Less Than Helpful Messages

I recently printed a series of client photos on EEF, and then printed several of my own pieces on Luster, to fill orders taken during a recent show. With those out of the way I decided to swap PK for MK so I could print another client job I've put off for while I was busy preparing my current show. That print would be made on Epson Enhanced Matte paper.

The printer performed the ink swap as usual. Also as usual, it wanted to do a cleaning when I sent the first print job after the swap. The machine stopped, showing this pair of messages on the LCD (the display toggles between them).

OK, which ink did you have in mind? Of the eleven inks in my 7900, all but three are below 5%, which I've come to believe is the threshold for cleaning. If an ink level is at 5% or lower, the machine won't run its cleaning routine until a new ink cartridge is installed. Once the cleaning is finished, that cartridge can be removed and the original cartridge can be installed so its ink can be more completely consumed during routine printing.

But the display does not indicate which ink(s) are too low. Since I have eight inks below 5%, I'd no idea which to replace for the cleaning. I'd done a black swap, so I guessed the printer might be unhappy about the PK being at 3%, even though PK was no longer being used after the swap. I installed a new PK, but the messages remained the same.

I had one channel, VM, which had a tiny gap in the nozzle check pattern last time I printed one. So I canceled the current operation, installed a new C and a new VM, and then ran a cleaning cycle on the C/VM pair. Another nozzle check print showed the VM was now perfect. I returned my low C and VM to the machine and was able to make my print without further interruption.

Epson, how hard would it be to make these messages a bit more helpful? Any reason the message couldn't specify which ink is too low? If there's more than one, couldn't the display toggle through a list of them?

As it is, one must either know beforehand which ink is likely to raise a complaint, or guess well, or replace several inks before happening on the right one(s). Dumb.

  --Jay