It's Dead, Jim

Short version: after nearly a decade of service, my 7900 has reached the end of its life. Printing had become increasingly challenging in recent months; clearly some of the machine's components were no long operating up to par. But I was always able, with various levels of effort and wasted time and ink, to get good  nozzle check on all channels. That is no longer true. The longer story follows.

On 3 May I prepared a couple of image files for printing. One would be and black & white image on an 11 x 17 inch sheet of Canson IFA Baryta, using one of my last remain sheets of this discontinued paper. It's been a favorite for years. The second would be printed larger, on a 17 x 22 inch sheet of Epson Exhibition Fibre. I prep'd the files in the usual way, and then began what I knew would be an ordeal getting the printer ready. I'd last printed in mid-March, about three weeks earlier.

The first nozzle check print showed showed all channels at 100% except VM, which had a small missing nit in a corner, and minute "displacements" or deflections on the sides of the LK channel. I first noticed this displacement back in December, 2020, but I could see no obvious issue with the prints, so I'd come to ignore it on later nozzle checks. If I could get all nozzles firing in all channels, I'd continue with printing and get the usual excellent results. I ran a standard cleaning of the C/VM pair, did a second nozzle check, which showed problems with O, LC, LK, and LLK missing entirely.

Before I finished I'd run a total of 15 nozzle checks and print purge files (which prints a business-card-sized patch of a single ink) for several channels, over the space of three days, in total consuming about six hours and leaving me very cranky (don't ask my wife). I removed and cleaned the wiper (which needed it, as it turns out). I had to replace the maintenance (waste ink) tank and two ink cartridges; fortunately I had a new ones on-hand. When I'd start to feel like I might be a danger to myself or things around me, I'd shut off the lights and walk away, hence the three days. My normally low blood pressure probably wasn't for a lot of this period.

In the end I had a good nozzle check. Except for those LK displacements, as shown below, with the second scan enlarged for detail.

  

As mentioned, I'd been seeing this for a while, and based on past results didn't consider it a problem. As it turns out, I was quite wrong. Below is the first print I made, of the B&W image.

Those bands pointed out with the tiny red arrows are about .75 inches (2cm) from the printed edges, with the image being close to the edge of the paper. This sent me down the hours-long gopher hole of troubleshooting the problem.

A nozzle check looked fine (except for the LK displacements). I made a few partial test prints on junk paper and learned little, with one interesting exception: If I made a small print in the center of a larger sheet, such that the unprinted borders were several inches wide, the print looked fine. I've thought long and hard about this and have come up with no reasonable explanation, especially given the root cause of the problem (keep reading--I'm almost done).

Finally, I printed some purge files for the black and gray channels, PK, LK, and LLK. PK and LLK looked fine, but LK showed a wide band, as shown below.

 

It seemed pretty clear that the displacements in the LK channel had progressed to the point at which quality prints were no longer achievable. Looking back through older nozzle check prints I found the first hint of these displacements in late 2020. Comparing that to a current check it's clear the deflection has increased. My theory is that when tiny, whatever impact the displacements had on print quality was covered by later passes of the printhead laying down ink over the area where banding happened. Just a WAG, but I can't think of another explanation, and in the end it's irrelevant anyway.

Since I had nothing to loose (but a little time) I ran through the head alignment procedure one normally does when setting up a new machine (or when banding issues arise). This had no impact.

Just a sampling of head alignments, failed prints, and other tests.

So, that's it, the end of Life With A 7900. I'm not happy about it, but I'm feeling surprisingly serene, maybe even a little bit relieved. The machine produced first-rate prints, and a lot of them. It paid for itself many times over, although it often wasted more of my time than perhaps it was worth.

I have mixed feelings about Epson; the 7900 punished me for many of the prints I made. There were buggy drivers (which got fixed), a somewhat weird UI (which I got used to pretty quickly), more wasted ink than I care to recall. I understand some, perhaps most, of the hardware issues (clogging or other ink delivery problems) never happened with later generations of the machines: a friend with a P7000, which does not see frequent use, doesn't even bother to run nozzle checks; he just prints, and the results are excellent every time. With later models Epson clearly fixed many of the x900 series's issues, proving that nothing is so screwed up that it can't serve as a bad example.

I've got a very busy year ahead of me and I'm not feeling any immediate rush to replace the 7900 (although a couple of my regular clients have expressed a hope that I do). I have a lot of research to do on the path to choosing my next printer. As a former U.S. President and "reality" show host said all too often, "We'll see what happens." But one thing is certain: I won't be blogging about it!

