Faint banding caused by minor blockage

InkjetMall Customer Support Printer Maintenance & Cartridges
21

What is going on? Hard to say. There’s no real answer, or putting that another way, there are quite a few possible answers, and it’s hard to know which one it might be.

I am having a similar problem with my R1900, although my recurring problem is misfiring nozzles rather than a simple gap. This is physically virtually identical to the R2880, except it runs a different OEM inkset. I’m using it for Piezography2. I’m fortunate that since the problem channel is also Yellow (just a coincidence), which holds shade 1 for gloss, and I’m printing on matte mostly, I can just leave the flush cart in there. I’m yet to see if this made any difference. If you try this, it may be worth pausing printing and leaving the cart in there for a while, like several days, and maybe up to a week. When trying to get the gremlins out of a printer, patience is often a virtue.

I’ve had a problem like yours in the past with this printer, and at that time the inks and carts were both a little old. So I replaced them and the problem went away. If that applies to you then it’s worth considering. But as you can see in that thread, my current Y channel already holds new ink in a new cart, and there are only two possibilities that I can think of. One is that I haven’t done the cleaning routine, as recommended by Dana, well enough. Two is that the print head is on the way out, after five years.

I also have an R2880 that I use for colour work, rarely. It sits with flush carts most of the time. When I put the flush carts in after a period of printing, I find that after the printer does the mandatory head clean, and I print a couple of those calibration pages, there are still traces of colour. Another head clean removes all that. So that’s the routine I’d recommend if you put a flush cart in the Y slot - mandatory clean, purge (calibration) patterns, and an second head clean. When I put the colour inks back in, generally the mandatory head clean is sufficient.

It’s not clear what you did when declared problem solved. If you flushed the Y channel with the cleaning kit then it’s not clear that a flush cart is going to help, although it may. There’s also the full printer cleaning routine, but once you’ve done all that, and your inks and carts are fresh, and the problem continues to return, then I’m out of ideas.

22

I thought the problem was solved by flushing with piezoflush, so I can’t see how leaving a cart filled with piezoflush in that position will help alleviate the problem. Plus that means I will be unable to print for a week.

The printer is pre-owned but allegedly has been used a handful of times. Difficult to say.
The ink is about a year old, well within its ‘best before’ date
The carts, of which I’ve gone through 3 sets along the way are a few months old

Nevertheless I have a perfect nozzle check apart from that one teeny tiny little blip and that is enough to make my negs inconsistent. I held one of them up to the light and it was pink instead of black in the densest area.

I have spent a year battling with these inks and have had nothing but gremlins. I was told if I increased my throughput so things didn’t stagnate that my problems would be lessened. So I’ve been attempting to print a negative most days and when not in use I’ve been running nozzle checks daily to ensure the printhead doesn’t sit unused for prolonged periods. Also, shaking the carts regularly. Have even left the printer powered on standby the whole time.

I’ve helped out at a commercial platinum printing studio and I can tell you that they use OEM and sometimes the inks are left for a number of weeks without being used. The printer can be fired up and a neg printed after this period out no problem. Couldn’t see that happening with this system. As you can see, it takes one nozzle to go and the entire neg is compromised. Waaay to sensitive

I’m certainly out of ideas and nearly out of patience. Not to mention one broken printer, 100+ message board posts and hundreds of quid. You all seem to be having difficulty too.

23

I’ve been using Piezography for 7.5 years, in an R1410 for 2.5 and in the R1900 for five years. Both printers were piezo printers from new and have never seen OEM inks. I’ve had almost no problems with either printer in that time (The upgrade to the R1900 was just a rash upgrade impulse). The current nozzle issues are the first recurring problem, but that said, I don’t know yet just how serious, and the printer is five years old. Most people on this forum who have had misfiring nozzles have managed to clear them fairly readily.

You have a specific problem, which is that a single nozzle gap apparently causes banding in digital negatives. I’ve never found that to be a problem on paper prints. The system seems fairly robust to the odd single gap when printing on paper.

