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
