In August, the Sandpiper Art Gallery in Polson, MT, hosts its annual "Art Festival", an outdoor show now in its forty-second year. This takes place 10 August, on the lawn of the Lake County courthouse. This will be my fifth year exhibiting in the show.
It's not too soon to be printing new work for the show, so there will be time to order a few frames and get everything assembled. Last night I set up to make the first new prints. I chose a couple of panoramas, one from Glacier shot just a few days ago, and a second that's been a good seller since I first printed it for a commission in 2007. I selected a third, smaller image, to nest with the panoramas on 24-inch-roll luster.
In my experiences so far with the 7900, getting the printer ready for this job was by far the most frustrating.
The first nozzle check showed about half the pattern for VM missing. A standard cleaning of the C/VM pair fixed that, but that second nozzle-check print showed both LC and LLK entirely missing. I did a standard cleaning of the Y/LLK pair, followed by another nozzle check print (#3, if you're counting). This showed about half the LLK nozzles were printing. Next, I cleaned the VLM/LLK pair. When the cleaning finished, the printer's LCD showed a "Replace Ink" message, with the flashing red X over the G bar on the display. This ink had been at 1% for a very long time. I replaced it, and after the printer pressurized the inks, the LCD again showed the "Replace Ink" message, this time on the O bar. Orange too had been at 1% for a long time. I should note that both of these inks were the original 110ml "starter" inks that had been included with the printer; both had expirations dates of last August. I replaced the Orange.
Now I could print another nozzle check (#4), which showed only a few lines in LC, and a bit more of the LLK channel restored. Giving up on standard cleanings, I did a powerful cleaning of VLM/LC, and then another nozzle check. This showed most of VLM restored, but a few tiny voids remained scattered throughout the pattern. LLK seemed to be improving on its own, that channel now missing only a couple of lines at the bottom of the pattern.
All of this cleaning and nozzle checking was burning time; I wanted to get the prints done, so I sent the print job to the printer. That was a mistake, of course. Banding was quite obvious in the gray/cyan sky and fog areas in the smaller panorama (bottom right in the photo below). I watched closely as the print emerged from the printer, and canceled the job from the printer's control panel as soon as I saw the problem.
After removing the roll paper I printed another nozzle check (#6), getting the same result I'd seen after #5. I then did a powerful cleaning of Y/LLK, and another nozzle check print. Finally, LLK was perfect. LC still had several very small voids in the pattern. I reloaded the roll paper and printed the job, which looked fine.
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| The final print, after spending far too much time and materials getting ink to the paper. |
All of that took over an hour, seven nozzle check prints, reduced my LLK from 10% to 4%, and took my maintenance cartridge, the original included with the printer, from 25% to 21%. I've ordered replacements for both.
--Jay
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