The simple fact is that refillable carts do present more challenges to get working and keep working than OEM. They have to be refillable, and not infringe on Epson patents. The older a printer is, the harder the challenge. Based on my experiences, I’ve written some refillables lessons, which you may find comforting or worrying, or perhaps both.

The R2880 I referred to in my last post was a printer that I bought on a similar basis to yours. Supposedly low mileage. It certainly appeared to be in good condition, and the WICReset tool, which can report on pages printed, head cleans preformed, and the state of the waste ink pads, suggested that it hadn’t had heavy usage. It came with a perfect OEM nozzle check, although I have reason to believe that it had sat unused for some time. Yet I had a terrible time getting it to work with IJM refillables, and was partly what prompted me to write those lessons. Which is why it sits with flush carts in most of the time. The problem with second hand printers is that you can never really be sure of their history.

My view is that Piezography (and refillables in general) works best in a new printer. I always get a bit nervous when I read about someone wanting to convert an older printer that has only seen OEM to refillables. That probably doesn’t help you right now, but Jon has said that he is fairly close to getting the digital negative system working for the R1430. That is a fairly inexpensive printer to buy, and you can still buy it new.

The idea of leaving a flush cart in for a period of time was that there may be a small spec of dried ink stuck in the head somewhere, that may dissolve given a little time. It’s a long shot, but you’d want to try all possibilities before you ditched the system, wouldn’t you?

[p.s. The post that this post was replying to seems not to be available anymore.]

24

If I were to get Epson to fix my other broken printer and replace the parts would this be up to the same standard as buying a new printer? I will look into the printer you suggested. Deleted because I thought it was a bit rash to condemn it completely. Was just raging slightly and should have took a breath first. Releiving to hear you have had mostly good experience with new printers. Will look into the thread you sent with your experience of refillable carts when I get home. Will try your suggestion if it’s a persistant blockage. I’ve had some beautiful results with this system but I want to get it working consistently. Have learned a lot by trial and error so far though. Cheers

25

We all learn a lot by trial and error! I’ve been at it for quite a few years and I’m still learning. In addition to the lessons that I linked to above. some months back I wrote a series of blog entries summarising many of my learnings / unconventional / strongly held opinions, although I’m not sure how much of it is relevant for digital negatives.

I can’t comment about the wisdom or not of getting your “other broken printer” repaired without knowing which printer mode and what’s broken and what condition it was in before it broke. The problem is that some repairs are simply not cost effective. The capping station is not that expensive to buy, but the labour to fit it would be significant. A print head on the other hand is typically close to the price of a new printer, i.e. prohibitively expensive.

The other option for a new printer, if you can still get one in whichever country you’re in, is the R2000. This is an updated R1900 which is virtually physically identical to your R2880. There are two things you’d need to do: (i) check that IJM still have refillable carts available; & (ii) edit the .quad files so that the inks are listed in the correct order for the R2000. I have instructions and a spreadsheet available on this forum on how to do the .quad file restructure if you want to explore the option. The R1430 would be a cheaper option, once the digital negative curves are released, although cash-backs on the R2000 in some countries made it almost as cheap as the R1430.

26

Have left the printer for a few days without doing anything, not a nozzle check, nor a calibration sheet or a neg and now the gap has disappeared and I have a perfect nozzle check again.

Wish this thing would make up its mind!

27

These things happen. There isn’t a crystal clear explanation. Not all nozzle check gaps are clogs. Ones that come and go are probably just some air in the system somewhere. In such situations, patience is a virtue. Head cleans generally don’t help. Purge pattens may.

28

Will have to investigate purge patterns, thanks

29

Ok, I’ve had a little look at the purge patterns. Is it correct that you just print a big block of colour from one channel?

Also, does it matter what size the purge ‘pattern’ (block of colour) is printed? Because when I opened up the document it was too big for an A4 piece of paper and I had to reduce its size to 80% to fit on the page.

