R3000 VLM cart quit during printing

InkjetMall Customer Support Printer Maintenance & Cartridges
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[QUOTE=Dana-IJM;2439]From what you explain, I suspect the problem you’re dealing with QTR not correctly printing thru calibration mode is related to your operating system. I asked Roy about compatibility with Windows 8, but unfortunately he said he doesn’t know, and can’t update QTR for Windows. We don’t have Win8 to test here, so I have no experience with this setup to give you any recommendations.

I can certainly send you a new VLM cartridge, but that’s not your problem- your problem is air in the ink line after the cartridge ran dry, now on top of that you’re dealing with issues related to Win8 and QTR, making our solution for purging an individual ink line using QTR Calibration Mode possibly not a solution for you. If this is the case, you use the Adjustment Program to do an Initial Fill (though, I recommend checking to make sure it works with Win8 before downloading).

Please let me know what I can do to help.
Best regards~ Dana :)[/QUOTE]

Got the printer working after doing a new ink install. Cost almost $20 and required every tank to be filled to capacity to start and used half the ink to do it.

I’m not happy with the issue of the chip not stopping the printer before it essentially sucked it dry.

Will keep a close eye on it when printing and will fill them when a bit less than half to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Windows 8 doesn’t seem to allow the use of the QT single channel purge feature so it gets expensive if it happens frequently and negates the bulk ink savings.

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Thanks for the update. I’m glad to hear your VLM channel is now printing after purging air an refilling the line with ink. It’s certainly easier to avoid getting air in the lines than purge air to get the channel printing again, so keeping an eye on your ink levels is helpful to avoid this issue again in the future, though if the chips are only reset when the cartridges are refilled with ink, the ink level read should be accurate. It’s a bummer that QTR calibration mode doesn’t seem to work correctly with Windows 8- Roy did say he’s received reports that the regular printing is working well, but had some issues with the curve creation.

Please let me know if you have questions or there’s anything else I can help you with.
Best regards and happy printing~ Dana :slight_smile:

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At some risk of a virtual punch in the nose for putting it where it doesn’t belong, I’d like to offer some observations on the exchange between Dana and mweaverpics (MWP).

Dana mentioned that this forum is meant to enable participants (customers of IJM) to interact, as well as to get advice directly from IJM. But no one from the customer side chimed in to offer advice based on his/her experience. In particular, it is obvious that there is a large number of QTR users who are on Windows systems, and MWP could have benefited from their input. For instance, perhaps the following might have been helpful:

Windows QTRgui Software:
email: Steve Billard at QTRgui@sbillard.org
website: http://www.sbillard.org/pages/QTRgui

I can’t quite figure out whether MWP ever got to the point of properly using the individual channel purge capability via Calibration mode, but, as Dana indicated, that would have been the best route to solve the problem. It appears from MWP’s comments that that route was not taken. It certainly wasn’t necessary to recharge all of the lines to clear one of them - again, as Dana said.

However, on the other side of the coin, there is an issue with the refillable carts for the R3000 that could have contributed to MWP’s problem. IJM recommends that the carts be pulled every so often and shaken to avoid settling. But as I, and evidently others, have observed, the carts have a tendency to reset themselves when they are inserted into the printer. IJM offered the possibility that this might be due to inadvertent contact with metal during the insertion process. I don’t believe that is sufficient explanation. But, in the event, MWP may have reset one or more of the carts inadvertently at some earlier point when they were half (or less than half) full. That could then account for the channel running dry. It behooves the R3000 user, therefore, to note the front panel readout before and after removing and reinserting a cartridge.

Harry

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Thanks for your input Harry. I agree and see huge benefit in community support, which we are happy to see developing on this forum.

I have never worked with Steve, and don’t know anything about him, but assume he must be who helped Roy write the QTR Windows platform. I see he blogs on everything from his shoulder, his father’s passing, solar energy, his new floor, sailing, and QTR… While working with Win8 questions/issues, Roy told me he no longer works with his Windows programmer, therefore won’t have any QTR Windows updates.
Can you please elaborate to explain why you posted his website, and feel it would benefit others? Roy Harrington directly supports QuadTone RIP, and I believe is best suited to support QTR specific questions/issues.

