A Tale of Several Print Jobs

What follows started back on 9 December. I've been fairly busy lately, having little time to make a posting here. As usual, I kept records to make catching up a little easier. This posting covers a number of days, so it's fairly long.

My 7900 had been idle for just a day shy of four weeks. This isn't typical, but such long periods without printing have happened several times during my ownership of the machine. On 9 Dec I had a job to make a single print for a client. I'd print on 24-inch roll Epson Luster. After sizing and optimizing the file in Photoshop I moved to the printer to start, as usual, with a nozzle check print. This print showed gaps in five channels, more than I'd ever seen at one time. Also for the first time ever, there was a tiny gap in the orange channel. Circumstances and environment were as usual; no extremes of temperature or humidity. A number of my ink cartridges were at 1%, and had been for some time. I had spares on hand for all.

OK, this wasn't going to be a simple "check and go" print job. I found gaps in C, O, LC, VM, and LLK. I felt the image file, being a little unusual and a challenge to properly sharpen, would need a test print, a slice through an area of high detail. I had no concerns about color fidelity in this test strip, so despite the failed nozzle check I printed the strip, learned what I needed to learn, and made appropriate adjustments to the file. The test strip color was awful, as you might expect. But having pumped some ink through the system I thought some of the channels might have cleared; stranger things have happened during my life with this 7900.

I ran another nozzle check, and thing had indeed changed. I still had the same gaps in C, O, and VM. But now LC was missing entirely, and about half of LLK had disappeared. I replaced all of the 1% inks with fuller cartridges, and then ran "powerful" cleanings of the C/VM pair, the LC/VLM pair, and the Y/LLK pair. It's been widely reported that powerful cleanings are hard on the printhead, so I left several minutes cooling time between those pair cleanings. When the last had finished I made another nozzle check print.

This time, I had more gaps in C, the gap in O remained (not a surprise, since it hadn't been cleaned), and LC was mostly back but still had a small gap. As I was still tweaking the image a bit I ran another test print, this time a small version of the full image. The top 2/3 of that print looked good, but the bottom third exhibited very obvious banding. Another nozzle check print (#4, if you're counting) showed a large area of gaps in C, the small gap in O, and numerous small gaps in LC, VM, LLK, and VLM. Today, the machine is chasing itself all over the place.

I repeated the powerful cleaning of the C/VM pair, the LC/VLM pair, and the Y/LLK pair, again leaving some time between each pair. The next nozzle check showed only the small gap in O, the one channel I'd not yet cleaned. After a standard cleaning of the O/G pair, the nozzle check (#6) showed perfect patterns in all channels.

Finally, I made the print. It was perfect. Being the only print I needed, I put the 1% inks back in the machine and quit for the day. I can't say how much ink the cleanings consumed. The waste ink tank went from 66% down to 58%. That one print turned out to be rather costly to make.

On 11 December I woke the printer and made a nozzle check, finding no problems. I made a small print.

On 14 December I needed to make a large print on HPN, which required switching to MK, something I'd not done in many months. I made the PK-to-MK swap, ran a nozzle check, and found a small gap in MK. That ink, at 1%, required replacing with a new cartridge so I could do the cleaning cycle. I did a standard cleaning of the MK/LK pair, which solved the problem without creating any new ones. I returned the 1% MK cartridge to the printer and made my print, which is very nice. HPN is such a lovely paper. I should do more with it.

Three days later I started the machine, did a nozzle check, found no problems, and then made 28 small prints on sheets of  Epson Ultra Premium Presentation Paper (formerly Enhanced Matte). The prints were perfect. Another three days later I made a few more prints on the same paper for the same client, again without problems.

Finally, to wrap up, the next day (21 December) I made six more prints on the same paper for the same client, who'd come to pick up all the work I'd done for him this month, plus one large print on Epson Luster I'd made in early November.

Once again all of this points to the need to run these machines regularly. I can't explain why I had such problems after the four-week idle period, when there have been several periods over the years of that duration or longer with no or fewer or easier-to-resolve problems.

That's Life With a 7900.

  --Jay

Four Years? Really??

Somehow my "new" printer is four years old. I'm not sure how that happened. I can't recall where I heard it, but someone said, "Time passes slowly, but the years go by so fast."

The 120 postings (121 counting this one!) in this blog are a record of the joys and frustrations experienced in real-world use, four years of life with a 7900.

