I got a job a few days ago to make three small prints, these for a local newspaper for whom I've done a few dozen similar jobs. In the newspaper business they have to work fast; their photographers "run and gun," shooting lots of jpegs, mostly with low-end "consumer" DSLRs. The staff cull their photos and go to print quickly; there's no time to process raw files. After some false starts a couple of years ago I've finally trained them (ha!) to set their cameras to make the highest-quality jpegs of which they're capable. This is overkill for what gets printed in the newspaper, but the files now are generally of suitable quality to make nice small prints.
This job was like most others. I made the three files print-ready, set up the 7900 with a sheet of Epson Luster, and sent the first job. Printing started normally, but after a few passes of the printhead it stopped, hunted a bit, and then "parked", as if printing were complete (but had only just begun). Several seconds later the paper advanced a normal distance, the printhead came out, made a pass or two, and then stopped. After a few seconds it made a pass back to the home position, hunted a bit, and then parked. This repeated over and over. Printing did eventually complete, but it took over 20 minutes. For a letter-size sheet! Fortunately the print is perfect.
I started the second print, and the machine behaved exactly the same. This time I grabbed my phone and made a video. This was my first attempt at shooting a video. I have no video editing tools, and really don't have time (or interest) to find and learn any. I hope the video here is at least playable.
It shows the printhead moving as a blur, as this is under available light from an overhead fixture out in front of the printer. My apologies for the glare of the printer's front plastic cover, but please understand this wasn't a planned shoot. I just wanted to quickly grab a video to show you this weird behavior. There's sound, but you'll probably have to turn up the volume considerably to hear it.
After the second 20-minute print I cycled power to the 7900. After it booted up I ran the third print. The machine behaved normally, with its usual speed, and the print is fine. I let the printer sleep, and haven't powered it down in many months. Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned.
Update: The day after this happened I printed a pair of panoramas 2-up on 24" roll paper. This was two copies of the same image, 36 inches long x 10 inches high (91 x 25 cm). I did my usual setup, first waking the machine from standby and then printing a nozzle check, which found problems with LLK. A standard cleaning of the Y/LLK pair resolved that. The printer once again exhibited the behavior described above. I canceled the job after a couple of minutes, cycled power to the printer, resent the job, and it printed normally.
Today I made another single, small print for the newspaper client. Again, the usual setup, waking the 7900 by inserting a sheet of bond paper and then running a nozzle check. No problems found. I then printed the single letter-size sheet of luster. The printer behaved normally.
--Jay
