Epson 9900 cyan ovelrlay on prints

[bluebird]

I have an Epson 9900, yesterday after making a good print the next one had a heavy cyan overlay on the print.  I did a nozzle check and the nozzle check had a cyan band about 1/2 inch wide over just the upper half of the nozzle check.  You could see through the cyan overlay and see that the nozzle lines were all there.  also the text under the nozzle check had the same cyan band over it.  Any ideas would be appreciated.  I got an estimate for up to 2,300 in parts to repair it.  I have never seen anything like this and have had several Epson wide format printers.   

[elisabeth russell]

Oh, man I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but that was one of the symptoms I had right before a whooooole lot of visits from Epson. They were unable to narrow down specifically what caused it and ended up replacing main board, the aidboard, the pump cap, the wiper, adjusted the platen gap, paper feed length, replaced the print head, and finally replaced the sub board on the carriage. It got to the point where this odd cyan band (and sometimes a light band and sometimes just a 1/2" area of the print would be skewed before resuming normally!) would show up at odd places and at the worst times, always on enormous prints of course.

  That being said: there are a number of things that I would check first to eliminate a few less expensive possibilities.
--Update your firmware.
--Hook your printer up to another computer and send a print. You need to make sure that this is not a computer issue.
--Try a different USB cord to connect to the printer.

I remember that for us, this problem was intermittent, thus making it more frustrating. I hope you figure it out...
Good luck!

[bluebird]

Thank you for the prompt reply, I have a feeling I'm in for bad time with this.  The printer is in a college digital imaging lab that I oversee.  I have already updated the firmware and according to Epson it is now current.  I will try another computer.  The printer has always had a long UBB cable, over 10 ft but has never been a problem in the 2 years we have been running it.   There was another problem with the printer about 3 weeks ago, it simply would turn on, no display on the printer at all but it did make some noises.  Then a few days later it came back on by itself and has been fine until the cyan banding.  I had a tech come and look at it but of course it was working fine when he got there and he did nose around some and pronounced it OK.  Do think these things could be related.

Ok one more issue, when the banding started I thought I might do a power clean, shot in the dark I know.  But my orange ink was at 1% so I thought I would replace it first.  Neither one of my extra, brand new in the box, orange carts would be recognized by the printer.  Put the 1% one back in and recognized right away.  This is why I updated the firmware as Epson told me that would solve the cart problem but it did not.
So now I have cyan banding and about 500.00 in carts the printer won't recognize.  I have had this recognition problem in the past and Epson has sent free replacements that were fine.  But they said they aren't doing that anymore as the updated firmware would solve the problem

Sorry for the long post and again would appreciate any insight.

[langier]

If your carts don’t work and within date, call Epson and they will probably replace them.

I had one a month ago that wouldn’t recognize, updated the FW and still nothing...Epson sent a replacement. No muss or fuss.

[elisabeth russell]

Yes, Epson will replace them immediately at no cost and they ship them quickly. Call Epson Tech Support 562-276-1305. I've had this issue just this week and 2x in the last 2 months, both times w/ a LLK cart. You can also try shaking them well and firmly thumping the bottom edge on a padded surface to dislodge any air bubbles in case that is the problem. Guarantee, Epson ships replacements out with zero hassle and they are very, very, fast.