Clog-free For Two Weeks (And Counting)

I've been working on the art repro project I mentioned here in early January. It's been a large job, but its finally winding down. I've got one more painting to complete. I'm doing the photography—some of these are large paintings, requiring multiple exposures later stitched together—and then the Photoshop work to assemble the frames, make various corrections, and do the color matching. I'm not doing the printing. The paintings are oils on canvas, and I've no interest in printing on canvas. Mostly, I've no interest in coating the canvas, in dealing with that learning curve and the potential for generating scrap.

I am proofing my work by making small prints on mat (or "matte", for those who insist) paper. Getting the color right has been easy for some of these pictures, not so easy for others. Regardless, I've been making a fair number of proof prints before finally getting it right.

As usual, prior to making my first proof of the day, I print a nozzle check on plain paper. I print perhaps two or three days a week—never (so far) more than that. The last time I had to clear a clog was 3 January. That was in the Y channel, and was cleared by doing a Y/LLK pair cleaning. There's some consensus that temperature and relative humidity affects the frequency of clogs with these machines. My 7900 is in a room that's heated only when in use, so the temperature swings more than it would in a typical living space. With the heat on, the room is 65 to 70 degrees F (18 - 21 C). With the heat off it can drop as low as 56° F (13 C). When the printer is running, it's usually in the mid-60s. RH varies, too. The lowest I've recorded is 35%; I've seen it as high as 46%. I've only had the printer for a couple of months, those being wintery ones here. In summer that room will be a few degrees warmer. Our humidity levels typically drop, sometimes dramatically, in summer. I note the RH on my nozzle-check prints, so I'll be able to watch the trend.

Printer status display on the Mac

The LK ink is still at 1%. Interestingly, the 7900 today showed the maintenance cartridge at 56%. Since the middle of December, that has varied from 49% up to today's reading. I've no idea how the printer senses that capacity, but I suspect it doesn't sense it at all. I think it's more likely a (rough, apparently) total of the amount of ink used in cleanings, in addition, in this case, to any waste ink from the initial set-up process.

I now have five inks below 20%, which means the printer's LCD, and the status display in the intuitively-named "Epson Printer Utility 4", are showing five ! marks for those inks.

There's always something flashing on this machine. If there's no paper loaded, the paper LED flashes. Unless the printer is asleep, in which case the LCD is blanked, the ! marks are flashing over the status bars for the inks below 20%. I use a large sheet of thin foam, from the original packaging of the printer, as a dust cover. The sheet is not opaque, but it does somewhat dim the flashing stuff, making it a bit less eye-catching when I enter the room.

I've been out doing some winter shooting lately (we've had a mini-irruption of snowy owls here in western Montana's Mission Valley—great fun!); with the repro job winding down, and other client work at a bit lower priority, I should soon have time to print some of my own stuff.

  --Jay