If you've followed my increasingly infrequent (and irrelevant) postings here, thank you. I hope you found them useful, and failing that, maybe at least a little bit amusing.

  --Jay

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

Photo Tex

In my last posting (9 November 2019) I mentioned getting an interesting commission. This may involve printing on materials I've never used, which is part of what makes it interesting.

A client, for whom I've done some scanning and printing work, is looking for a photo to be installed or mounted on the doors of a large cabinet. He showed me a rough sketch of the cabinet, but the design is still in the conceptual stage. I don't have any dimensions, but the cabinet will hide a large flat-screen TV, so the print, which will span a pair of sliding doors, will be several feet wide. The client is an experienced carpenter and craftsman; he's made some beautiful furniture and built a number of custom high-end homes. I expect the cabinet to be nothing short of gorgeous, and I hope his idea of mounting a photo on its front doesn't impact that.

I could make a print (or prints) and then laminate it, or print on a plastic substrate, or print on metal; these last two would be farmed out, not printed on my 7900. I'd also thought about printing on Photo Tex®, a material I'd never used, nor even seen up close. I've sold images to clients who printed them on Photo Tex and then applied the material to mural walls or outdoor signage, but I've not seen the final results. Those clients claimed to be happy with the finished product.

I ordered a sample roll of Photo Tex from the maker. This got me a 42-inch (107 cm) wide roll ten feet (3 m) long, which of course is too large for the 24-inch 7900. This is a lot of material for $30 USD, plenty for making test prints with different profiles. It's a much better "deal" than the Photo Tex sample packs sold by my usual paper vendors.

The sample arrived quickly. I cut letter-size sheets from the roll, downloaded the canned profiles from Photo Tex. They offer two, one each for MK and PK. I had PK loaded in the printer so I printed my usual profile test page with the PK profile. It looked pretty bad, but I set it aside to view after 24 hours. I then swapped the black inks to MK and printed the same test image with the MK profile. A little better, but not much.

A day later I still found both test images to be wholly unacceptable. They are little better than a poorly made image printed on plain bond paper, or the lowest-gamut of mat papers. Washed out low contrast, faded-looking color, weak blacks.

Next I made a custom profile, something I don't often do in part because I so rarely need to, and in part because what I have for making profiles isn't very good. I use LaserSoft's Silverfast scanning software with both my Nikon V-ED 35mm film scanner and my Epson V850 Pro flatbed. Both are profiled with LaserSoft's "Advanced" targets. A print profile software package is available. The software is used to make a print with several hundred sample patches. After an adequate drying period the patch print is scanned on the flatbed, and the software generates a printer profile. My results have been quite variable and never really very good. In this case my print made with MK ink and the LaserSoft-generated profile was much worse than the prints made with Photo Tex's canned profiles.

Photo Tex is quite popular and I'm sure has its place. With the right printer and profile it may be possible to get a decent/accurate print on Photo Tex material. With what I have, and the kinds of images my client is likely to want, it's not.

Perhaps I expected too much. But it was an interesting experiment.

  --Jay

It's Been How Long??

I can't believe my last post here was 11 months ago. Those months have not been uneventful, and some of the events I could easily have done without. But more to the point of this poorly maintained blog:

My 7900 is now eight years old. Among the owners I've known of these things, that makes it the oldest still-functioning unit. And that is, I suppose, the reason my last posting was so long ago; there's been nothing to report. The machine is still running, still making gorgeous prints, and still only moderately painful to start up for each print job. Nothing has changed. Some days I can spend 40 minutes or more getting a good nozzle check print. Other days things "just work" such that I wake the printer, run a nozzle check, it's perfect, and I print. I love those days!

I've recently been commissioned to make some prints for a rather odd installation. There's no deadline (yet), and I'll need to do some experimentation with materials to determine what will both "work" and be acceptable to the client. More to come, and I promise the next posting will be sooner, rather than later!

  --Jay

LLK Problem Resolved?

My last two postings here mentioned the problem I've had with the LLK ink channel. To summarize, for several months, going back to the middle of summer (2018), each time I've awakened the 7900 and run a nozzle check the LLK channel's pattern has been partly to completely missing. Nearly every time a simple "standard" cleaning of the Y/LLK pair has cleared the problem and I've been able to print with the usual excellent results. I worried that this might be indicating my printer was nearing the end of its life, now that it's more than seven years old.

