Still printing LK and LLK with PiezoFlush reaching nozzles

InkjetMall Customer Support PiezoFlush
1

I have a Epson 9890 and have been battling two nozzle head clogs. One on LK and the other LLK. See attached file 1. I’ve followed your video(beautifully done Dana) on cleaning the capping station, the wiper blade and flushing box, and bottom of the print head(many times) with no change in the nozzle test print. I purchased the replacement cartridges and put the PiezoFlush in the LK, LLK, and PK (because I was low on ink at the time). Did the INIT Fill in service mode and let it set for several days. Did 3 clean cycles and I printed nozzle test and see the red now in LK, LLK, and PK. See attached file 2. Still clogged. Ugh! I decided to print large boxes of light black (RGB 128) and light light black (RGB 198), with a strip of Black. I did this as least 10 time on large 17x22 glossy paper and much to my surprise the LK and LLK boxes printed not red but gray and light gray with no banded at all everytime. The strip of black printed red as I expected. Where does the light black come from if the lines to the damper show full of PiezoFlush? Why is there no banding? Why does it not print red? Thanks for your time!

2

We have experienced this with this printer model, 1 Initial Fill isn’t sufficient in moving enough ink from the cartridge, through the lines, into the damper and through the head. Just last week Dana had to run 3 Initial fill cycles to rid the printer of Cyan staining. The new X9XX printer models don’t duplicate the initial fill cycle in the way the older 7880/9880 models did (unfortunately).

There is a possibility you haven’t run enough piezoflush through your system to actually clean these 2 channels out completely. I would recommend running at least 1 more to see if Black still shows up in the LK & LLK channels. From your #2 image it appears there is still some LK & LLK black present. There is possibly some left over in the head as well, that is showing up in your images. Which leads me to the next topic…You need to print through QuadTone Rip, using Calibration Mode to actually print from each individual channel here is the link for instructions http://www.inkjetmall.com/tech/content.php?166-Flush-individual-channel-using-QTR-Calibration-Mode

3

Why did you flush the PK channel as well, it appears to be printing well?

4

KellyC thanks for your input. I did another init fill and I’m going to let “Monster Ink” sit quietly for a couple of days. I filled the PK channel with flush because at the time, I had a near empty PK ink cartridge.