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Author Topic: Epson 7900 from the inside - out  (Read 1115460 times)

Jeff Magidson

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #340 on: February 13, 2012, 05:18:34 pm »

It's really time for EPSON to step up to the plate and answer some questions / give some guidance, otherwise we are fishing in the dark. Hello Epson PR department? This thread has 9,000 views so far and that will surely grow everyday. MANY people come to this forum to figure out what printer to purchase. I just bought a box of Epson Fine Art Velvet Paper, on the box is a big photo done by LuLa's own Jeff Schewe. Jeff has mentioned numerous times that he has a "relationship" with Epson. Perhaps he can point someone with clout at Epson to this thread. I don't expect them to spill trade secrets or anything.. I just want them to be helpful, after all, its their product.  
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Eric Gulbransen

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #341 on: February 13, 2012, 05:35:39 pm »

I have more potentially great news for anyone who feels like they are backed into a corner with no way out of their failed printhead completely negating the value of their entire Epson X900 printer.  No your printer is not suddenly a worthless pile of rubbish.  No a replacement printhead for your machine is not $1,800.  In fact it's quite a lot less.  

Brand new printheads purchased directly from Epson (this price was just quoted for me 12/13/12 by Epson themselves) are $1,132.12.  They are in stock.  They can ship today.

Here is the deal on buying Epson replacement parts from Epson themselves:  You can't.  You have to buy Epson parts from any of their distributors.  And the parts are sold with the intent that a qualified service technician will be installing them.  Here is where it gets interesting though..  There is an exception to this rule.  If YOU are installing the printhead yourself, you CAN order it directly from Epson.  They offer no assistance, no manuals, no programs used for installation.  But they DO offer you the part.  It's expensive, but it's not the end of your printer expensive.

I already pm'd the new-to-Luminous Landscape member who stated his 9900 was for sale on ebay as spare parts because he has unclearable clogs only on his green channel.  I told him to end the auction.  

Something is changing here, finally.  Our answers are drawing near.  In fact we may soon have 2 solutions to unclearable clogs.  But we definitely already have one - replacing the head at an unprohibitive cost.  Yes I just made another word up.

Before you jump on the "Oh hell no I can't take the printhead off by myself " bandwagon, rest easy.  If enough people are cornered by this unclearable clog dilemma, and you support the cause I will create an Epson 79/9900 printhead replacement video that a Chimpanzee could understand.

« Last Edit: February 13, 2012, 05:40:13 pm by Go394 »
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chaddro

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #342 on: February 13, 2012, 06:25:54 pm »

Eric,

I was doing more endless searching and found this print head recover service ... and they DO perform the clean and TEST before returning:

http://inkjetperformance.com/id33.html

They don't list the x900 printers, but the page may be old. Might be worth a call to pick their brains also. They put a nice bold red notice about the drawbacks of using ultrasonic "jewelry" cleaners... 

Take a peak! I also saw that 9900 on ebay and was about to email him with a link to this thread!
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chaddro

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #343 on: February 13, 2012, 07:21:44 pm »

« Last Edit: February 13, 2012, 07:54:41 pm by chaddro »
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SacredEarth

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #344 on: February 13, 2012, 08:20:06 pm »

Ok, Eric just convinced me,  and I just pulled my clogged 9900 off eBay. I'm going to wait and hear Eric's results with the ultrasonic cleaning. $1200. For a new print head is still just out of my budget for repairing this printer. I already put $$$ into purchasing what I thought was a working printer, wasted a bunch of inks trying to clear the clog,  and then needing a working printer right away and putting more $$ into a 9800, to get my back log of print orders out the door. I'll just wait and see..., but it still may end up on eBay. Thanks again to Eric for his time and willingness to put his printer through the paces and post his findings on this forum!
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clic

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #345 on: February 13, 2012, 08:21:54 pm »

Eric,


Nobody can say whether you had a serious clog originally or not, but correct me if I am wrong, my understanding is that at least since the head dip in cleaning solution overnight, there is just no clog left in the head, right?  Yet the head still has drop outs on the nozzle check, so there is something else, and that something else can either be premature delamination (premature because such a young printer should not be subject to delamination) or its nozzle connections are fried.

