I can't get this image of my head now. Thanks a lot Ernst. There I am on all fours barking up a tree at some innocent Japanese man in a white lab coat. I just know I'm gonna wake up to that tonight..
Do you really think piezoelectric printheads from different manufacturers will vary greatly in general design? I am not baiting you here - I am sincerely asking. My idea in asking the very scientists who design these piezoelectric printheads themselves, is to break away from endless speculation and gather a more specific understanding of how they work, how they are cooled, what exactly their tolerances are, etc. I can't help thinking that rather than abiding by some arbitrary rules we are told to follow, that if we all had specific knowledge about what exactly goes on in our heads, we would be better prepared/motivated to provide more appropriate care for them. For example I see many posts about moisture, capping stations, and drying ink. Some put jars of water in their machines and hope for the best, others monitor their rooms daily and run humidifiers. But what exactly is the moisture doing? Does it keep the ink from drying around the seals of the capping station only, or is it more. Is the moisture intended to reach the printhead itself? And if it is, it must also make it's way into the ink in the printhead itself? I am just thinking out-loud here but what I am after is actually less random.
I would like to understand exactly what happens during the time your printer sits between prints. For however long, doesn't matter - because theoretically whatever happens begins to happen the instant your head parks itself over the capping station, and gradually works toward clogging your head. When I say I want to understand things like "tolerances", what I am referring to is the relationship between the size of the nozzle opening in the x900 printhead, to the viscosity (thickness) of the Epson UltraChrome HDR ink. For instance - in monkey language, using whole numbers so I can understand this better - if the ink measures 1mm wide and the nozzle openings measure 2mm wide, then in this case we have 1mm of tolerance for our ink to get "thicker" as it is exposed to the open air through the face of the printhead, and still fit through the nozzle opening when it gets fired out during a print. Obviously the reason we have such a thing as a capping station is to protect the face of the printhead from exposure to the "dry" open air. And obviously, even with a capping station, the face of our heads are not completely protected from dry open air - otherwise we could leave our printers idle for a week and have no clogs to clear.
imagine for a moment, Ernst, that you are a piezoelectric printhead engineer wearing a lab coat. You are in a tree. I am barking the following questions at you:
So for instance just on the subject of humidifiers, which I am confident not every Epson x900 user runs in the room of their machine, what EXACTLY is going on with all this extra moisture in the air of the room that houses our printer? Because it's not purposely affecting our printheads, per-say, but rather the ink that is inside them. Is it a "thickness" thing? I assume it is. How much of a thickness thing is it? And then how exactly does ink in the printhead react as it sits idle over time? And how does this in turn affect the piezoelectrics? Is a "clog" (dried ink blocking the nozzle opening) actually even a clog? Or could it mean the ink in the printhead has simply "thickened"? And if it has indeed thickened, what exactly goes on now? Does this thicker ink slow down the piezoelectric movements? Does that in turn build up resistance, which leads to overheating causing misfiring, which shows up as "clogging"? Is "overheating" sometimes what we are actually referring to as clogs? Is the reason we are supposed to let the printer sit after cleanings meant to allow the Piezoelectrics to cool? Is there some tolerance to overheating then - like do cleanings clear thickened ink from the head to provide thinner ink and in turn better FUTURE cooling? So are automatic cleanings actually then maintenance, or could they be preventive maintenance? In the case of these uncloggable clogs then, are these indications of what we sometimes call "dead pixels" on our sensors? Is a dead head really a dead head - an electronic failure, or is it simply a drain-o clog clearing clog failure? Is this why our printers are set by default to regularly clean themselves - to run thickened ink out of our printheads? Is THIS the preventive maintenance step we are all screwing ourselves out of by "saving ink" and changing our default cleanings settings? Is it actually not clogs Espon is concerned about, but instead "thickend" ink that's been exposed too long to open air entering the face of the printhead?
Are you scared yet Ernst?
Stepping back a moment - questions like these are what I want answers to. Maybe the guy in a lab coat would laugh me out of a room for asking such nonsense. But, then, maybe he would look up at me and say, "That's our biggest challenge."
Because if overheating is what causes clogs, rather than clogs being what causes overheating - and ink is what plays a key role in piezoelectric printhead cooling - then maintaining the proper tolerances of Epson UltraChrome HDR ink viscosity would soon be appointed the new sheriff in town.
