Over the course of the last four weeks, in preparing for a series of shows I've made dozens of prints. Many have been small, printed several across on 24 inch Luster. I've also printed a few panoramas on various papers, and a number of prints on 13x19 and 17x22 inch sheets. The 7900 has performed flawlessly. I don't post much here when there's nothing to say; the printer's given me little to talk about in recent weeks. That's always a Good Thing.
I've put aside a number of client print jobs (for my more tolerant clients). I'll be getting to those after my next exhibit hanging and opening reception, that reception being 26 August. It's a large show; as the featured artist I've got most of the gallery to fill. In addition to selecting the work to print, which takes more time than you might think if you've not been down that road, I've been working like a mad person to wrap up the printing, matting, and framing. Fortunately, most of that's now behind me. A few last minute details to sort out, hang the show this coming Thursday, and then enjoy the opening the following Sunday.
As usual, I begin each day's printing by printing a nozzle check on plain bond paper. These have been perfect for weeks, despite varying temperatures and humidities in my print studio. Today, however, I had a very odd occurrence.
I'd made a couple of prints two days ago, with no problems. Today I printed a nozzle check; it showed a very tiny gap in the pattern for VM. I decided to print anyway, loaded a sheet of GGFS, and sent the print job. The result was terrible. Washed out colors, the print looking badly blown out and horribly over-sharpened. I checked my setup, verified the use of the correct profile, even made sure I'd fed the sheet with the correct side "up". Everything looked fine.
Lacking any better ideas I printed another nozzle check. The LLK channel was missing completely. The pattern for LLK was perfect on the first nozzle check print, run not ten minutes earlier, immediately before making the failed print. I've no idea what happened to that channel, but clearly there was an ink delivery problem.
I ran a pair cleaning of LLK/Y, and then made another nozzle check print. This showed a few of the LLK nozzles had returned, but most of the pattern was still missing. I then ran a "powerful" cleaning of the same pair, and another nozzle check print. This time the pattern was perfect.
I fed another sheet of GGFS, ran my print, and got the result I expected the first time—a perfect print.
This disappearing nozzle problem hasn't happened to me before, but I've read a number of reports of this on various forums. It's a darned unhandy way to waste a sheet of quality (expensive) paper.
--Jay
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