Several weeks ago I did an experiment that seemed to solve the problem. I've waited this long to report here so I'd have time to complete a number of print jobs and gain more confidence that the problem really is fixed. I now believe it is.

As mentioned in my last posting, I'd replaced the LLK ink cartridge, which had about 20% of its ink remaining, with a new one; that didn't help. A while back I stumbled across Marrutt USA's Web site and found a section about using "purge files" to clear stubborn clogs (which may or may not really be nozzle clogs). Each purge file is a jpeg of a single color patch corresponding to one of the printer's color channels. I downloaded their files for the 7900, but didn't have an immediate use for them. I revisited their site and found they'd changed the files a bit, making the color patch a bit larger, so I once again grabbed the files.

I then set up by waking the printer and sending the LLK purge file. I did not print a nozzle check prior to this. The file puts a LLK patch in the middle of a sheet of paper (I used plain bond paper). I then ran a nozzle check and it was perfect.

In the weeks since then I've printed a number of jobs both for clients and of my own work. Various papers, various print sizes. As usual prior to each job I've run a nozzle check, and each time LLK has been perfect. There have sometimes been little nits missing from other channels, requiring a cleaning to include that channel. Pretty normal behavior. But LLK has been perfect every time. I can probably remove the question mark from this posting's title!

You can get these files here, and I'm grateful to Marrutt USA for making these available.

  --Jay

It DIdn't Help

The new LLK cartridge I ordered (see the previous posting) arrived and has been installed. I ran a nozzle check and got the expected result, most of the LLK channel missing. I then did the usual standard cleaning of the LLK/Y pair, which as usual fixed the problem. I had one small print to make, did, and it looked great, also as usual.

A week later (yesterday), having four small prints to make, I started up and ran a nozzle check, found LLK mostly absent, cleaned LLK/Y and then got a perfect nozzle check print.

Clearly the new LLK didn't resolve the issue, leading to the obvious conclusion that something in the cartridge-to-nozzles path for that channel is failing. As long as I can get a good nozzle check I'll continue, expecting LLK to need a cleaning any time I want to print. I'll let you know if (when) things change.

  --Jay

Seven Years....

My 7900 is seven years old, as of a couple of days ago. This wouldn't be interesting except it seems seven years is approaching the typical end-of-life for these things. Of the people I know who have had x900 and x980 printers, none has maintained a working machine very much beyond its seventh birthday. The sample size is small, but beyond those few reports, there's ample evidence on various forums that seven years is a pretty good life for these models.

My printer has been inactive lately. My "print studio," the room in which the printer lives and where I do my matting and framing, suffered a water leak back in July, an event about which I wrote for the articles section of my Web site. The article includes a few photos of the damage. Here it is 1 November, and the final part of the restoration, the painting of the repaired ceiling, is just now being completed. I hope to get the last coat of paint on tomorrow.

The printer has been powered down and stored in a clean, dry space while the sheetrock work, with it's "mudding," sanding, and spraying of texture were completed. This weekend I expect to return the 7900 to its place, along with all the other "stuff" that belongs in that room.

I've had a recurring problem with the machine most of the summer: every time I start it and run a nozzle check, more than half, sometimes all, of LLK is missing. Every time but one a standard cleaning of the Y/LLK pair cleared the problem and I then printed as usual. Once when that didn't work, a "powerful" cleaning did. I should mention that at last check LLK was at around 20% capacity, so it's not an issue of low capacity (which I've seen, too).

This sort of thing has happened with other channels, and a new ink cartridge solved the problem. To that end I've ordered a new LLK, which will be here before I'm ready for it. That may resolve the issue. If not, it could be the capping station, or any of the many components between the ink cartridge and the head.

I need to make a couple of prints, which I should be able to do early next week. I'll post here with the results of the new LLK.

  --Jay

The Best Packing Ever

Continuing the story I started on 22 June: For the MAM printing job I started by printing the largest of the images, on a 24-inch roll of EEF. At a final size of 37 inches high X 24 inches wide (94 x 61 cm) the print required careful handling until I could get it packaged for delivery.

Next I made six prints on 11 x 17 inch sheets. That consumed the last of the EEF I had in appropriate sizes, putting the job on hold until I received the 24 x 30 inch sheets I'd ordered a few days earlier.

Most of my orders for paper and ink over the years have been with IT Supplies. They have the papers I prefer, the ink the 7900 uses, and much more. When I compare prices they are always competitive, and often the lowest. Shipping is free for orders over $149 (it had been $99 for a long time, but recently increased when they 'merged' with Atlex, with whom they've shared an address for years). It's pretty hard to place an order for less than that amount, which, at least in my case, means free shipping all the time.

