I wanted to put this in a new post, since it's more about issues to my 9900.
Before I put down the details, I just wanted again thank Eric, for his time and effort to explain both complex and simple issues around the 7900/9900 family and to his taking the time to create the video's on his website that cover simple maintenance issues.
This morning I was trying to finish up 2 final 30 x 45 canvas prints for an account that had to have them this weekend. My assistant had made all the previous prints on the 9900, no issues and they have all been stretched. The final 2 he overlooked the gallery wrap allowance on the width. I was in a rush, coated the prints, and never measured them. Go to stretch, and 30" not 34" on width.
So, I know I can re-print, and coat and have them on site still by Saturday. Run down to my office, and fire up the 9900, which has been running a bunch lately. I do my mandatory nozzle check, and I have one bar missing from PK. I know, I should have just made the prints, but somehow my obsessive side came into play, and I powered off and came back up in Service Man mode. Ran a CL1 and fully expected the one bar to be back. NO, what I now had was a huge mass of deflected and missing nozzles. I ran a CL2 and it only moved the mess down a bit.
A bit of history, this printer is 3.5 years old, and no longer has any extended warranty, it expired in Sept. If I had been under warranty, I would have called a friend of mine, and just had him make the prints and let Epson handle the issue on my 9900. My 9900 had the head and dampers replaced back in March of 2014, and I assumed the wiper also. I have never seen this behavior before, ever with 1st head or replacement, i.e a single line missing, turning into a total mess with a CL1 cleaning. I was already running the pricing comparison of a new 9900/ vs paying for Decision One to replace the head.
Not sure if the head had permanent damage, but I did wonder if somehow the wiper was screwed up. I have been doing a lot of PK/MK switches and inevitably you are going to have to run a cleaning cycle. Yes you can do the switch in Service Man mode, and the printer won't clean, but mine seems to still want to clean, once I come back in normal mode. Net, lots of wiper use.
My older 7800, does this all the time, in that I can get junk on the wiper and see defections, and a simple pull the head, and clean off the old ink, fixes it. So I wondered if my wiper on the 9900 was needing replacement?
We all know Epson doesn't show how to do it, but I remember Eric's simple video on the process. I had purchased several wipers in the spring when my first head went out. I found the video, and followed the process and with a CL3 and new wiper, came back with a clean head pattern. I was pretty sure that just throwing more cleaning cycles at the head with the old wiper would be useless.
Eric's video is short and two the point, and the process is simple and straight forward. Epson should allow end users to do this (but that's another story).
When I took a look at the original wiper, sure enough it had a very slight tear about 1/4 of the way across, and there was a lot of junk up in and around that part of the wiper.
This process would not have been doable without Eric's taking the time to create the video and give the part numbers, etc. Sure you can purchased the actual service manual (if you can find it on-line), but this is one situation where a video is better.
Net, I got the two canvas prints done, and they will be coated and stretched tomorrow for delivery on Sat.
Eric, thanks again.
Paul Caldwell