If you have delamination, I think that everybody will agree that it is extremely unlikely that it may have been caused by a clog, which means that you probably did not have any serious clog in the first place.  The only problem with the delamination theory, is that one would think that delamination would manifest itself more randomly in the nozzles than the rather regular order of progression it is known by.  And this is really why I believe more in the fried nozzle connection theory.

If you have nozzles connections fried, then who knows what caused it, but it is unlikely that it is nozzles clogged, because even as we post here, your head does not have any nozzle clogged, and yet it keeps loosing nozzles, just as mine does, and just as all the other heads I know do or have done.  The fact that the number of damaged heads still seem to be overwhelmingly affected in the LLK channel makes me think of a chemical component of the ink that would promote a "corrosion" of the electronic/electrical contacts under specific circumstances, and if you admit that for the sake of the argument, then it seems to make sense to envision contamination just like rust propagates.  But my understanding of this is no better than my expertise in what propulses the Star Trek space ship.
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Eric Gulbransen

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #346 on: February 13, 2012, 08:34:38 pm »

God dammit that's the Enterprise, not the Star Trek space ship!

Hey you started it.  It's your fault I now assume you have a sense of humor   :-)


Yes we soaked the face of our head in distilled water and cleaning fluid.  Mixture about 20% solution, 80% distilled water.  However, do we know if that cleared our clogs?  We definitely do not.  After soaking our printhead's face in the solution for 24hrs we then very gently sucked fresh cleaning fluid mixed at the same proportion, up through the face of the head and out the back into a clear tube attached to a syringe.  In this clear tube we did see crap come out of the PK channel.  I was not watching during the YW sucking.  By assumption yes, this gave us the impression our head would be clear of clogs.  But no, we do NOT know if they were actually cleared.  We don't even know if our clogs are clogs at this point.  The only thing we know for sure is our head has drop-outs in the very same places it has since we got this machine.  Only difference since day-one to now, they are slightly worse.  But not from the soaking.  Mostly from the cleanings.  The soaking made absolutely no difference.

Mark D Segal

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #347 on: February 13, 2012, 09:01:49 pm »

But my understanding of this is no better than my expertise in what propulses the Star Trek space ship.

Indeed, same here, because I don't design piezo-electric printheads nor the chemistry of the inks. It could be a number of things and those of us who are allowed to converse have neither the data nor the expertise nor the context to diagnose it with any confidence.

Perhaps just getting on the right track for diagnosis needs to start with the initial conditions. As I've said before, if the printer was working fine the night before it left Dan Berg's house and it was not working fine when it arrived at Eric's house. whatever caused the problem *most likely* happened in-between, unless by a low probability coincidence a problem unbeknown to Dan was brewing from some time before and  just happened to erupt as the printer came to Eric, perhaps exacerbated by what happened between their two houses. I think Eric's current path of investigation makes a certain amount of sense. It will probably reveal whether clogs remain the issue. Failing that, I believe it unlikely that the root cause will be definitively nailed on this Forum.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Wayne Fox

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #348 on: February 13, 2012, 09:17:46 pm »

Wow!  I can’t wait for the final verdict.  Any side bets on the outcome???
Well, I'd bet the head still has issues.  This sounds like a classic head failure, which unfortunately does happen. they are pretty rare, but evidence does seem to point to the new heads being more prone to this, and after moving a 7900 and seeing a similar failure one has to wonder if moving these printers can cause problems. Maybe we should be flushing the heads before moving printers.

The printer I sold and moved developed a few clogs that were challenging (in the LLK channel), and the user executed several cleans consecutively, even a couple of SS cleans.  that begs the question whether aggressive cleaning can actually damage the head.

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Mark D Segal

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #349 on: February 13, 2012, 09:20:55 pm »

that begs the question whether aggressive cleaning can actually damage the head.



