LC partial head clog 9900

InkjetMall Customer Support Printer Maintenance & Cartridges
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OK, its my turn. Getting only partial LC on nozzle check. All other colors are fine. Did all the usual, cleaning cycles, Windex, Simple Green, SS cleaning, overnight soaks, etc. Cleaned wiper blade. Printed bunch of C/LC squares hoping it would “work itself out”.

Your suggestions welcome.

Mark

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Oh, and I did watch this: How to Professionally Clean Epson 7890 9890 7900 and 9900 printers on Vimeo

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Just replaced cleaning unit. Jon said last time I had issues with ink not flowing/head clog he has some special tricks. They are???

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When you say you replaced the cleaning unit, are you referring to the Pump & Cap Assembly? Also, did you replace the wiper blade?

Have you tried to run any flush through the system using the initial fill cycle (2-3 depending on color staining) and letting it sit overnight?

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Yes Pump and Cap and wiper blade. Trying to avoid the severe ink wasting init fill. It really should not take that, the head and damper have ink in it, just a few LC nozzles not printing.

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How long have you been experiencing this problem with the LC channel? It is not uncommon for these printer models to have chronic clogging problems, we see this kind of nozzle check very frequently with this printer model. Sometimes flushing out the system or the channel that is to fault, in your case the LC channel solves the problem, other times it does not. These heads are prone to having problems and once they start, it is very unlikely it will be cured without drastic measures. Your nozzle check looks all too familiar for a X900 printer having problems with clogged nozzles. If you google X900 clogged nozzles, you will find a slew of information on this topic.

Here is a recent article, which also applies to the 7900/9900 printers http://www.inkjetmall.com/wordpress/maintenance/epson-oem-inks-versus-epson-4900-print-heads/

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It started last week. This is the third head on this 9900. I am guessing THIS head has failed too. Sorry to say but two of the three head failures were with your inks. The first one with Epson inks was shortly after I got the printer years ago. The last one was because the C cart leaked and sucked so much air into the head it burned out the C channel on the head. I know somebody had tried to generate a class action suit against Epson over 7900/9900 heads but could not get enough people to sign up from CA, were Epson USA is. Lets hope the new printers have better heads in them.

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Any other suggestions out there?

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The new printers have the same exact heads but you can set an automated “purging” cycle of from 6 minutes to 60 minutes and the heads will “clog less”. Total windfall for Epson in terms of ink wa$te.

Personally I would buy a refurbished 9880 from Ron Ardito - rather than continue on the new platforms. We bought two of them recently. And we extended our warranties on our new 9900s to three years. The warranties were more than the two 9880s. We can not see a visual difference in print quality. We seldom take advantage of the orange and green as we mostly work with photographers who are photographing naturalistically.

I swear by INIT FILL because it uses suction without stimulus. The others use more stimulus than suction. Yes it wastes ink but if it can’t do it - then? So it may be your last trick.

This morning we converted a printer with a dead cyan channel to a Piezography printer and mapped out the cyan channel and they will use the green channel for shade 2 instead. We have a customer who got three 9900s for free and converted them to Piezography. More and more people are finding free 7900s and 9900s with permanently clogged channels and converting them to Piezography.

Sorry as I know how frustrating it is - but you have to consider that this platform head life is as long as the warranty. Any more is a blessing…

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OK, I bit the bullet and did the INIT FILL. Same issue. Load gun, point at printer, pull trigger…

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Question, since I have only partial nozzle block in the LC position, if I re-profile, will that compensate for it? I do not see any banding being caused by this issue.

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Mark,
If you do not see banding - then that might imply that this is a cleaning function issue - and the print pattern is the result only of the cleaning operation and that printing resumes the jets ability to emit ink… just saying. If these were really clogged - then your eyes would see banding. You are very particular in your print standards… So if there are no color or printing issues - then maybe the wiper blade you replaced is bum. ??
If the color has not changed and no banding is visible - then Carry On!

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Have tried 2 new wiper blades. Did notice a slightly warmer print with the old profile (because of the lack of a few nozzles of LC) but with new profile all looks great. After profiling I feel a bit more confident I can print without any noticeable issues. We will see.