OK, here goes. I posted this response to a similar thread a few months ago:
"We are a small Epson dealer in Pittsburgh, PA - we generally sell to end-users within our geographic area. I won't share total sales stats, but I will say that as far as I know from our experiences with our customers, we have had less than a 5 percent print head failure rate with the 79/ 9900 series printers that we have sold (in and out of warranty). One of them was one of our demo units (about 2 1/2 years ago) - it was used very infrequently, and the other was with a customer's printer* - the printer's head was damaged from a repeated head crash on a torn piece of heavy weight paper (the printer was running unattended)."
Threads like this really bother me - I talked to my Epson sales rep who just returned from a sales meeting in California. One of the topics that they covered was the reliability of the printers - and, based on their service records, they have about a 3 percent failure rate due to manufacturing problems. Epson's overall experience very closely matches our experience with these printers.
There are environmental conditions that will definitely cause problems, and there are operator errors that will cause problems as well. No specifics were given for the conditions under which this printer operated. It could have been abused (it definitely was at the end of the video), it could have been in a non-recommended environment, it could have been left to sit for long periods without recommended maintenance, or the problem could have been as simple as a bad capping station or a bad damper.
And, I guess that this is a problem with the internet in general, people who may or may not know what they are talking about become experts. And, people who may or may not realize this listen to their opinions and follow their advice. And, based on our knowledge and experience, I would be very reluctant to listen to a lot of the advice presented in this thread.
Tony
*our customer who had the 9900 with the head crash sold his printer for $1,000.00. Maybe the guy who smashed his printer could have done the same and donated the $1,000 to a charity. I guess that the video wouldn't have been as entertaining...
I have no doubt you feel that Epson has a high end product, you are a dealer. However I do take considerable exception to your post that implies most of the information on the internet about the problems with the 9900 family are not correct.
I have worked with Epson's now for over 10 years, wides for 7 of those years. I own a 9900 and it has not been a easy printer to work with. I fully understand the environmental conditions that can impact these printers. I also believe that the post that was started by Eric G. about the 7900 has more information about the actual 9900 family than a Epson service manual.
To be honest, no printer, be it Epson, HP, Canon etc. should make a perfect print, then without changing anything else on the next print, totally block on color. This is not a clog, it's a ink system delivery failure. This has happened on my 9900 with Orange and Green, (do a search as this is this the most common type of this issue), LK, PK, MK and now Cyan. I use this printer daily in my work. I work with it in both matte and PK insets, so both sides are worked.
Net, the head itself is very durable, however the ink delivery system, either the channels or or the pizeo heads themselves can be damaged. The damage appears as a clog and users then possibly do more damage in trying to un-clog the printer with excessive cleanings.
It's good that your Epson salesman told you that these printers are great, and don't have problems. I would have been surprised if they didn't. Epson's failure rate I am sure is being measured for the 1 year warranty only. Most people using these printers are assuming a life of at least 4 to 5 years.
As for the internet and knowledge, I have learned much much more about how to get around problems with the 9900 family from the internet than trying to call Epson and getting someone on the phone who doesn't even know that the 9900 is a 44 inch printer. There are a lot of accomplished printers and photographers that are members here who have thousands of hours of experience working with the 9900 family of printers.
If you compare the number of issues around clogs with working running printers in the 9900 family to the older 9880/9800/9600 family I think you will find that the heads in the the older printers were much more reliable, were much easier to replace and to be totally honest, printed about 95% as good as the 9900 family.
Paul Caldwell
