R2880 - can't maintain a good nozzle check

InkjetMall Customer Support Printer Maintenance & Cartridges
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1

The history is that after agonising (here) about whether to buy a new R3000, I bought a second-hand R2880. In another thread I had trouble getting it working, but this seemed to be caused by me not following the filling instructions to the letter.

I am printing on a R2880 using ConeColorPro inks.

My problem now is that having achieved a good nozzle check, I can’t keep it for long. Attached is a scan of a series of nozzle checks.

  1. I start with a perfect nozzle check.
  2. After a short period of time (24-48 hours) I lose one or two nozzles on PK, as per A. Not a really big deal, as only one missing nozzle won’t show in a print and it’s easy to fix by printing a calibration pattern or a block of PK using a custom curve in QTR.
  3. After another day I get more gaps on PK, as per B. I wouldn’t print like this, and so more purge printing to clear it.
  4. After several more days I get a nozzle check like C, where the gaps have grown and spread. What to do now? Sometimes a set of purge prints will clear it. Other times a head clean is required.
  5. The head clean is not without risk, as on at least one occasion I lost a channel (LK I think) that had been printing just fine. This is harder to deal with. I put a flush cart in this channel, do a head clean, print purge patterns, switch back, another head clean and purge patterns, and it’s ok again.
  6. So I get a good purge pattern again, and start the cycle over. The cycle 1-5 repeats itself.
  7. Now I get to the stage where I start to get bleeds between channels. As per D. (Sorry that this is printed on the back of something else - PK is bleeding into C.) This is not the worst example - M also bleeds into yellow.
  8. Anxious to avoid head cleans, I clear things like this using purge patterns and custom QTR curves where possible.
  9. Last night I had a good nozzle check and made some prints, but tonight PK was nearly completely gone. I printed a block of black using a QTR custom curve, and had ink drips on the page.
  10. In frustration I have put flush carts in for the moment.

Now I’ve been reading these forums long enough to know what the standard answers are:

(i) Follow the filling instructions to the letter. Check. It took me a while to do this correctly, but eventually I did. See the other thread. The fact that the carts are not draining, and that I can get a clean nozzle check doesn’t suggest filling issues to me.

(ii) Maintain humidity. Check. If you look at my delivery address you’ll see that I live somewhere that is supposed to be dry. But in fact where I live it’s ok and especially at the moment. Moreover I have tried keeping the printer in a plastic bag and with a small container of water in the printer with a sponge in the water. ( I know you don’t recommend this, but I’m getting desperate). I’ve tried leaving the printer on and leaving it turned it off, both with and without the water - nothing much helps.

(iii) Follow the cleaning video. Check. I did this several times as described in the another thread. I did it once just before I successfully got the printer working the first time, so the current state of the printer should have commenced in a clean state.

I’m just about at my wits end. I know from experience that even with OEM carts these printers can clog all too quickly, but this is silly.

What do you suggest I try next? My only idea is to repeat the cleaning routine. Perhaps I missed a spot. And in any case, with bleeds between channels and now ink dropping, it’s likely to need a clean now, even if that wasn’t the cause.

I hope that you have some ideas.


2

Hi Brian~

I’m sorry to hear of your continued struggles with your R2880 setup, and apologize for not responding sooner.

Thank you for providing such a detailed report, and nozzle checks so I can better understand what’s going on, which helps me troubleshoot and resolve your issues.

When you get a good nozzle check, do you continue having good ink flow while printing, and the missing nozzles are only happening when the printer sits unused- or are nozzles/channels also dropping out during printing?
If these nozzle check examples are from the beginning of different days, with more days of un-use between each, and the nozzle checks are not in order on the same day after cleaning cycles between, then I suspect this may be more climate than cartridge related.

Maintaining proper humidity and temperature levels can be difficult, and be a daily balance thru out the year. Do you have a hygrometer in your printing environment? The humidity and temps outside don’t necessarily reflect the inside climate, so the printing environment should be monitored and controlled. Low humidity can easily cause issues such as clogging, mis-firing nozzles, and drying of ink in/on the print head, capping station and wiper blade- causing ink mixing. I don’t believe keeping the printer in a plastic bag with water or a moist sponge is effective, and this doesn’t control humidity when the printer is in use, though could possibly lead to mold and bacteria growth.

Please let me know so I can help you past this and back to happily printing.
Best regards~ Dana

3

I can speak from experience about the humidity issue. I travel with my printer, and am at the whims of the location I set up in. At one event, (summer, full AC), humidity was at 20%. Needless to say, I filled my waste ink tank with all the cleanings that were necessary over that weekend. At a similar temperature event, they had a 40% humidity level, and the printer was fine all weekend.

At home, I run a humidifier and keep the humidity level as close to 50% as I can. I don’t print too often at home, but when I do, the printer has no nozzle issues.

Btw, I have this meter: http://www.amazon.com/La-Crosse-Technology-Thermometer-Hygrometer/dp/B006MOVP7K/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1419806865&sr=8-3&keywords=humidity+meter

And as for your issue, it’s very strange that it mostly affects black. Have you tried a different black cart? Perhaps the seal isn’t sealing properly around the ink outlet port and is letting air in slowly. Best of luck!

4

Thanks for chiming in. I don’t doubt the seriousness of the humidity (or lack thereof) issue. I have spent a little time in a North American winter some years ago, and I know how dry it can get, and why a humidifier is needed. While the great south continent is regarded as fairly dry, in fact the past month here has been quite wet and the official humidity levels have rarely dropped below 40% and generally well above it.

Here is what happened since my last post re this printer:
. I gave it another very thorough clean, as per the video, although I didn’t use the cleaning kit to push flush through the nozzles, since it didn’t seem to be needed. I was getting a perfect nozzle check with the flush carts in.
. I refilled the carts following the instructions closely. I tapped each one and let them sit for around 24 hours.
. I inserted them and let them sit a bit longer.
. I had a perfect nozzle after the initial head clean. Great!, I thought, perhaps I’ve beaten it.
. Over the next day or two I did a reasonable amount of printing without issue.
. But after a few more days and less printing, the problems roughly like the above emerged. I’ll save you the long version, but in essence it skipped stages A and B and pretty much went to C and D.
. I couldn’t print this out with purge patterns of various kinds.
. I pulled the carts out and PK & CY had drained completely!
. In disgust I’ve put the flush carts back in.

I’m at the stage where I have no ideas left. When someone says the above, the only answer left is humidity, but as I said, it’s been ok here over this latest period. And in any case as I understand it, low humidity means clogs whereas I’m having the opposite problem. Rather than the heads drying out, I’m getting leaks. Sometimes they’re slow and cause channel bleed and gaps. Sometimes they’re fast and the carts drain.

Also, I’ve had an R1900 (essentially the same printer) in this room for quite a few years, and never had any symptoms of low humidity in that time. It’s been very well behaved, mostly. (I am now having a few issues with that printer, but they’re very similar to the R2880 - leaks rather than clogs.)

I may make one last attempt, and if I still have issues then I’ll try OEM for a while. Or maybe try some other carts from another supplier. But the flush carts are staying in for a while, so the next report will be some time away.

BTW, I have already changed carts once to try to solve this problem (documented in another long and detailed thread). I ordered 4 sets of carts, which seemed excessive at the time, but I only have one unused set left, and I haven’t done all that much printing!

5

I’m not sure whether to start a separate thread for this, but I am having much the same symptoms with my R1900.

This is a printer which I’ve had from new and only ever used piezo in it. I’ve never had humidity-related clog problems with it over several years. I recently took out the flush carts that had been in it for a few months and switched from K7-SE to K7-neutral, so this meant putting brand new inks in fresh, unused carts (bought last year I think) in shades 2,3,4,5. I did the clean routine and filled the carts carefully following the instructions, although this printer has never shown itself to be overly sensitive to variations in filling.