I feel fortunate in having avoided the serious, costly problems some 7900 owners have reported. My machine makes lovely prints and has provided a decent percentage of my income, although sometimes at the expense of a great deal of time and annoyance. I've had plenty of occasion to ask myself if, knowing what I know now, I'd buy the same printer. Some days the answer is, "Not a chance in hell." But other days, you bet I would. If forced to decide right now, forced to buy another printer today, I'd say, "Probably not." But to be fair, there are more options today, and I know a lot more now than I did four years ago.

As mentioned in several postings here, I've settled into a comfortable routine and workflow that allows me to get the best out of my 7900. As would anyone after four years' experience, I know what to expect. When there are problems I've so far been able to work them out and get the job done. There's always the chance of a surprise, but life with the 7900 is quite stable at the moment. That's the main reason new postings here are fairly infrequent: there's simply not much to report. But the blog lives on; I'll continue to post here whenever something interesting happens.

I can offer no advice if you're shopping for a printer, but I offer this blog as a history of my own experiences. I hope you find it useful.

  --Jay

New Printers to Replace The X900 and X890 Series?

This is off-topic from life with a 7900, but perhaps of interest to both of my regular readers: A few days ago Epson announced a new series of printers: Eight-ink SureColor (SC) P6000 (24"), and SC P8000 (44"), and ten-ink SC P7000 and SC P9000. Epson lists these new machines under the heading, "Photography and Fine Art". In appearance and overall size they are quite similar to the X900 and X890 printers.

The eight-color machines use Epson's UltraChrome HD inks. While the name is similar to the UltraChrome HDR inks used in the X900/890 series, and the available cartridge sizes are the same, the inks have new part numbers, so one assumes they are not the same, and likely not interchangeable.

Epson calls the inks for the ten-color machines "UltraChrome HDX", perhaps in an attempt to ensure nobody can keep straight which inks are used in which machines. In any case, it seems clear the HDX inks are completely new.

And yes, one still (apparently) must swap MK for PK, and back, as the two inks continue to share a channel in the head.

There's no shortage of speculation around the Web: these machines use new (and one assumes better) heads, or they don't; one can swap the new inks into an X900/X890, or not; there will be fewer head clogs (ink delivery problems) or that problem will remain a major annoyance and expense; the list goes on.

Imaging Resource has posted a decent quick overview. I found a couple of minor factual errors, or at least, information that doesn't agree with what Epson has posted. I also noted a number of the features the article describes as "new" are, in fact, present on the X900/890 series.

Epson's "Pro" printer page is here. You can see the Stylus Pro X900 and X890 series are still shown, under the heading, "Photo, Proofing, Packaging, and Fine Art" (pretty much covers it!). At the top of that page you'll find links to detailed information about the new SureColor machines.

Of particular interest is the ability to schedule automatic head/nozzle checks. This apparently uses a small amount of ink to check for nozzle clogs, and then cleans only the channels needing it. Apart from the ability to schedule when these checks happen, the nozzle checking part of this feature sounds similar to the much-reviled ANC function, which, I think it's safe to say, most X900/890 users disable soon after setting up their machines. Let's hope it works better than ANC ever did, and doesn't leave the machines stuck in an endless, ink-draining cleaning mode.

There is, as yet, no indication the SC machines will replace the similar-sized Stylus Pro printers. Time will tell. Although this is not an endorsement of the X900/890 series, if you're at all interested in owning one of these machines, it makes sense to watch for bargains over the next few months.

  --Jay

Cartridge Error

Recently I made a number of prints for an exhibit at a local gallery. I've been making several prints a week for clients, but these are the first prints of my own work I've made in some months.

My LLK has been at 1% for a long time. I think I’ve swapped in a new LLK half a dozen times for cleanings. And lately, LLK has shown nozzle-check issues every time I start up the machine. Setting up for these latest prints was no exception; about half of LLK was missing. I swapped in a new LLK cartridge, did a powerful cleaning of the Y/LLK pair (had to swap Y, too), and then had a good nozzle check. I swapped back in the old Y and LLK. I then inserted the sheet for the new print, and that’s when the printer’s LCD showed “cartridge error”, with a flashing X over LLK. OK, the thing was really close to empty, so rather than mess around “reseating” and such, I just replaced it with the newer one. No problems since. I made another print later, and had no problems.

In a way this error makes sense, but it’s the first time I’ve ever seen it, and have replaced many cartridges when they reported empty, with no error messages.

Just another oddity from this odd machine.

