I shifted to Cone inks about 16 months back.
Not much of color printing, but use it to print large format Positives for my large format graphic auto Screen printer.
Cone color was working well till now.
A week back it suddenly started printing bands(Photo attached). Tried our level best, no avail.
Next day it started showing Error 1537 which is Cart pressurization problem.
Couldnt locate source of problem, called Epson technician. He said pressure problem, Left Cart Chamber may be replaced.
I researched and found online article “http://www.inkjetmall.com/tech/showthread.php?401-Error-1537” of Dana of IJM.
With Epson man’s help located the faulty cart yellow.
Have no spare IJM yellow cart, bought Epson 350 ml Yellow cart, still problem is not solved.
NOW,9900 is not recognising Refilled IJM carts. ( My employee filled few of near-empty carts with Cone inks, but installed them without resetting them with the Chip Resetter.
I tried to reset with my Chip Re-setter, but it is not being resetted… (I think the Resetter is faulty with 2 pins sank inside (Photo).
Long story short, 9900 still says ‘Insufficient ink to perform Head-cleaning’…
I doubt it is dangerous to the Head, leaving the printer as it is, 35 Celsius is temperature in day time here.
Q1: What should I do? How to reset the carts ?
A. Buy another Resetter?
B. Buy PiezoFlush® Cleaning Kit to clean Head?
My sister in Atlanta is leaving for India on 28th May, who will carry the replacement accessories from IJM. Will it be too late for the Head leaving in idle, non-printing condition ?
Question A: This is the cheapest thing to try first.
Question B: I don’t think PiezoFlush will help you. Your printer’s ink bay as an internal pressure problem. This is a regular problem with this printer model and is completely independent of the cartridges put into it (specifically the left bay but it happens on both bays).
You may need to find a junk Epson 9900 that has a good printer bay and replace your with it. This is probably the best solution as your OEM Yellow cartridge that you tested is also not working.
However, it may be worse than that. If you have printed with the head in this condition, you may burned the nozzles. I do not suggest doing anything but nozzle checks and cleaning (not printing) with the head in this condition.
Thank you for your advise.
I was little worried about the “burning the nozzles” possibility.
But good news is I repaired the Chip Resetter pins, by just a tiny drop of Cyano Acrilic adhesive, and reset all Carts, except Yellow. I bought an Epson Cart to replace it and printed.
Only hitch now is, the Cyan Cart though reset with green light, Epson shows “No cartridge, install ink Cartridge” message every time a print is completed, or in the middle of preparation and I have to reinsert the Cyan.
And more, despite cart is full, Cyan is not being printed… But all other colors are being printed.
And if a Cyan-oriented print, it print the light Cyan which near green.
…to add with:
Neither Yellow, nor Cyan carts showing and leak or damage.
Is it the Chip damaged or the Cart?
Attaching copies of the Nozzle check and Status Sheet(Not very clear, but hope it is enough for your expert eyes…)
It is evident that Cyan and Orange are badly clogged and blocked. (This is after a Power-clean…)
It is an important fact that, I donot print much of colors, but mostly positive film printing with this machine, which could be a reason for the clogging…
…to add with:
Neither Yellow, nor Cyan carts showing and leak or damage.
Is it the Chip damaged or the Cart?
Attaching copies of the Nozzle check and Status Sheet(Not very clear, but hope it is enough for your expert eyes…)
It is evident that Cyan and Orange are badly clogged and blocked. (This is after a Power-clean…)
It is an important fact that, I donot print much of colors, but mostly positive film printing with this machine, which could be a reason for the clogging…
If you have done a power cleaning and nothing is coming through the cyan channel, it is most likely blown out and not clogged.
These print heads will die very quickly (no matter what ink or cartridges used) if there is a miss-alignment of the cleaning assembly and print-head or if there is an air-lock in the damper assembly. I am afraid this is probably the case with your printer.
For the coming 1 year till I sell my Screen printing industry, I need Black only for printing Film positives.
It is a 4 year machine.
But my problem is something else:
On my adopting IJM inks leaving Epson, my nearby Epson Dealer and the one and only Epson Service Engineer laughed at me “Your Head is gone in no time, haha…” I bullied them telling It’s an American product, cannot fail.
But now they have every reason to ridicule me, whatsoever is the reason, especially I will have to go to them for a new Head, in one year of my using a 3rd party ink. Difficult to counter them…
How can I continue printing Black ink (may be only black), using the existing head at least for 1 year ?
If I understand it is not a one year head failure but a four year head failure - the head is shot within 4 years of using the print head and that is very good for this generation printer.
If you use a software like Accuprint RIP you can assign black ink to any one or more channels for making screen print film positives. It will also produce dot for you - etc . It is the industry leading software for screenprint film positives. It is a RIP that allows you to put black ink in all of the positions and turn on and off channels and assign dot to the film.
