The Nasty Nines (Years, That Is)

 It's been a slow summer and fall here, during which I've done very little printing. The 7900 sits idle most of the time. Such conditions made the printer unhappy even when it was new. As things deteriorated with age, my now nine year old machine has become increasingly cranky. This ever more irrelevant record of my experiences with the 7900 is full of examples of this behavior. Here's the most recent:

Last week I had a job to make 14 small prints on mat paper for a client I'd not heard from since spring. I had no trouble with the prep work in Photoshop, just typical adjustments and then resampling and sharpening for printing. But I knew a nightmare of nozzle checks, cartridge swaps, and cleanings awaited.

I last printed on 31 October, but that was a bit of a cheat: I needed to print some CAD drawings of house plans on 24 x 36 inch sheets, using only black ink. I didn't bother with a nozzle check, just opened the drawing files, fed the paper, and printed, with a fine result. But I knew a nozzle check would show LLK, a constant problem channel, completely missing, and very likely some of the color channels in bad shape. I had no need to deal with any of that, so I didn't. Bottom line: the last time I needed to make photo prints was in September, which means it'd had been nearly three months since I had done the work to get a 100% clean nozzle check print. Oh, boy....

And of course, the Epson punished me for my lack of devotion and attention. As usual, LLK was completely absent, as was LC. Other channels had plenty of missing nozzles. Also as usual, as I worked through cleaning pairs, some channels outside those pairs disappeared. In the end, after about an hour of cleanings, powerful cleanings, and ink cartridge swaps (replacing low-percentage ones with new ones for the cleaning process) I finally had the machine ready to print. It's still possible to get all channels 100% "clean."*

After all that, the printing went as expected, the prints are lovely, and the client is happy. And I got there without bringing out the dynamite, although it was a close call.

*They don't stay that way more than a day or so. I suspect the 7900's capping station no longer seals properly when the print head parks, but that's only a guess, and I don't plan to tear down the machine to find out.

  --Jay

A Couple of Weeks Later

Almost two weeks after the nasty experience described in my last posting I powered up the 7900, and then set up as usual to make a single, small print. The nozzle check showed most of the LLK channel missing. I did a standard cleaning of the Y/LLK pair, after which a nozzle check showed 100%. The previously-problematic LC pattern was 100% both before and after that cleaning.

The machine printed normally, with none of the slow-down/delay described in that 16 February posting. The print looks as it should.

Just another Stylus Pro mystery that seems to have solved itself. These recent experiences are why it's hard to have much confidence in the printer, especially given its age. But life with a 7900 goes on, A couple of my inks had reached < 5% capacity, so I ordered replacements and will hope I can continue to print well into (and beyond!) the capacity of those inks.

  --Jay

The Worst Printing Day Ever

Welcome to another chapter of this increasingly irrelevant blog. My Epson Stylus Pro 7900 is now over eight years old, and is two generations behind the current models. The blog certainly won't be helping buyers of new printers, its original intent, but I plan to continue postings here whenever there's something I feel worth noting, and today's attempt at printing certainly warrants.

I've just spent four hours making six small prints, which required making eight prints, and has frustrated me to the point where I can barely type this. But I'm doing it now to get this behind me. Another day like this one will surely result in a YouTube video of what dynamiting a old 7900 looks like.

As is nearly always the case, this started as a simple client job, to print five 8 x 10 inch portraits on letter-size sheets of Epson luster paper. These are portraits of tribal council members (I live on the Flathead Indian Reservation in west-central Montana). I've made these for years, each time there's an election and new members are voted in. The client provides high-quality files for these, the print jobs are easy, and the results very nice. For the same client I would also print one slightly larger scenic on a nicer paper.

I last printed 17 days ago. When I set up today to print I got a perfect nozzle check (#1), so I made the first print. This was the lone black & white image of the bunch, and the banding in the print couldn't be missed. I ran another nozzle check (#2) and found the LLK pattern almost entirely missing and VM with large empty sections. I did a powerful cleaning of LLK/Y pair and a standard cleaning of C/VM. The reason for the different types of cleanings is based on experience with the machine, and knowing which channels have historically required (or not) powerful cleanings. Experience is a weird teacher, providing its lessons after you need to know them, and often being pretty fickle regardless. After those cleanings a nozzle check (#3) showed LLK at 100%, but LC entirely missing and most of VM likewise.

The next attempt was a powerful cleaning of the LC/VLM pair and a powerful cleaning of C/VM. After those cleanings the nozzle check (#4) showed LC still entirely missing but the rest of the channels at 100%. Since I hadn't in a very long time, I cycled the printer's power off and back on. I then printed an LC purge file, which prints a business-card-sized patch of pure LC ink. That patch looked perfect, so I printed a nozzle check (#5) to see if anything else had failed. The LC patch still had some small, scattered divots.

With the morning quickly drawing to a close I decided to print the small portraits, and got a good result.

The last print for this client was a scenic with a lot of empty blue/cyan sky, to be printed on an 11 x 17 inch sheet. I'd print this on Canson Infinity Baryta Photographique 310 (I love these concise paper names). The result was about as you'd expect, some banding in the sky. I printed another nozzle check (#6) and found the LC channel to be a bit worse than it was before I made the print. Really annoyed now, I took a break for lunch. I thought it might help if both the printer and I cooled off a bit.

Half an hour later I did a powerful cleaning of the LC/VLM pair (#7) and finally got a perfect pattern in the LC channel and all the rest. I made a test print on Epson luster (cheap); it looked very nice. So, thinking I was nearing the end of this ordeal I made the final print on the Canson paper. This started out as usual, but about 1/3 of the way into the print the 7900 stopped, seemed to think about things for half a minute, and then started again. Behaving exactly as I described in a posting here waaay back in September, 2017, the machine took another 20 minutes to finish the print. The good news is, the print is perfect. That bad news is, I've no idea what's going on, and I certainly wasted a lot of ink making these six simple prints.

I've powered down the printer and have zero interest in messing with it any more today.

  --Jay