  --Jay

Another Ink Replacement Failure

It's been a maddening week here. I'm about to leave for a short camping trip, immediately followed by a trip east to visit my parents. As often happens, client work has come in steadily, all of which required quick turn-around while I should have been preparing for these trips. Clients don't care about my trips, commitments I've made to other clients, or my desire to relax for a day or two. Fair enough; I do my best to accommodate them.

The 7900 had been idle for a couple of weeks, and has been busy since. Every day's start-up began with a nozzle check that showed the need for cleanings. Every day. As my printer currently has six inks at 5% or lower capacity, cleanings invariably require swapping one or more of those inks for new cartridges. When a clean nozzle check print finally emerges, I replace those fuller cartridges with the originals, most of which are at 1%. This is standard procedure for the 7900, but is tedious and takes a lot of time. What should be a quick printing job can often require an hour or more. Such is life with a 7900.

OK, to the real issue for this posting: In my last post, waaaay back in April, I wrote about the printer stopping in mid-print because an ink cartridge had reached the empty state. The printer allows one to replace that cartridge with a new one, after which the print continues. This is widely reported to work just fine, and in fact has done in my own experience. Then I had the issue reported in the previous posting.

For my most recent job I'd been hired to reproduce several very large oil paintings. I photographed these, color-corrected the resulting files, and started making prints. The job required a number of prints, which I spread out over three days. On the final day I had only one print to make, this one fairly large. The start-up nozzle check showed LLK missing completely. A standard cleaning of the Y/LLK pair resolved this, so I loaded the roll paper and printed.

After printing several inches of the image the printer stopped, reporting an empty VLM cartridge must be replaced. I did that, and the machine continued printing. With horrible results. I canceled the print job. Below is a small section from the "master" file:

Here is a photo of the failed print. I made no effort to color-correct the jpeg for this posting, but you can clearly see the band of magenta in the lower half of the crop:

I removed the roll paper and ran a nozzle check as usual on a sheet of bond paper. This showed the LC channel missing completely. This should have nothing to do with the VLM cartridge swap, and it would seem the LC channel was fine before the machine required that VLM replacement.

Frustrated and more than a little angry, I quit for the day; it was getting late, and I really wanted to wrap up the job, but I knew better than to keep going. Next morning I ran a nozzle check and found no change, with VLM still absent. A powerful cleaning of the LC/VLM pair cleared most of the VLM nozzles. I set up and ran the print, which looked good.

Yet another new experience with the 7900, yet another way to produce scrap and waste time. Some days this machine is not good for my blood pressure. I've now been bitten twice by this "bug." I think the lesson here is that I can't trust the printer to continue properly when an ink cartridge must be replaced mid-print. Instead, I'll cancel the job, scrap the print, replace the ink, run a nozzle check, do whatever cleanings seem necessary, and then, finally, start the print job anew. Yes, this sucks, and shouldn't be necessary, but at least with my machine, clearly is.

  --Jay

LK Mid-print Ink Replacement Fail

I'm in one of those periods in which several of my inks are showing 1% remaining. I have inventory for all, and I've occasionally needed those cartridges when cleanings are required. On those days the cartridge shuffle is the norm, a situation in which the printer won't complete the cleaning cycle until the low inks are replaced by fuller cartridges. When I recently did a swap from MK to PK, after which the machine cleans all channels (as far as I can tell), I simply replaced them all, let the cleaning finish, and then put the one-percenters back in place. This is standard operating procedure.

A week ago I got a job to print ten 8x12 inch and one 16x24 inch black and white photos for a local portrait photographer. She's putting together a display for marketing purposes; she chose a range of subjects, all photographed in the same outdoor location, the doorway of an old barn on her farm.

I made a couple of prints a day, on a 24-inch roll of Epson Luster. The machine started each day without issue, a perfect nozzle check, and then I made the prints. As I've said here many times, the 7900 can be a joy to use when things work well, and the week's work only proves the point; using the machine frequently and regularly keeps everyone happy.

I finished the job by making the large print. I started with a nozzle check, as usual; it was fine, so I fed the roll paper, and started the print job. Several inches into the print the 7900 stopped, displaying a message that LK must be replaced. It's been well publicized that these machines can stop mid-job, ink can be replaced, and then the printer will continue with no visible evidence an ink change had been done. I know this to be true from my own experience. But I'd never had to do it in the middle of a black and white print.

When the message appeared, I removed the empty LK, replacing it with one that had been used for several cleanings. It had 92% of its ink remaining. Swapping the ink took no more than 90 seconds. I closed the ink cartridge door, the system pressurized, and printing resumed. Cool.

The print finished and was cut from the roll. I placed the print on my work table and immediately saw a dark band in the black background. Below is a photo of a part of the affected area. You can't miss the flaw through the horizontal center of this snippet. This is, of course, exactly where printing stopped so the LK could be replaced.

I let the print dry 24 hours, but found no improvement. Interestingly, the dark band is obvious under florescent lighting, but almost impossible to find in today's cloud-softened daylight. In any case, the print is scrap. I made another a few minutes ago. A normal print, no messages from the 7900, no need to swap inks.

Although my sample size is only one, I'll take this as a lesson that when printing black and white, perhaps especially those with large, very black areas, it is NOT cool when printing stops for ink cartridge replacement. I suspect the same would be true for any color image that has large, solidly-colored areas. Should this happen again I'll cancel the job so as to not waste any more paper and ink than necessary, replace the empty cartridge, and start the job over.

  --Jay

Epson Hot Press Natural

I've mentioned here that I rarely print on mat (or "matte", if you insist) papers. It's not that I don't like mat papers; it's more that I really love some of the baryta and other soft-gloss papers and prefer the higher D-max typically found with gloss papers and MK ink. I like fairly contrasty images, and have been very happy with defunct Ilford's GGFS and now with Canson's Infinity Baryta Photographique. And a few others of a similar ilk.

Most of my printing on mat paper has been for clients who have that preference. I recently wrapped up a printing job on mat paper, which required the swap from PK to MK. It had been a little over a week since I'd last used the 7900. I did the ink swap, and the machine then auto-cleaned as usual when I attempted to print the nozzle check. After that cleaning the nozzle check was fine, as were the client's prints.

A few days later I printed my B&W photo on Epson's Hot Press Natural (HPN). This is a warm-toned (no OBA), very stiff paper. It comes off a 24-inch roll with a very strong curl. It's like dealing with a roll of aluminum flashing, so stiff it's almost dangerous, and a challenge to flatten.

I made the photo (above), of a abandoned and crumbling outhouse in the Ninepipe National Wildlife Refuge here in northwest Montana, on a beautiful, calm March morning, just as the sun appeared over the Mission Mountain range east of the NWR. I love these old derelicts, with their deep wood grain and patina, cracked and missing boards, exposed nails and other hardware. The strong side-lighting helps bring out that detail.

The print is lovely. Deep, rich blacks, excellent detail, and the smooth, buttery look of HPN. Sharpening these kinds of images can be a challenge, but is worth the effort to get perfect.

A crop at 100% ("actual pixels" in Photoshop-speak) showing some of the detail in the old shack.

I used Epson's "canned" profile for HPN. While I think the print is excellent, it's not a great match to the monitor (NEC's MultiSync PA272W, calibrated with NEC's SpectraView II software and the NEC-branded colorimeter). The print is warmer than the soft-proofed version on the monitor. My color printing work has been a spot-on match to the monitor, so I'm assuming the canned profile isn't Epson's best work. I've posted a query to friend Dean, who also sometimes uses HPN with his 7900, and who also has a calibrated NEC monitor. I'll post his comments when I receive them.

  --Jay

New Format for Ink Expiration Dates?

Today I received two new ink cartridges, Y and LLC. The first thing I do when new ink arrives is check the expiration date. Long ago I got some new ink with an expiration date barely a week away; given that one sometimes needs a new ink cartridge only for cleanings, after which the older ink (below 5% of its original capacity) can be returned to the printer and used for many more prints, I often need to buy ink that will sit in inventory for weeks, even months.

The ink expiration date ("Best before") is marked on the outer carton, and also on the cartridge itself. It's always been straight forward, obvious, and easy to understand. Until today. The inks I got today have two dates on the carton. The bottom date is from last year, the top date two years later. What's one to make of that? How can both dates be "Best before"? There's no new marking on the carton, nor is there any internal paper with an explanation.

Older ink with a single date at top, newer ink with two dates at bottom.

I assume the older date is a manufacturing date, and the second, later date is the expiration date. Perhaps this should be obvious, but the older date is additional information that's not really of any use. It's an unexplained change I wish Epson had made clear. I don't like guessing Epson's intentions. I haven't had time to look around on Epson's support site, but I'd be shocked to find there any mention of this change.

The ink carts themselves are marked with only one date, as always. This is the later date that appears on the box. No confusion there.

  --Jay

A Delayed Firmware Update

As mentioned in my previous posting, my 7900 had been idle for some time before printing the most recent job. During much of that time I'd been busy with other things; making prints, or doing anything else photographic hadn't been on my to-do list. I therefore hadn't looked lately to see if Epson had posted any updates to firmware or software for the 7900.

A couple of days ago I did that, and was surprised to find, on the U.S. Epson site, a firmware update dated 29 October 2014. As usual, Epson provided no clues as to what changed between the newer firmware version HN110EA, and the previous release, HN111E8. I've no idea how I missed the posting of this. I am certain I've checked the update page since last October. In any case, I downloaded the newer firmware.

I also downloaded an update of the Remote Panel 2 ("RP2") software for Macintosh OS X (I'm still using version 10.9.5 "Mavericks" of OS X, having found no compelling reason to update to the latest).

RP2 has always been twitchy for me. It seems to have trouble locating my printer. When RP2 eventually succeeds after several attempts, it seems to work fine. I'd hoped the newer RP2 (version 3.01) would improve, but alas, it hasn't. My printer is networked. There are reports that RP2 is more reliable with directly-connected (USB) printers. I've never had mine directly connected, so I can't report on that. Also, for me, RP2 never finds newer firmware; the search always fails. To work around that I download the firmware and then mount the image. I point RP2 to that, which works fine, and then proceed with the update, which also has always worked as expected.

I launched RP2. On the third try it located my printer and displayed its status. I selected the option to update firmware, navigated to the downloaded update file, and waited. RP2's status doesn't show much, only that the update is in process. The printer's LCD is a bit more informative, eventually showing a progress bar of asterisks. When this completed the printer restarted. All appeared to happen normally, and a check of the firmware version on the LCD indicated the new version.

However, when I returned to the computer, RP2 had raised a dialog box indicating the update had failed. No explanation, no numbers, only "Update failed." I dismissed that. RP2's status window showed a small blinking icon of the printer overlaid with an X.

Since the printer rebooted, and shows the proper firmware version installed, and since I can navigate through the menus and all appears normal, I suspect the firmware installation went fine and all's well. I've not made a print since the update, but I have a small job to do in the next few days. If that proceeds as expected and the print looks good, I'll forget about this. If not, I'll report back here.

  --Jay

Printing Hassles, Nothing Unusual

Winter in northwestern Montana: often a time to get outside to play in the snow. It can also be a time to start (and perhaps finish!) projects that are set aside in better weather. I live in a town with an economy supported mostly by tourism. It is located between major ski resorts; we see little traffic from either. The tourist season here is short, essentially from July 4th through Labor Day (in the U.S., that's the first Monday in September). During those two months there's traffic, the sidewalks and shops are crowded with people from places near and far, and every weekend is chock full of events drawing large crowds. This is a time when art galleries do very well, the outdoor art shows occupy local parks and town squares, and artists are busy making prints, framing their work, hanging shows, and attending opening receptions.

But winter! Winter is different. A long season of short days. Cold and snowy (although less so every year, it seems). I've spent much of this winter installing some new tech here, solving the mysteries of my new QNAP NAS (network attached storage), and working to process some of the raw files made last year. I've done very little printing. I last fired up the 7900 on 19 December. Until a couple of days ago when I got a job to make 20 prints for a local artist, a painter who has had several of her original works scanned, and for whom I've made prints before. It seems she's planning ahead for this summer.

After being idle for 30 days, the printer's nozzle check showed about one quarter of the LK channel missing, and a few tiny voids in LC. I ran a standard cleaning of the Y/LK pair. I'm not sure why I did this, as the "standard" cleaning almost never clears the problem. That didn't improve this time. After the cleaning LK was almost entirely missing, and LC was entirely  missing. Before continuing I replaced the VLM cartridge, with an ink level of only 1%, with a new cartridge. I then did a standard cleaning of the LC/VLM pair, after which LC had a few scattered voids and the bottom two lines missing. As expected, LK was unchanged. Next I did a powerful cleaning of Y/LK. This fixed the LK channel and left all others unchanged. Finally, I ran another standard cleaning of LC/VLM, which cleared the LC clogs. I then reinstalled the 1% VLM cartridge.

After more than half an hour of this nonsense I was able to print the job. LK is now at 1%, Y is at 4%. I don't have either of those colors on hand, so it's time to order ink.

These kinds of problems seem to be less severe when I print more often, but even when I print every three or four days these stubborn "clogs" (or "ink delivery problems", which aren't necessarily clogged nozzles) can happen. As I've said so often in these postings, that's life with a 7900.

  --Jay