The two boxes of 25 sheets would be large, heavy, and prone to shipping damage. Here in rural Montana, it's rare that a package arrives via UPS or FedEx, the main shippers, in good condition. Without exception the boxes arrive filthy, as if there's some kind of contest to see how cruddy they can make a package. And they often are smashed, with crunched corners, punctures and tears, and broken tape seals. If the corner of a paper box is crunched, you can be sure every single sheet in that box will have damaged corners. I've had to return too many packages to any number of suppliers because of this; the contents simply weren't packaged to accommodate whatever abuse the shipper might inflict. While the vendor has little control over that, I can fault them for embarrassingly bad packaging. The typical practice seems to be to fold and tape the bottom of the box, toss in the product, and then stuff bubble wrap, or a wad of crumpled craft paper, or a few inflated air pillows on top of the product, and then seal the box. This puts the product in direct contact with the bottom and at least one edge of the carton, with protective cushioning only on top at perhaps another edge.

With all of that in mind, I asked IT Supplies (via their ordering Web site) to please, please package the order carefully. I needed the paper right away; there'd be no time to return a damaged shipment and wait for a replacement (which may well be as damaged as the original).

A few days later the delivery arrived in an enormous 39 pound (18 kg) box. Inside I found enough crumpled craft paper to wrap the Golden Gate Bridge, miles of bubble-wrap, and two large boxes of EEF. All of this centered in a double-walled cardboard carton. A note on the packing slip, intended I'm sure for the warehouse crew who packaged the thing, simply said, "Please double-box."

Pictured above is the outer carton against the back of my 2010 Toyota RAV4, just to give you an idea of the scale. The dotted outline is my estimation of the size of the Epson boxes inside the carton. Those boxes looked perfect. IT Supplies did a great job, no doubt burning through much of the profit on this sale just to make sure it arrived here in good condition.  Nicely done, and thank you.

Interestingly, Epson's normally robust product boxes didn't fare so well. The cardboard bumpers that center the pack of paper inside the box were completely smashed, allowing the paper (which is inside a heavy plastic bag) to slide around. The condition of both boxes were identical. They looked perfect on the outside. It's not impossible that this damage happened before my boxes were packaged into the large outer carton, which contained so much packaging that the product should have withstood the worst UPS could do. Whatever the case, the paper was undamaged.

I've now completed the MAM job

(Other than being a long-time happy customer of IT Supplies, I've no affiliation with them, and did not benefit from this posting. I just wanted to pass on a story of what was, in my opinion, impressive customer service.)

  --Jay

Here's What 46 Prints Look Like

For several weeks I've been working on a large job for the Missoula Art Museum (MAM). This is a Big Deal for me, and perhaps my most "prestigious" client so far. While certainly not the Art Institute of Chicago or New York's MOMA, the MAM is quite nice, with one very large gallery, several smaller ones, library and media rooms, and an outstanding curatorial staff that's brought in some spectacular exhibits over the years. In 2017 they added, in cooperation with the City of Missoula, an impressive outdoor art "park" adjacent to the museum.

This job has been in the works for a year, and finally, in May, I received 46 files. The images, made by a Salish Kootenai College photography student, capture and narrate a story of modern Tribal (American Indian) life on and around Montana reservations. Some of the photos are beautiful, some are gritty, one or two are just disturbing. But my job is to make prints, so I'll withhold my opinions and get back to my story.

Part one of the job was to make small proof prints of the entire lot. I used letter-size sheets of Epson luster, in part because it's cheap, and also because luster has a tough, durable surface and would tolerate the handing I expected the prints to receive. They'd be spread out on a large table; the photographer, his teacher, and the museum's senior curator would rearrange, stack, sort, and otherwise cull the lot down to something appropriate to the narration, to fit within the available space for the exhibit, and to stay with their budget for printing and framing.

Everything about the job was routine. There is some time pressure, so I printed over four days. During that time the photographer and his teacher visited here to look at paper choices for the final prints, and I also had some other small client jobs to complete. The printer behaved as I've come to expect: each day's start-up and nozzle-check print revealed some missing nozzles (this aging 7900 is never 100% clean anymore at start-up), some cleaning was done (which, as always, required swapping out some ink cartridges for fuller ones, and usually required multiple channel-pair cleanings as I'd chase missing nozzles around the channels), and then I'd print the day's batch. One small problem: making room for 46 prints! I prefer to let them dry at least 24 hours before stacking them, so I often had a couple of day's prints spread out.

