The First Clog in Nearly Two Months

My recent snowy owl prints have been selling very well. Sunday, a gallery about 20 miles (32 km) south of here had an opening reception for its new show. I'm not one of the two featured artists in the show, but I do have a number of pieces displayed there. A few days before the opening I delivered and hung several different owl photos, in several sizes. Most were framed, but I did take some small matted-and-bagged pieces. I attended the Sunday reception; because the owls are still here (no one knows when they'll return to their arctic breeding grounds, but early March is a good bet), there was a lot of interest in the photos. I spoke with a number of people, and some of the small matted prints sold.

Monday I received a call from the gallery owner. She asked for more owl photos. It seems all of the matted pieces sold, along with one of the smaller framed prints. I love getting this kind of phone call! I promised to bring more of these pictures to the gallery Thursday.

Monday evening I made a number of prints on letter-size sheets. These would be used in matted/bagged pieces and in the smallest frame size I use. As is my usual workflow, I made the files ready to print, printed a nozzle check (no clogs), and then made the prints. Entirely routine. I wanted to make one more larger print to frame, but ran out of time.

Yesterday after dinner, and before other business I had to take care of, I had time to make that larger print. I set up the file for printing, made the nozzle check print (no clogs), and then made the owl print on a Super A3/B (13 x 19 inches) sheet of GGFS. I couldn't believe the result. It's the worst print I've ever made. Color was waaaaay off, and the gloss differential was horrible. These are white birds, so there's always a little of that, but I've never found it objectionable with this paper (or EEF) and the 7900. The entire print had a magenta cast, making the foggy-blue sky background an alien, lavender shade. The owls were pink.

What happens when LLK goes away (left). The snippet on the right shows the correct color.

Sorry for the poor reproduction. These are point-n-shoot snapshots of the prints.

Thinking perhaps I'd made an error when setting the profile, I used a scrap sheet of GGFS, one that had been used for testing something a while back but had most of the sheet unprinted, and started over. I went through each step of my workflow very carefully, made the print, and got the same result. By then I was out of time and had to shelve the problem until this morning.

Today I set up to print, checked my workflow carefully, and then made a nozzle check print. Ah, there's the problem! The entire LLK channel was missing—not a single dot printed. All other channels were 100%. Interesting—last evening I printed a perfect nozzle check, and then printed my owl picture just minutes later. In those minutes, the LLK channel disappeared. I should mention there's plenty of LLK in the cartridge. This is the first clog I've seen since 3 January.

I did a cleaning of the Y/LLK pair, and then printed a nozzle check. LLK showed a few line segments in the print, but nearly all of the nozzles were still missing. I did a second cleaning of that pair, this time a "power clean". The nozzle check after that was perfect. Right away I made a small print of last night's failed picture. It looked great. So I resized and sharpened for the larger version, loaded a sheet of GGFS, and made the print. Perfect.

It's all a little puzzling, as the machine has been trouble-free since that last clog was cleaned in early January. I had no trouble with the prints made Monday, the nozzle check printed on Tuesday was perfect. Hmmm....

Tomorrow I'll be making a dozen client prints in various sizes, all on mat paper. I'll be watching carefully as each print emerges from the machine.

  --Jay