I’ve read quite a few threads here and its been a great resource, but this is my first post. I have an Epson 9900 that I’ve had for just over 4 years, which overall has been relatively trouble free. I use it fine art printing, so the machine runs pretty regularly, although when I was first starting out there were times it sat a couple of weeks between uses. The machine says I’ve printed 2650 pages, but I would say a 1/4 to a 1/3 of them could be nozzle checks, since I preform them between at least every few prints. I also regularly switch between black inks depending on the what jobs I have for the day.
About 6 months ago I started getting getting big black smears (usually in the middle of a large print) after printing one or two images. Since then I’ve had to clean the underside of the print head using the lint free cloth and windex method, along with any gunk on the capping station, pretty frequently to prevent this from happening.
Now yesterday after a routine switch from PK to MK, I developed a clog in the cyan channel that will not clean no matter what I do. I have tried all of the cleaning cycles, including power cleaning, the service mode four stages of pairs cleaning, as well as the SS cleaning. I also cleaned the actual wiper for the first time, and it was very dirty. I’m not sure how I missed doing that when the black smears started happening, but I guess I must have found the windex solution first and I didn’t investigate further since it was working. I ordered a new wiper yesterday though. I’ve also tried printing large sheets of only cyan, but hasn’t helped either.
After reading quite a bit on the Epson 7900 from the inside - out thread as well as the information on Eric Gulbransen’s
http://myx900.com/ site, I feel like I probably have one of the unclearable clogs. Reading up on things after I had already gone performed all of those cleanings to no avail, it made me nervous that I might have made things worse, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. It’s actually only one segment of the cyan channel in the nozzle check that it is missing, but I have never been one to want to print anything with a nozzle check showing any missing segments for fear of banding.
So far the test prints I’ve made since I’ve given up on cleaning haven’t showed noticeable banding, so it probably isn’t time to abandon this machine quite yet. I have a few very large projects coming up in the next few weeks though, so if things get worse and this machine is rendered useless, I need to decide what I’m going to do ahead of time so I can move quick. Epson has already quoted me what amounts to $2500 for service and parts to fix it if it needs a head which they said it does about 50% of the time. Reading about the issue here seemed to make it seem even more likely that the Epson tech will recommend a head replacement, which just does not seem worth it. Any recommendations of anything else I should try before it gets to that?
The first option I’m considering would just be buying another 9900 to replace it. It seems like there is a lot of people here that have been turned off these issues the x900 series printers have, but does anyone still think they’re best option out there despite that? Does anyone know if Epson has taken what people are saying to heart and worked out any of the issues with the newer machines?
Up to this point I hadn’t considered anything but an Epson in my future, but the seeming endless issues others have experienced with the x900’s makes switching to a Canon IPF8400 a possibility, since people around here see it as a viable alternative. What are the positives and negatives compared to a 9900? I’ve read that bronzing can be an issue with certain colors and that the B&W printing isn’t of the same quality as with the Epson, but in many ways they’re very similar and in some ways superior, any experiences from people who have had both?
A third option would be to use this as an opportunity to move up to a 60” printer. I’ve had to turn away a fair amount of work in the past because I couldn’t print large enough, so moving up a larger machine might make sense now if I’m going to be needing one anyway. In that case that puts it between an 11880 and a IPF9400. Obviously the Canon is a much newer machine, which I would assume has a larger gamut and noticeably faster, but it also seems to be going for about $3000 more. Is it worth it? Any thoughts as to the advantages and drawback of either one? How does an 11880 compare with a 9900 as far as print quality, speed, and reliability?
Thanks in advance for everyones help.
Noah