It seems wasteful to print 2/3rds of a sheet of A4 paper with ink. Do I need to purge this much ink to get results? Cheers

30

Print whatever size purge pattern you think you need, and scale the purge image to fit the size paper you’re printing on (or change the size in Photoshop).
With just one individual missing nozzle, I would personally do a regular cleaning cycle thru the Epson utility first. If the exact same nozzle keeps dropping out, then sometimes printing can help bring it back, but typically the same missing nozzle means a clogged or dirty nozzle in the print head, which may require flushing that channel with PiezoFlush, then cleaning the internal components. If flushing and cleaning doesn’t help long-term, then I suspect it’s a quark of your printer, and something to be aware of to check before printing.

31


I have just noticed that my capping station looks like this.

Is this the sign of a leaky cartridge?

32

I was just having some missing nozzles on the LLK channel, so I performed the same cleaning routine using a syringe of Piezoflush. Now the LLK channel will not print at all.

33

Your left capping station pad does look overly wet, as well as the spot of what looks like PiezoFlush on the white plastic base of the wiper blade.
Have you removed your LLK cart to check the physical ink level? If not, then please open your Epson status monitor to see what all the cartridge chips are reading for ink levels, then push the ink change button and remove each cart one at a time and compare to the SM reading to check accuracy.

Let me know~ Dana

34

My ink levels have never been that accurate to begin with. So it will be difficult to know which cart is out of sync. All I can say is I had a few gaps in my LLK which I tried to eliminate with piezoflush in exactly the same manner as the Yellow channel. Now this has compromised the yellow channel which is now not printing properly. I noticed that the capping station was saturated before trying to unblock the LLK channel. So the piezoflush on the wiper blade and capping station isn’t a result of cleaning.

35

I meant to type yellow channel in the post above not light magenta.

36

I have just checked the ink levels and all seems to be reasonably accurate apart from the LK and PK channels that hold the Piezoflush. These are quite a lot lower.

The Cyan channel that holds Shade 2 is a bit higher than the SM reading

the Yellow channel that holds shade 2.5 is a bit lower.

I am noticing Piezoflush on the capping station and wiper blades again.

37

I’ve taken all the Piezoflush carts out and given them a shake vent down and they aren’t dripping as I’ve seen occur before with other carts. This leaves me confused as to why there might be Piezoflush on my capping station and part of the wiper blade.

Nevertheless it still leaves my first issue.

Why would using flushing a channel with Piezoflush to eliminate a few gaps cause the channel to stop printing completely? Like, nothing coming out even when I print a purge pattern for the LLK channel. And also affect the performance of the Yellow channel, right at the opposite end of the print head.

When before this same procedure helped eliminate a small stubborn gap I was having.

It seems very erratic. Something that worked to help before has now caused more problems than I was experiencing to begin with :confused:

38

The air vent plug was removed from the offending LLK cart? if it is still in the cart, nothing will print from this channel. Now ask me how I know this :slight_smile:
Good luck,
John

39

If you used too much pressure or you did not move the head off the capping station before you injected, you may have injured the membrane inside the head. Or if you moved the head and did not apply too much pressure, it may just be a temporary cartridge issue. I’m not certain if the 2880 is like the 2400 with sensitive electronics under the capping station (which is why you must move the head away from the capping station before injecting). Make sure the vent on the cart is clear and the air is purged from its exit port.

40

Hi Jon, the damp capping station you see isn’t a result of forcing piezoflush through the printhead. That is what I was encountered with when I went to move the head off the capping station and onto a paper towel to perform the injecting of the LLK nozzle. So the two are separate issues.

I got the LLK channel I was having a few small gaps with unblocked but then the Yellow cart began to show banding, that was previously showing no gaps. Perhaps it is just air trapped after performing a head clean. Will give it a day to settle down and see where I am then.

Two of the piezoflush channels are now full to the top. I’m going to keep an eye on them. Should they stay full a long time considering they are not being used aside from the occasional head clean?

Cheers