Epson technical staff have advised me that successive heavy-duty cleanings can introduce air into the system and this is to be avoided. Hence they recommended running prints between cleanings and not to run successive power cleans.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Pete Berry

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #350 on: February 13, 2012, 10:14:35 pm »

Eric,

If you have nozzles connections fried, then who knows what caused it, but it is unlikely that it is nozzles clogged, because even as we post here, your head does not have any nozzle clogged, and yet it keeps loosing nozzles, just as mine does, and just as all the other heads I know do or have done.  The fact that the number of damaged heads still seem to be overwhelmingly affected in the LLK channel makes me think of a chemical component of the ink that would promote a "corrosion" of the electronic/electrical contacts under specific circumstances, and if you admit that for the sake of the argument, then it seems to make sense to envision contamination just like rust propagates.  But my understanding of this is no better than my expertise in what propulses the Star Trek space ship.

This sounds like the typical modus exodus for Canon iPFxxxx thermal bubble jet heads, which seems to be thermo-electrical burnout rather than reversible ink clogs. I have yet to hear a report of reversible clogging associated with banding and/or printhead error messages in 6 years of following the Canon LF printer Wiki closely.

The design difference is that Canon iPFx300 series printheads (two of six colors each) have a large nozzle redundancy, with auto re-mapping as they fail - 2560 nozzles/color, vs. Epson's 360/color for the x900 series. The downside is that every few years you replace printheads as they fail, which takes about a half hour's time between purging and removal of the old and refilling of the new - at $450 each for the new x300, and $600 for the earlier gen. x100 series. Then total freedom from nozzle checks or forced cleaning cycles - for 5 years of regular use with my iPF5000 after the original PF-01 heads failed and were replaced under warranty with the x100 series PF-03's.

Pete
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jeverton

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #351 on: February 14, 2012, 10:51:16 am »

Well, I'd bet the head still has issues.  This sounds like a classic head failure, which unfortunately does happen. they are pretty rare, but evidence does seem to point to the new heads being more prone to this, and after moving a 7900 and seeing a similar failure one has to wonder if moving these printers can cause problems. Maybe we should be flushing the heads before moving printers.

The printer I sold and moved developed a few clogs that were challenging (in the LLK channel), and the user executed several cleans consecutively, even a couple of SS cleans.  that begs the question whether aggressive cleaning can actually damage the head.


You might be on to something here... I was thinking the same thing last night.  What if too much electrical current is sent through the printer head during several cleans consecutively?  This is definately not highlighted in the printer manual under the maintaning and transporting the printer.  And if we should print in between cleaning cycles - where is this documented?   ???
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Eric Gulbransen

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #352 on: February 14, 2012, 11:02:11 am »

I'm thinking like Wayne as well.  If you're shipping your printer maybe do more than what is advised - leaving carts in place.  Perhaps those flushing carts are a good idea.  Might suck to feel like you're wasting ink but really you could be risking a lot more expense than ink.

Ernst Dinkla

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #353 on: February 14, 2012, 11:33:34 am »

I watched the videos of their machine in action, but do not undestand how you could possibly do a back flush drawing cleaning fluid through the head without removing it on a 7900/9900, and drawing fluid though the nozzle plate itself as Eric did.
I think the ink connections on those other machines are set up differently allowing  fluid to be drawn through the head in a different manner.
 

It could be done on the Epson 10000 if I parked the 3 head assembly at the left side of the printer with the cover there removed. Two empty cartridges in the two corresponding slots for the head (2 channels) I wanted to clean, tubes in the carts to a bottle + vacuum pump. A small perspex + rubber plate with a tube to a bottle with cleaning fluid and that plate put on the nozzle surface in the very narrow space between the nozzle surface and the media transport axle. I also had to keep two channel valves open at the back on the other side. The 10000 had dampers in the head assembly so you could not replace them (at least I did not know how), a reverse flow could take out the pigment settling on the damper's sieves. Running MIS inks on that printer then. I do not have fond memories of jobs like that.


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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #354 on: February 14, 2012, 12:08:15 pm »

If you have nozzles connections fried, then who knows what caused it, but it is unlikely that it is nozzles clogged, because even as we post here, your head does not have any nozzle clogged, and yet it keeps loosing nozzles, just as mine does, and just as all the other heads I know do or have done.  The fact that the number of damaged heads still seem to be overwhelmingly affected in the LLK channel makes me think of a chemical component of the ink that would promote a "corrosion" of the electronic/electrical contacts under specific circumstances, and if you admit that for the sake of the argument, then it seems to make sense to envision contamination just like rust propagates.  But my understanding of this is no better than my expertise in what propulses the Star Trek space ship.
This is highly unlikely given the chemical composition of the inks.  LK and LLK are basically the same thing with different amounts of carbon black ( think MK is based on carbon black as well while PK has a dye based component).  Corrosion in the classical sense is ionic in nature and there are no salts in the Epson ink formulations.  Glycols and the ink component which is a  polymerized dye/carbon component would not be sufficient to do this.