The issue in this specific thread was air in the line, and the details of exactly how that occurred is not clear, but in trying to help resolve the problem, other issues popped up such as QTR calibration mode not printing a single channel as it should, but this was due to operating system incompatibility, which I wasn’t aware of and immediately contacted Roy about to continue trying to help MWP. There were a few misunderstandings as well, such as the cartridge vs. exit chamber having to be 1/2 full for proper ink flow, how to refill an empty cartridge, etc…

Yes, there have been a few reports of R3000 cartridge chips automatically resetting themselves, and I have spent quite a bit of time testing this with different age chips, new/old batteries, and all sorts of different cartridge handling, plus have worked with the cartridge manufacturer to try figure out how/why this happens occasionally. After much testing, and working with the manufacturer, we feel it has something to do with the age of the battery (older batteries may work strangely as they lose power?), or possibly the reset contacts on the chip touched metal when being removed/inserted that is causing the occasional “automatic” reset. We don’t have a definite answer after much testing, but feel keeping an eye on the physical ink level of carts, and refilling low carts when one is empty will avoid cartridges running dry. Obviously, it would be ideal if the chip ink level tracking was always dead on, but you have to understand these carts are designed to be reused many times, whereas an Epson cart is designed for one time use. There are many more factors with reusable carts/chips, and in this case, the batteries used can play a huge roll in the cartridge/chip function.

At the end, air was purged and all channels were printing again following an ink charge. As I learned in the process of supporting MWP, had he been using an older operating system, he would have been able to print the single channel thru QTR calibration mode as I instructed (to focus on one channel, without wasting ink in the other channels).

After re-reading this thread, I do think it shows the lengths we go to provide support to our customers. We are always here to help our customers and support our products.
We always work hard to provide top quality products, along with top quality support to ensure our customers are happily printing.

Warmly~ Dana :slight_smile:

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[QUOTE=Dana-IJM;2860]I have never worked with Steve, and don’t know anything about him, but assume he must be who helped Roy write the QTR Windows platform. I see he blogs on everything from his shoulder, his father’s passing, solar energy, his new floor, sailing, and QTR… While working with Win8 questions/issues, Roy told me he no longer works with his Windows programmer, therefore won’t have any QTR Windows updates.
Can you please elaborate to explain why you posted his website, and feel it would benefit others? Roy Harrington directly supports QuadTone RIP, and I believe is best suited to support QTR specific questions/issues. [/QUOTE]

As I understand it, QTR initially installed on Macs as a printer (although in recent times you need a separate “Print Tool” due to changes in recent MacOS). This wasn’t done on Windows as it’s too hard to create your own printer device and driver, and so it was a command line program, I think. It’s a long time ago and so my recollection is a bit vague. Steve wrote a GUI for QTR which greatly simplified the process of running QTR on Windows, named QTRGui. The problem was keeping the two in sync, as new options in QTR needed to be reflected in QTRGui. Eventually they rolled them together and for quite some time the Windows install doesn’t really distinguish between them.

To be honest I don’t know the current relationship between Roy and Steve and whether Steve updates QTRGui behind the scenes for Roy or if Roy had another Windows programmer. It sounds like he might have but no longer does. It’s a real pity if there are no more Windows QTR updates, especially as Macs are a less attractive option give the increased difficulty in controlling colour management in MacOS.

I’d have thought that the best place to get QTR / QTRGui advice is the Yahoo group http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/QuadtoneRIP/

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I had a little browse on that yahoo QTR forum and found this statement from Roy posted on 11 Nov 2013 which is a summary of the current state of QTR, but it doesn’t mention Windows 8. It indicates that while QTRGui may have initially been a separate front-end, it’s now integral. This is a little off-topic but I thought that it may help complete the discussion of QTRGui. My apologies if it’s too off-topic:

[I]On Windows there is just one product – QTR – B&W printing from QTRgui layout to the Epson printer. It’s all one piece and can’t be separated. There is No Color Mngt at all. There is an issue about maintaining the QTRgui frontend – I didn’t write it so I have no way to change anything. It works with no trouble on Windows XP & 7 as far as I know. It fully supports all the 8 ink printers. Its the 10 ink printers that have limited support. Printing works fine with them, but Curve Creation can’t access the other 2 inks. If you get 10 ink curves from someone else, the printing works just fine with all 10 inks. The driver internals and actually the Curve create internals have all 10 inks. If you edit the .qidf with NotePad and drop them onto quadprofile.exe you can create 10 ink curves but yes its different and a bit more hassle. I’m trying to figure out a way to continue to fully maintain a product on Windows but so far its not clear how to accomplish this.
The virtualization idea is a good idea, in fact that’s how I’ve done a lot of the Windows work for years on my Mac.