It appears that shade 2 MK is leaking. Gaps appear and then a little while later blobs. Quite a few blobs this evening, and bleeds into the neighbouring shade 6. I can print these out with single channel purge patterns, and then continue printing, but I know that either today or tomorrow the problem will be back. It looks like a fair bit of ink is being dumped on the wiping station on the left side of the printer (i.e. opposite end to the capping station).

Seriously, what is going on? Am I doing something systematically wrong or am I unlucky with faulty carts? I did follow the filling instructions. I don’t think that it’s humidity, as the Bureau of Meteorology indicates that the humidity has hardly been below 40% today and in fact quite a lot higher for much of the time due to a storm.

6

Looking at just the 2880, if it’s always PK and C, there might be something wrong with the cartridge seats that are causing them to leak. In that case though, you’d be getting ink in random locations. Since it all drained out through the print head (so it seems from your description), it sounds more like an air leak in the cart (e.g., the cart should let air in, but only when ink is drawn out. If the air inlet is too “loose”, the ink will drain with no provocation). But since it’s happening on your 1900 too, it would be too coincidental that they would both act up suddenly. Trying OEM would probably rule (in or) out the cartridges as the problem and might be worth the investment just to see.

I’m out of ideas at the moment. Good luck! Hopefully IJM staff can provide further insight.

7

I can only manage wrestling with one printer at a time and at the moment it’s the R1900 piezo printer. The problems are less severe with it, but in a sense the issue is more serious as there isn’t an OEM option. Since it’s just the MK shade 2 that seems to have this problem in this printer, what I have started doing after each printing burst is turning the printer off and taking out the MK cart and putting in a flush cart. I reverse the process before I turn it on, and so avoid a head clean. I can do this because I have removed the lid to the cartridge bay, and MK is not one of the two hidden carts when the printer is off. If that seems to work then I think that will be confirmation that it’s a faulty cart.

It is a strange coincidence (and a huge pain) that I’m having much the same problem with two printers. I keep asking myself what is the common factor? Location is one, but I still find it hard to believe that humidity is the issue here, given the history of the printer and official measurements. Also both had cleans recently - could this have caused the problem somehow? But then coincidences do happen, and as these forums attest, these printers can be fussy at times.

8

Well, so that isn’t working for the R1900. It looked like it might after the first night with a flush cart in, but not the next two. So either:

(i) I was wrong about which channel is leaking in the R1900. It may be the adjacent shade 3 (Red position), and as shades 2 and 3 are so close in tone it is hard to tell. (It’s surprising just how close those two shades are, at least in the neutral K7 inkset.) Or perhaps both are leaking (like PK & C in the R2880.) Or,
(ii) Now that there have been leaks and dribbles, the printer needs (yet another) clean before it’s going to function properly, or
(ii). I’ve misdiagnosed the problem.

It looks like I’m on my own with this problem. I haven’t given you much room Dana to help me when I say that I’ve cleaned the printer, filled the carts correctly and that the humidity is OK. But perhaps you answer me two questions:

(a) When there are leaks and dribbles, I get a lot of ink deposited on the wiping station on the left side of the printer. I’ve asked this question before but I haven’t had an answer. Surely this needs to be cleaned as well if there’s a lot of ink been deposited there, doesn’t it? Could this be contributing to a continuation of my problem?

(b) In some of the blobs on the page when I get a leak, there are traces of blue (or perhaps cyan). See the attached scan of a problem nozzle check. I’ve had this printer since new and it’s never had colour inks at all. It ran Special Edition inks until recently (now neutral), but I can’t see that the Selenium in shade 5 (and parts of shades 3 and 4) is causing this. Especially as I had flush carts in for some time between the switch. Where is this blue tinge coming from? What does it tell me? Is it a clue of some sort?

9

Hi Brain~

I appreciate your detailed information, though sorry to hear of your unusual struggles.

Based on the nozzle check you attached above, you have a few missing nozzles in the MK channel (3rd from left), and I see a little mixing between the PK + C channels (two far right positions). The bottom box is a combination of the MK and GO channels. Ink mixing between channels is often caused by either ink dripping from the head and being sucked into another channel, or excessive ink on the capping station being sucked into channels. I know you have repeatedly cleaned both of your printers, so don’t expect your capping station is dirty/flooded. I also responded to your other post on Tyler’s thread, with more info, here:http://www.inkjetmall.com/tech/showthread.php?981-r1900-individual-ink-drining-while-idle

Ink can leak from carts for a few reasons: if the side label/membrane is punctured, or fill and air holes are open ink can flow from carts excessively, if the exit valve is damaged- spring is worn out, o-ring is worn out or not sealing properly, ink will leak from the exit valve when carts are removed from the printer. If the printer is dirty- ink gunk on the bottom of the head, wiper blade or capping station, can cause ink to wick out. Excessively dry or moist climate conditions can both cause issues- too dry can cause ink to dry and gum up on the head and other parts, but too moist can also cause flow issues, as well as swelling of paper, which effects how it feeds thru the printer and takes the ink. Since I feel confident that you’ve been following our cartridge and cleaning instructions well, after our multiple communications recently, I think you may be dealing with a bad seal between carts and printer, and/or possibly a few of your carts aren’t providing good ink flow for some reason, and/or your results may be related to printer age (of your older R1900)- though if you get good/consistent results with flush carts in this printer, I expect you should have the same results with ink carts.

You say you’ve tried several sets of carts in your R2880 with similar results. Have you replaced all carts in the set each time, or only specific carts that you feel may not be preforming correctly?

Please don’t think I’m trying to brush you off! Since I’m not there to work with or see your printer, I have to rely on my experience with our products and different printers, along information you provide, to help me troubleshoot and (try to) resolve the issues you’re experiencing (and I do this every day, with all customers that contact us for support). I realize there is some level of defect with any product (nothing is perfect), though based on my personal experience of using I’d estimate 300+ sets of different refillable carts over the years, as well as feedback we get back from customers (evaluating total sales of a certain product, and number of complaints/reports of issues, to determine the quality, functionality, consistency and failure rate of a product), the carts we currently have have been working very well in a wide range of uses and printers (for example, the R2880, 1400, 1430, R1900 and R2000 all use the same shape/size/style cart, with different chips attached).

Warmly~ Dana :slight_smile:

1 Like
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In relation to the R1900, I’ve managed to do enough printing between purge patterns (to clear the gaps and bleeds) that I need to refill the carts now anyway, so I’ll do another printer clean since I’m going to trigger a head clean anyway. I assume that this is a good idea after leaking and bleeding between channels, as there must be ink under the print head.

I am tempted to switch carts, but the trick is knowing which cart or carts is leaking. I think all the carts were purchased late last year. The carts for shades 2,3,4,5 are fresh in the printer with fresh neutral inks. I think it’s one of these that is causing the problem. The purge pattern I posted may not necessarily give this impression, but the problem worsens and spreads over time - it was mainly around shades 2 and 3 in the beginning. (That last purge pattern is not entirely typical of the problems I’ve been having - I posted it just to show the blob colour.)

So I still have the question I posted above - does that blue tinge in the ink blob give any clues as which channel is dropping ink? That’s what’s hard to be certain of. Maybe I just use a complete fresh set.

I know you’re not trying to fob me off - you’ve been very generous with your time, esp at this time of year. But I don’t understand your continued reluctance to comment on whether cleaning the left-side wiping station is a good idea or not, in your opinion.

In order not to make this long and complex, I’ll discuss the R2880 when I next take out the flush carts and make another attempt (but to answer your question, I replaced the PK,C,M,Y carts, since the problems at that stage seemed to be confined to that group of four). But there is a common factor, which is that I’ve cleaned both printers the same way. I’ve done this often enough before and I’m did my best to be careful, but could I have damaged the printers? What would the symptoms be if I had scratched the print heads? (I’m still grasping for ideas.)

11

A progress report on the R1900. I went ahead and cleaned the left-side wiping station. A lot of ink had been dumped there after the last fill, suggesting to me at least that there was a leak somewhere. So I used some flush to dissolve any ink, and de-mineralised water to help soak it up. Given how much ink was dumped there, it’s hard to imaging that small amounts of these liquids carefully applied and removed with paper towels will cause a problem.

I gave the machine a very thorough clean. There was a fair bit of ink under the head, as you would expect after leaking and cross-channel bleeding.

I’m still a bit puzzled by this blue colour that appeared in the blobs. In cleaning the capping station, as the ink started to clear, there was blue in there as well. There was a dark line roughly where I’d expect the PK cart to sit, and as the black went that’s where the blue seemed to emanate from. What is this?

I worked on the assumption that the MK cart was faulty, so I replaced it (a spare from the 2880 with the chip swapped). I noticed that around the MK ink nipple that there was some sign of ink, whereas the other nipples were pretty clean (all were cleaned recently). This could indicate a faulty seal. Or it may reflect the fact that I was pulling the MK cart on and off and putting a flush cart on to try to prevent the leaking between printing. Early indications are that the new cart is not leaking. There was no sign of large quantities of ink being dumped on the wiping station, which is a very good sign. So I think that suggests that it was the cart. I’ve had a bad run with carts lately, as at least one of the brand new carts for the R2880 was leaking when out of the printer for a few days. Am I really that unlucky?

With the refilled carts and new MK cart there weren’t any nozzle gaps, but there was some misfiring on MK. I’ll start a new thread on that, and leave this one for my leaking problems.

So, what is the pale blue colour that I keep seeing?

12

I’m writing several status reports tonight, as I’m spending a fair bit of my time struggling with various printers.

I didn’t get an answer to the previous question about the blue in the blobs, and although it’s not critical, I’d like to know all the same.

This thread has morphed into being about two printers - my R2880 and my R1900. This status report is about the R1900. I’m still struggling with the R2880 and will post about that once the situation is clearer.

The R1900 seems to be working. I was fairly sure that in switching from SE to neutral (and so inserting new Shades 2,3,4,5) I had inserted two faulty carts - Shade 2 (MK in position 3) and Shade 3 (Red in position 4). Shade 2 was leaking a bit worse, but they were both leaking.

I could tell which carts were leaking by where the initial gaps appeared, and how they bled into adjacent channels. I first gave the printer a full clean and replaced the Shade 2 cart. The problems were now slower to emerge and seemed limited to Shade 3. Another printer clean and I reinserted the four SE carts. Problem seems solved. Hurrah!

I seem to have had a run of bad carts recently. These two were purchased with my other R1900 carts on 16 Oct 2013, so I guess they’re outside the warranty period, even though I’ve only just filled them with ink and used them?

At least this printer seems to be working. A report will follow on the R2880, where I’m less confident.

Relieved, although not entirely happy.

13

This is a report on the R2880 that started this thread. Well, today is D-day. D for decision. It’s the last day I can order an R3000 and take advantage of a roughly 25% cashback. I need to decide whether to persist with the R2880 or upgrade. I’d much rather the R2880, since I can put flush carts in and hibernate it much more easily and cheaply.

It’s been a long saga, and to save you all the trouble of reading it all again, here is a brief summary.

. I purchased this printer s/h at the beginning of October 2014. It appeared to be in good condition and little used, and the WIC Reset utility confirmed this. I had a good nozzle check with OEM carts

. I had a LOT of trouble initially getting fresh ConeColor inks and carts to work. My experiences are discussed in this thread. The short version is that I think the M cart was faulty, but there may also have been a little user error in filling the carts, i.e. not following the instructions to the letter. It’s hard to say how much of each. I’ve not found other similar printers to be over sensitive about how IJM carts are are filled and reinserted.

. I eventually succeeded, but where this thread started, I had trouble keeping a good nozzle check. After a few good days I was getting gaps and bleeding. Where I got to in my last post on the R2880 on 29 Dec, a couple of carts had drained and I put the flush carts back in.

. I had strong suspicions that the PK cart was faulty and was draining. In order to test this I refilled the empty carts, gave the printer another thorough clean, and tried again.

. Surprisingly I had problems getting a good nozzle check after taking out the flush carts and reinserting the carts with ink. The PK cart was still not right, and LC had a lot of gaps. I persisted by printing purge patterns, and the occasional head clean. It never came good, and it wasn’t long before I found that the PK cart had drained, again.

. I took this to be confirmation that the cart was faulty, although it was / is possible that the PK ink nozzle isn’t a good fit for refillables, and I may need to use OEM in that slot.

. So another thorough printer clean, another new cart in the PK slot, and off we go again. This time I got a perfect nozzle check on all channels pretty much straight away. Fingers crossed.

. That was four days ago. The next morning I got a few similar gaps in PK (i.e. a couple of rows missing and not just random gaps) in the first nozzle check and thought oh-oh. But a closer inspection of that pattern indicated some misfiring nozzles, and the second nozzle check immediately after the first was fine. All nozzle checks since then have been ok. Well, there was a single PK nozzle in one check that was missing, but not repeated in subsequent checks.

So today I need to decide whether my problems this printer have mostly been a couple of faulty carts, or whether this printer is messing with my mind and is going to wait until 1 Feb when the cash-back has finished to recommence misbehaving, thereby demonstrating its incompatibility with refillables. At the moment, I am going to wait and cross my fingers. If it was just the faulty carts, then we need to talk offline about the four that I’ve had with the R2880 and R1900 being discussed in this thread, plus the issues with the R2400 being discussed in another thread.

14

The good news is Epson almost always has a rebate on the R3000. May, 2014 the US rebate was $150. Today the US rebate is $250. Purchased at B&H the rebate is over 33% of the purchase price.
Cheers,

15

Hey Brian,

As you may recall, I purchased a R2880 just a few weeks ago, refurbished from the Epson store. I ignored the “test with OEM carts” suggestion and installed IJM immediately. So far there have been no problems with cartridge set 1. I print a nozzle check before printing (a couple times a week so far) and it either does an autoclean beforehand and the check is fine, or it has some missing nozzles and I initiate a manual clean and it’s fine after one. I haven’t tried my cartridge set 2, since I haven’t even run the first ones down yet. This should happen soon.

My point is, I’d keep my eye open on the Epson store for refurbished R2880s. They sell for $349 shipped and seem to pop up a couple times a month since I started tracking in December. That said, I also have a Pro 3880 which has ink tubes. I try to print about once a month with it in the winter, and a single head clean when clogged has taken care of it so far this winter. Maybe I’m just lucky…crossing my fingers that it keeps up. The point I’m trying to make here is even if you get the R3000, I wouldn’t worry too much about hibernating it. Just print some things every few weeks and shake your carts beforehand.

I definitely feel for you with the bad carts though. I think one of the PK ones for the 3880 has an air leak, which caused no end of issues for me over the summer. I have a replacement and should get around to moving the bad one out of circulation :stuck_out_tongue:

Sorry for the ramble, good luck!

16

Thanks fellow printers. I’m in the great south continent on the other side of the planet, not the great north continent. Epson here doesn’t seem to have a refurb program, maybe the market is too small. I rang them last year to check and got a confused person who didn’t know what I was talking about. They have one or two factory seconds and damaged carton models on the web site, but nothing like a photo printer. I’d thought about trying to import a refurb 2880, but it would not be cheap to ship and we’re on 240 volt.