I also suspect that Epson are reading this thread.  We know that one of their marketing people is a contributor to LuLa and Dan already had corresponded with him with regard to this thread.  Whether Epson reply directly or indirectly to what is being discussed is unknown at this point.
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jeverton

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #355 on: February 14, 2012, 12:16:18 pm »

I also suspect that Epson are reading this thread.  We know that one of their marketing people is a contributor to LuLa and Dan already had corresponded with him with regard to this thread.  Whether Epson reply directly or indirectly to what is being discussed is unknown at this point.

Maybe it’s time Epson steps up and sets the record straight… a whole lot of conjecture going on with no position?   ::)
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #356 on: February 14, 2012, 12:50:27 pm »

Maybe it’s time Epson steps up and sets the record straight… a whole lot of conjecture going on with no position?   ::)

At this point, I'd be very surprised if anyone at Epson seriously thought it was "time" for them to do anything of the sort on this particular case. How can they? They didn't see the printer, they weren't consulted on anything that was done to it, all manner of things were done to it that they had no control over and haven't seen first-hand. If you were them under these conditions what would you do, being a manufacturing enterprise with reputational risk and potential commercial liability - as far-fetched as that may be insofar as no warranty provisions would appear to apply?
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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jeverton

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #357 on: February 14, 2012, 12:59:03 pm »

If you were them under these conditions what would you do, being a manufacturing enterprise with reputational risk and potential commercial liability - as far-fetched as that may be insofar as no warranty provisions would appear to apply?

At the very least the company should make a more proactive positioning on preventive maintenance and best practices to dealing with ink clogged nozzles and the nozzle test pattern.  I’ve heard many times on this thread and others the recommendation by technical support is to print in between nozzle pattern tests… Where is this documented? 

With respect to the liability and company’s reputation, it would be prudent to be proactive vs. reactive to all the conjecture and set the record straight… regardless of what happened to a specific printer.
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Jeff Magidson

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #358 on: February 14, 2012, 01:05:21 pm »

At this point, I'd be very surprised if anyone at Epson seriously thought it was "time" for them to do anything of the sort on this particular case. How can they? They didn't see the printer, they weren't consulted on anything that was done to it, all manner of things were done to it that they had no control over and haven't seen first-hand. If you were them under these conditions what would you do, being a manufacturing enterprise with reputational risk and potential commercial liability - as far-fetched as that may be insofar as no warranty provisions would appear to apply?

If I where Epson, I would give some general guidance, try to clear up any misunderstandings about how their technology works and try to be helpful. They don't need to comment on specifics of the particular 7900 that started this thread. Based on past LuLa readership, this thread will probably hit 30K+ views, that is too big to ignore... of course they can choose to ignore it, but that shows hubris.  
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #359 on: February 14, 2012, 01:09:31 pm »

At the very least the company should make a more proactive positioning on preventive maintenance and best practices to dealing with ink clogged nozzles and the nozzle test pattern.  I’ve heard many times on this thread and others the recommendation by technical support is to print in between nozzle pattern tests… Where is this documented? 

With respect to the liability and company’s reputation, it would be prudent to be proactive vs. reactive to all the conjecture and set the record straight… regardless of what happened to a specific printer.


I checked my 4900 manual and indeed this recommendation from tech support is not documented. If Epson as a company officially supports this recommendation (which can differ from tech support advice given by staff of the company - believe it or not), then yes I agree with you, it should be documented in the manuals that we get with the printers.

As for pro-activity, given where things are at now, they are being neither proactive nor reactive. They are saying nothing. I have to assume they are well aware of what's being said around them and they have done their homework on what to say or not say. They would have their own view of what's in their best interest, taking more information into account than we have access to, and obviously, their judgment of what is in their interest to say or not say about either this case or the technology in general may not be the same as that of some others here.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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