Later this week I need to change my display area at a local gallery. I have plenty of framed inventory on-hand, but these periodic refreshes at area galleries provide opportunities to print new things, or to make prints of older pictures I've not previously had time to work with.
Last February I spent a day and a night in Hot Springs, Montana. I wrote an article for my Web site about the experience of judging a photography show there. The black and white photo used in that article, of a window in the Symes Hotel, is the picture I printed today. I did a little work on it today to remove some distortion (perspective tool) and adjust the contrast a bit. I then set up to make a print on an 11 x 17 inch (US B) sheet of EEF.
I'd last printed with the 7900 on 1 February; it's not getting much use lately. When I ran a nozzle check print today I found a small clogged area in the LC channel. I did a standard pair clean (LC/VLM), and then ran another nozzle check print. This showed the LC problem had been solved, but now the LLK channel was almost entirely gone. I did a standard clean on the LLK/Y pair, which made very little improvement in the LLK channel. Thanks to a phone call, the machine sat for about 15 minutes. When I got off the phone I ran another standard cleaning of the LLK/Y pair, again with no improvement. Finally, I did a "powerful" cleaning of that pair, which eliminated the clog.
All of this took half an hour (not counting the telephone delay) and required five nozzle check prints. Wasted time, and more than a little frustrating. I've seldom had this level of difficulty clearing an ink supply problem.
Fortunately, the problem did clear, and I was able to make what turned out to be a very nice print.
--Jay
I have been printing with my 7900 for 6 months. If the printer sits idle for more than 3 days, each ink cart is removed and shaken for 18 seconds then reinserted before power-up. I do not experience any serious clogs. Occasionally the IC chip is not recognized but a simple paper shim attached to the bottom of the cart fixes that.
ReplyDelete--Lee
People have developed dozens of ways to manage clogs. Some are quite elaborate, others as simple as printing a test page of some kind, generally attempting to fire all colors. Yet others do nothing at all, and simply print when they need to, perhaps after some nozzle checks and cleanings, perhaps not.
ReplyDeleteReported results seem to have no correlation to the clog-prevention method used. Some people report stubborn clogs, some report no clogs ever, while the majority (I suspect) have the occasional clog.
Best advice: do whatever works for you. That may or may not work for others.
--Jay