9900 Woes - any possible next steps?

InkjetMall Customer Support Printer Maintenance & Cartridges
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Hi folks. First, I am grateful for the forum and wish I had known earlier what I’ve learned recently! I own a five year old Epson 9900 which had been lightly used during that time, then put in storage for 6 months during a studio move. I now have a persistent clog on the cyan channel. It comes up on the test print in exactly the same place every time I print a nozzle check. All the other channels look perfect.

Here’s a shot of the nozzle pattern, taken when there was ink in the system. The pattern with Piezoflush is the same, just harder to see:
nozzelcheck

I’m writing this to outline what I’ve already done, and to ask if there might be any further step I could take. First I used piezoflush and followed the video instructions to perform the shoe-shine on the head, cleaned the wiper blade and the capping station, and the flushing box. None of these things had ever been done in the five years I’ve owned it, due to my ignorance.

A test print after all this revealed no change in the nozzle gaps on the cyan channel. So I purchased the set of carts and the gallon of PF, filled and primed them, and ran an initial fill. After sitting for a day, I ran a cleaning cycle, but a test print showed no improvement. I ran a second initial fill and let it sit for two more days, then did a cleaning cycle, but still no improvement.

Incidentally, the last cart (the LM channel) might be defective. It reads much lower than the other inks, even though a visual inspection shows the same amount of PF as in all the other channels. Also, there are times the machine does not recognize it - in which case I remove the cart, push on the green end of the chip to nudge it up a bit, and reinsert it. It usually accepts the cart after this.

So back to the real purpose of my note here. Having done all this, is there any further step such as replacing some of the hardware? In one of the posts I read something about Dana’s “nuclear option” but couldn’t learn what that entailed! I am not exactly eager to turn this into a piezography printer, though that could be a last resort.

Thanks for any suggestions - Jim S.

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Many times people send us nozzle checks before purchasing PF so we can verify if PF would be useful. In this case, PF would not be. It’s a de-laminated print-head. This is all-to-common with the x900 printers and can’t be fixed.

-Walker

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Hi Jim,
My condolences,and welcome to the club. Honestly, you’re way ahead of the curve if you got five years from a 9900 without major service. It’s almost always lack of use with these things that kills them, and the Epson inks. Fortunately, you are at the best site there is to keep it alive. Lots of experienced users and expert staff.
Just out of curiosity, can you still get a good print even with the clogs? I’ve had channels that looked slightly better that still performed. The control panel shouts at me , yet it prints on.
If you go the repair route through Epson, my guess is that a new head and damper assembly would cost nearly as much or more than the new model. Walker thinks that Epson may have a more reliable platform now.
Good luck, Ken

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Thanks Ken for the comments and the advice. No, I will not replace the head and damper, but your comment about making a print even with a bad channel is interesting. In fact - I have made good prints of normal subject matter that do not show banding. It’s mainly when I print a difficult test print that includes a spectrum of solid saturated colors that it falls down.

And Walker - I am still looking to replace the defective LM cart (or its chip) that came with the full PF kit I recently purchased. As mentioned, the machine does not always recognize the cart, and when it does, it consistently reads about half the amount of fill that the other carts read, even though all the carts are in fact the same. Could you issue me an RMA please? Thank you. - Jim

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The LM is coded as a 150mL chip. I think. We can send you out a replacement chip although in researching this more I think there are no 350mL coded LM chips anywhere on the market. Our internal chips do the same thing. Do you have a resetter? Resetting this chip half-way is what is needed. I minor inconvenience if you have the resetter for this refillable-resettable carts.

-Walker

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Hi Walker - But I also have the problem, as stated before, that often I get the message “Ink Cartridge Error” when using the cart. i.e. it doesn’t seem to read the chip at all. How about I send you my LM cart and you send me a replacement? Thanks, Jim