Alan: really I have no idea what difference may or may not be with the 3800 inks, so I will not venture there. The only thing I know is that AIS, which I trust, tells me that he has rarely seen an Epson head fail before the x900, and now that is current, or common, let's say not a rare occurrence anymore. Now that could be because the nozzles are so thin, but that does not explain very well why a couple of heads removed were actually flowing just fine, nor why my head with cleaner in it, no ink, kept clogging some more for as long as I left the cleaner in it.
Jim: well, now I have one case of LK clogged. What have you done about it? Have you tried AIS cleaners on the capping station, and then if that does not work, the cleaner from inside solution?
What I can tell you is that the issue I am studying always manifest itself as a clog in the type of pattern on the test attached: not on top or bottom at first, always as a group, not random nozzles in the color.
About the other fellow on the other thread, if I remember well, what he was describing was unclear, and once again, it is one thing to have a more or less stubborn clog, it is another thing to have one that just does not go away and actually grows constantly. So I only consider clogs that are persistent enough that people change the head or the printer and complain clearly about it. In other words, if you post twice and don't complain, don't scream to high heavens in pain, I am going to assume that you are either extra terrestrial, that your pain threshold is higher than allowed in civilization, or that you just did not have to work that hard and that the clog went away but did not bother to tell us.
I have 13 cases of people aiming for a spot at the Blues hall of fame, and possibly one more pending.
Gwhitf: Why wanting a perfectly uniform glossy print? For several decades in the latest part of the 20th century, photographers saught to have texture in a print, like in a die transfer for instance, that added a richness to the print, vs. a C print or a Cibachrome one at the time, which were the standards, and had as much texture as a chrome plate. In b&w, my mentor had developed a te4chnique to remove part of the gelatin in order to bring the silver to the surface, there again among other things, in order to create texture, different ways for the light to be handled across the image. Certain toners would metalize the shadows, in essence creating "bronzing" to everybody's delight, so why wanting to avoid that now?
Also, as far as Epson goes, only the x900 and x890 can both do glossy and matte at the same time. That was the selling point for me, as I can't have two printers.
Mark: we already have had this discussion privately, but you are stubborn at confusing the issues. The fact that I only have found so many cases, yet more than one can count on one hand might make it a small amount of data, but the fact that the overwhelming part of that data is related to LLK, that is statistically relevant. Once again, there is no reason that logic conceives, why all the other users who would have had head failures on a different color would have massively deserted the places where I gathered the cases I know. Everything points in the direction of an LLK problem, but if you want to be in denial for academic or other reasons, that is your prerogative.
You are right though, that "transparency would be in the consumers' interest."
