On Behalf Of Mark Thompson Photography > I left my 1290 idle for a couple of months foolishly without > doing regular > headcleans and found that it needed many cycles of cleans and > test patterns. > However the light cyan remained printing very badly no matter > how many > cleans I did.
A quick tip for any Epson inkjet printer user (tho' it may apply to other inkjets also): Run a nozzle-check Run a clean cycle Run a nozzle-check Before we get to the interesting bit... Please don't quote me (!!!). This test is OUR idea about what goes on inside an Epson printhead, and it needs to be understood in conjunction with any number of other possible factors that CAN & DO influence a printer's performance. * If you have missing or deflected nozzles in the first check, and _broadly speaking_ the SAME nozzles are missing or deflected in the second test... then my broad assessment would be to consider the problem is (probably) not about the delivery of ink to the printhead, possibly more likely some sort of problem with dust / fluff / dried ink in or under the printhead. Try cleaning the parking pad and soaking the head in a fresh clean parking pad. Repeat applications may be necessary. * If on the first nozzle-check you have some missing nozzles, and (on the same colour) the second nozzle check has different missing nozzles, the problem is (probably) with air in the printhead, or ink delivery to the printhead. What causes that will vary by if carts or CIS are in use, system age, ink set in use, and even potentially which model of printer you are on. * If both nozzle checks are perfect... Why were you running this test?! Problems in printing images that do not show up in nozzle-checks, or after a clean are unusual to say the least (in which case, a whole different set of 'rules'!). Of course, rules vary by printer model (different printheads have different quirks) and the above will simply be quite useless to you if one head is not firing at all (another set of tips etc!!!) or if so few nozzles are firing you can't get a good indication of what is going on. The point with the above being... if you can correctly assess where the problem is, you can concentrate your efforts to fix the 'right' problem. I would hope of course that our customers would contact us if experiencing problems.... Though I will state again that I think the above is a good tip - but it is often not the whole story ;) Take care, Nij =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