On Mac there are now two separate products. The long time QTR driver runs as an ordinary print driver in the OS. Its just a specialized print driver for B&W output. You can print with any program you like – naturally Photoshop has been the usual. Recently (actually almost a year ago) I introduced a new program for high level image layout. I’ve used the name QTR-Print-Tool but to be less confusing I’m dropping the QTR part of the name. Print-Tool is somewhat like the QTRgui frontend but its capabilities are a lot closer to something like Qimage. Print-Tool and QTR are completely independent, so you can do Photoshop to QTR driver, Print-Tool to QTR driver, or Print-Tool to Epson driver.

A little comment about color management (CM). CM is mostly thought of for printing color but the ICC standard has always included a grayscale format that can control the lightness/darkness tonality – essentially like a grayscale Photoshop Curve. Hardly anybody cared about this so it was not supported much. QTR added some tools for creating grayscale ICCs way back. They were a bit harder to use on Windows but on the Mac it all worked just like color profiles. It all worked beautifully until CS4 – yes a long time ago. Due to a lot of internal changes like 64-bit programs, the grayscale CM stopped working when printing from Photoshop to QTR driver. I spent a lot of time with Apple and Adobe to have them fix this but no such luck. In fact later on they even made it hard on the color people by dropping No Color Management from Photoshop. So you couldn’t print the color targets for making custom ICC profiles.

All this led to me writing Print-Tool – first as a CM fix and then as a general easy to use layout program.

Hope all this helps and thanks to all you QTR supporters.[/I]

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Hi Dana. Sorry for not responding sooner, but I just saw these latest posts this morning.

I think Brian S. did a great job of elaborating on the QTR/Windows issue. My reason for recommending the Steve Billard site was that it was just one of many sources of information that might have been useful to the OP. But my main point was that forums such as these have enhanced value when members step in to help other members by sharing their collective experience. Brian’s post does just that, and Roy certainly depends upon feedback when there are changes to the QTR working environment . But this doesn’t detract in any way from the valuable advice you routinely offer, with great patience, to members on an almost daily basis. There is no need for you to be defensive, as in

“After re-reading this thread, I do think it shows the lengths we go to provide support to our customers. We are always here to help our customers and support our products.” That’s a given, Dana.

As for the chip auto-resetting issue, you suggest that aging batteries may be a problem. Well, following my own advice offered above, I can say that, in my case, that is not likely since my IJM carts were spanking new, just as the R3000 is. And for the sake of completeness, i.e., adding another data point to your knowledge base, I just now removed and reinserted a cart, and it did not reset. But I also find it difficult to see how the pair of resetting contacts can simultaneously touch any metal upon insertion. The next time I remove and agitate the carts, however, I’ll report back here on the outcome. Perhaps other members using these same carts can post their experience as well.*

Harry

  • forum |ˈfôrəm| noun
    1 a place, meeting, or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged.
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Thanks for adding this info from Roy about QTR Brian_S.

Harry- Yes, there are a few good places to get help with QTR. I feel working with Roy Harrington directly, and/or the QTR forum is best for support specific to QTR. My understanding is Steve wrote interface for QTR for Windows, and Roy writes/supports QTR himself. I use QTR, and can support the basics to help our customers (like in this case to try purging air from an individual channel to avoid wasting ink in other channels after one cartridge ran dry), but the Windows 8 issue came up in the case, which I wasn’t previously aware of, so contacted Roy and he explained that regular printing with Win 8 seems to be working ok, but not calibration mode for some reason, and he’s unable to update QTR for Windows.

Regarding the R3000 refill carts, and occasional unintentional chip reset- I have tested this a few times since it was first brought to my attention, and worked with the cartridge manufacturer, but haven’t determined a solid answer why this happens sometimes. Old batteries was something the manufacturer suggested, and I investigated, but didn’t feel that was it. We’re dedicated to helping our customers, and spend a lot of time testing/using our products to learn all about them to offer the best support possible, and make sure we have the best products available for our customers. I do MANY different things every day between product testing/development, tech support, and production printing, and haven’t had time to focus on the R3000 testing in hopes of discovering the answer. I may have more time within the next few weeks to investigate more, but this is a perfect situation where feedback from other users is VERY helpful to gather more details and figure this out together. In my testing, I have notated the details such as printer on or off, cartridge ink level reading before cart was removed, chip and battery age, and any other detail that could be helpful. I would appreciate any details you can provide of your experiences with this issue, and will continue testing ASAP.

Thanks and happy printing~ Dana :slight_smile: