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