We've been working with Dano from Epson quite a bit over the past few months. He is a strong proponent of EMI (Epson Media Installer). Settings were developed for EMI over a year ago which were purported to solve the issue of head strikes with the P9570. But, they did not. When Dano came into the picture, he suggested settings for EMI which we had already been using over the past year. They made no difference to the head strikes, whatsoever. However, after we installed the latest firmware update (LL18N4), the head strikes cleared up. Dano claims there has been no significant change to the firmware and that it is the use of the new settings in EMI which were the fix for the head strike issue. Of course, this can not be true since, as I said, we had been using those settings for over the past year and head strikes were a very common issue.
After all is said & done, our 9570 and our 7570 are now working normally. Frankly, I don't care if Epson doesn't want to own up to the real reasons for the head strike issue and what fixed it and wants to pretend that settings in EMI were the solution. We've had our 9570 since shortly after they were released and have lost a lot of paper and ink due to head strikes regardless of platen gap height which was always at the max. Not good! The last time we had our D1 tech in to try to fix the issue (again) he said in frustration "why did they put the damn head so close?" Now, we are finally able to reduce the gap to a more palatable level for higher quality prints without head strikes. So, whatever the fix, magic, divine intervention or Epson techs, we're happy it's fixed.
All of this said, unfortunately EMI still doesn't work with any RIP. So, they have a good deal of work ahead because they plan to put a lot of their eggs in that basket.