The photo gear market here is small and not very competitive. We pay high prices, and there is a frequent reference to the “Australia Tax”, which is not a real tax, but the higher prices that get charged here. That said, I assume that the R3000 is going to be phased out and replaced by the new SC-P600, so as long as there is some stock around then you may be right - they may extend or repeat the cashback.

I printed last night and today’s nozzle check was good. But 1 Feb is tomorrow …

17

I just checked the back of my 2880 and it says 120V only, so an import isn’t a good idea :frowning: Silly non-universal power supplies.
Having not heard about the SC-P600, I looked it up. It seems identical to the R3000 in the ink supply sense, but with the new PrecisionCore head. Neat. Hopefully the refillables market catches up quickly, and/or it uses the same carts. Fingers crossed :slight_smile:

18

Yep, we were right. $AUD300 Cashback now ends 31 March, instead of 31 Jan. Lowest price here is $AUD1149. So the R2880 has to behave for at least another two months if it wants to continue to play mind games with me.

Which it is. I’m at least doing a nozzle check every day, and I occasionally get one missing PK nozzle, and immediately do a second nozzle check pattern and it’s gone. But yesterday, a week after finally getting something that resembles stable performance, just as I was about to do a large print I got a several gaps that wouldn’t go away like that or with purge patterns, so a head clean was required. I was hoping that I’d get more than a week out of it without a head clean, esp as I have been turning it on and doing a nozzle check at least once a day and printing every couple of days. Still, I can live with it as it is, if it stays like this.

I could import one and use a step-up or step-down transformer. Not ideal, but people who are posted to the US or Japan have to use them. It’s the freight that’s the killer if I was to import one.

Dana: If you’re still following this thread, does IJM intend to release ConeColor inks that match the “new UltraChrome HD inkset”, as you did with the Vivid inkset? Perhaps it’s too early to say. I assume that HD isn’t just a rebranding of the existing Vivid inkset.

19

Hi Brian~

We’re getting a SC-600 to test and hopefully develop carts, inks and a printing system with. Please keep an eye on our website and newsletters for new product announcements.

Warmly~ Dana

20

An update on the colour R2880. After 11-12 days of mostly good behaviour, the wheels fell off last night. :frowning:

I got a perfect nozzle check Friday morning, and did a small amount of printing. I went to do another nozzle check Saturday night, and got the attached. Seems like some familiar problems from this thread and my previous one about this printer have re-emerged.

So I did a second nozzle check, and no change. Then a purge pattern and check and not much change. Repeat, and still not much change. I left it overnight (fingers crossed that it didn’t drain) and it had improved a little in the morning, but not enough by far. So the cleaning carts are back in for the moment. There are several things about this that have me confused:

  1. Why after 11-12 days of mostly good behaviour does it do this now? Over the past few months of fighting this printer, it’s usually only taken a day or two or three for these problems to emerge. How is it that it it hung on for so long this time and then did this?

I’m sure that Dana will say that it’s the humidity and see, I told you so. Well. maybe and maybe not. I looked at the official records and over the past several days it has been good here. There were only a couple of hours here and there where it went below 30%, and mostly it was well above. I know that it might be different in my studio, but not much I think. And the R1900 is in the same room and hasn’t missed a beat in that time. Are ConeColor inks really that different? And this is showing bleeds and leaks, not clogs.

  1. It’s not really clear from the nozzle check, but the purge patterns show M bleeding into yellow. So if it’s a cart leaking then is it one or two?

  2. When I pulled the ink carts out, LK had drained. That might suggest that it was causing the problem, but I don’t think so. There’s been no sign of trouble at that end of the print head.

  3. There wasn’t a very good match between what the Epson status monitor said about the level of the ink in each cart and the actual physical level. Which is why I’m not concerned about the LK being empty. Some carts were over and some were under by quite large margins. But it’s a puzzle all the same, as I always fill and then reset. Are the chips really that inaccurate?

Time to do some hard thinking. Perhaps it’s time to give OEM a go and see what happens.