Epson makes money selling ink (and not their printers) so their word is to be taken with a grain of salt. That said, Epson x900 printers are legendarily problematic related to head failure. (This forum, Epson Wide Format forum, and all the rest of them that deal with these printers have just thousands of threads about this.) I have printed with this generation of print-head for about decade (it appeared in the 64" wide epson 11880 which I was the first to actually run in North America in Chicago well before working at IJM) and never made it past 2.5 years on a single head with Epson OEM carts and inks. I would say the max life-span on these print-heads is 5 years but only if you’re using an ink that is encapsulated carbon particles like Piezography ink and if you are switching out other parts every year. For any color pigment (Epson or ConeColor, don’t use non-encapsulate pigment inks) it will give you between 1.5 and 4.5 depending upon if you replace the dampers and cleaning assembly preemptively or not. If you scrape the head on film or thick material and print with clogged nozzles, this can burn it out quickly.
We use two Epson 9900s at Cone Editions Press (and we have lots of 7880s with original heads that have been running cone-color and piezography ink for up to 8 years!) and for the x900s we lease them with extended warranties. We just preemptively replace the dampers, cleaning assemblies, and print-heads on these printers (under warranty). For a lab that is always printing, this is the way to go. Pay a little every month and you get to replace whatever moving parts go bad without a financial penalty.
As a professional lab, we rely on our own inks and we are right at the ground level with everyone. If it was not a stable system, we wouldn’t have sold it and used it ourselves (professionally) for so many years.
I agree with you.
I do not think Cone ink is the cause.
I was/am not very experienced with printing, cannot attend the Epson always, employees handle it, many times must be printed without caring if proper head cleaning is done or not.
There were long intervals at times in between the printer was idle, without printing.
I didnt dare to use any other 3rd party inks,though many available much cheaper than Cone: I was just replacing Epson inks with Cone, with trust, I am still holding it.
In fact, if proper training is given in Cone ink system and Epson Service, I see very big market in India, for Cone, which can be tapped.
I didnt need a 9900 just for Black Positive printing, but I bought it as a multipurpose high quality machine, head if damaged can be added as will, as per necessity.
>>>depending upon if you replace the dampers and cleaning assembly preemptively or not<<< Correct. But there is nobody to advise me on such printer friendly aspects and precautionary measures. Local Epson service is too poor, they are just seller of Epson inks and parts, they are happy is a machine is down…
Mostly I will be visiting USA in August -September, while I will allocate time to come to IJM.
What is the exact reason(s) why a Head become ‘blown out’, rather than 'blocked permanently or sort? I mean why the term ‘blown out’ and how it is blown out?
As this problem is not repairable, two of my Nozzles: Cyan and Orange are gone permanently, as you diagnose. That means I can no longer use these nozzels for color printing, by any means. In that case, Acuprint or other RIP software has little to do to improve or usability of the printer. Well, by adopting ALL (rest 9) Nozzles to Black,I can save cost of other colors. Correct? Is this reversible later, say by flushing out black ink from color channels and filling respective colors and get a decent color print ?
Another possibility is I can do away with Orange(useful for orange-dominated images), and convert Light Cyan Nozzle to Cyan and continue as it is now, so that I can print colors too but without Light cyan and Orange. Correct.
Can I do it by using a Cyan Chip on Light Cyan Cart ?
I am trying to use it as it is with CMYK color printability intact, without LC and Orange special shades.
What is the exact reason(s) why a Head become ‘blown out’, rather than 'blocked permanently or sort? I mean why the term ‘blown out’ and how it is blown out?
As this problem is not repairable, two of my Nozzles: Cyan and Orange are gone permanently, as you diagnose. That means I can no longer use these nozzels for color printing, by any means. In that case, Acuprint or other RIP software has little to do to improve or usability of the printer. Well, by adopting ALL (rest 9) Nozzles to Black,I can save cost of other colors. Correct? Is this reversible later, say by flushing out black ink from color channels and filling respective colors and get a decent color print ?
Another possibility is I can do away with Orange(useful for orange-dominated images), and convert Light Cyan Nozzle to Cyan and continue as it is now, so that I can print colors too but without Light cyan and Orange. Correct.
Can I do it by using a Cyan Chip on Light Cyan Cart ?
I am trying to use it as it is with CMYK color printability intact, without LC and Orange special shades.
Please advise.[/QUOTE]
Your reply and advice is valuable for my decision to buy appropriate inks from IJM, so please reply ASAP.
Sorry. I did not reply as this was not directed at cone-color products + it got stuck in the undertoe of my massive amounts of incoming emails during weekends (Friday-Sunday for us at IJM).
Epson drivers do not allow for ink channel control directly. If you want to do this you will need a RIP (Studioprint, etc) that has full channel control. This will require a spectrophotometer and other hardware. If you have all these, then you will be able to go about changing this into a direct CMYK system and you’d be able to put the ink wherever you want in the printer, but if you do not have these items, purchasing them will equal the cost of a new printer.
I can say that I’m exploring building RIP solution based on open-source code that would enable people with x900 (and SureColor P-series) heads that have blown channels to down-size to non-orange non-green printing, but that is only in the initial stages.
Now to continue as it is, printing film positives in Matte Black(CCPRO-MK-700), without Cyan and Orange, I prefer to buy 2 bottles of CCPRO-MK-700, one or two empty carts and a set of chips from you.
Do I need to buy PezoFlush to clean the Nozzles? Anything more that may improve the situation?
Please let me know, so that I can place Order today itself.
You do not need PiezoFlush for the channels that are working.
For the channels that are not working, PiezoFlush won’t cure them because they are dead. Just keep the current cartridges in there and print with the working channels (black only).
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