For the picture below, after all were printed, I spread them out on my main studio bench and a couple of temporary tables.

The group met at the college, culled the images, and then called me in to talk about final print sizes. With that sorted, I placed an order for the paper (more on that in another posting), and then did other work while burning off the lead time.

I'll follow-up with another posting or two about making the larger prints.

  --Jay

Sign Shop

I've avoided politics in my postings here. I never expected life with a 7900 would have anything to do with that, and it doesn't. But life in the U.S. (and around the world to various degrees) has been, uh, interesting these last 429 days. My wife (Pat) and I are quite liberal in our attitudes and approach to life in general; living in Montana, overall a very conservative state, has sometimes been frustrating. We didn't come here to be annoyed by our Republican neighbors and generally angry all the time, so we aren't, in spite of news reporting that makes it seem most of this country is.

Back in January Pat asked me to make some signs for a local (Kalispell, about 60 miles/97 km north of home) version of a nation-wide 'Women's March.' I'd made signs for a climate march we attended in Missoula in March, 2017. I printed those on Epson Luster (24 inch roll) and attached the prints to sheets of quarter-inch foam core. This worked out well, and the signs looked great for minimal cost. I thought they were much nicer than hand-lettered signs on poster-board, the kind of things commonly seen at these sorts of events.

Signs I printed for a local version of the nation-wide Women's March

And just like that I became a sign shop. Since that climate march a year ago I've made signs for the Women's March mentioned above, and last week made another pair for the 'March For Our Lives' held in cities around the world yesterday.

The message may be serious, but the signs are fun to make. Pat and I will kick around ideas, or she'll make up or find a slogan she likes. I'll dig around the Web looking for clip-art or other appropriate images I can legally use. I often modify them, changing colors, filling in areas, vignetting the image, etc. to best suit my design and the slogan of the sign. Often the images are small jpegs, which must be enlarged by orders of magnitude to accommodate my design. You'd expect these to look terrible, but the results are often surprisingly good.

Printing these signs is done the same as any other job. I size the image as needed for the sign, complete the design work, set up the printer with a 24-inch roll of luster, and then print. The prints are then cut to fit the foam core, which has been stapled to the yardstick handles. A spray adhesive is used to attach the print to the foam core.

 
The signs above, for yesterday's March For Our Lives, were made in the same way. I printed the nozzle check as usual, and then printed the larger sign, which looks as expected. About a half hour later I printed the smaller sign. I could see as soon as that print started to emerge from the printer that the color in the cow manure photo was way off. As this is a non-critical application I let the print finish. I then did another nozzle check and found the entire LK pattern had gone missing. It's not common, but also not unheard of for a channel to disappear in the middle of a print job; this was one of those cases.

When I got the 7900, and its Canon predecessor, I never imagined I'd print things like this. I don't plan to do it for anyone other than Pat. Making these things provides another opportunity to run the printer during slow periods.

  --Jay

Paper Loading Error

Not long ago I finished a print job that took me near the end of a 24-inch roll of Epson Luster paper. I removed the roll and found, after cutting away the usual end-of-roll scrap (the adhesive patch that pretends to attach the paper to the core), that I had exactly 17 inches of usable paper. I placed that under my heavy cutting mat to help flatten the curl. Nothing unusual or interesting about any of that.

A few days later I got a job to make two black and white prints on 11 x 17 inch sheets; the job, and the images perfect for that little bit of luster I'd saved. The sheet had flattened pretty well. Using my cutting rail and an Xacto knife I cut it into two sheets of the appropriate size, set up the print job, and fed the first sheet. I could hear the feed rollers slipping, and the sheet didn't feed into the printer as they normally do. This appeared on the 7900's LCD:

I removed the sheet, cleared the error, and tried again with the same result. I've fed hundreds of sheets into the machine and I don't recall ever seeing this before. It's been rare, but I know I've fed sheets I've cut, either from larger stock or from roll paper, and had no troubles.

I removed the sheet and because the cut edges were slightly raised I used a burnishing tool to smooth them. When done all edges felt the same; no raised edge. But feeding the sheet I got the same slipping feed rollers and the same error.

If I wanted to use these sheets I didn't have many options left. I tried forcing the paper when I heard the slipping rollers. That didn't help, but had it worked I suspect the sheet would have been misaligned anyway. Eventually, after several retries, the rollers grabbed the paper, fed it normally, and I got a perfectly centered print.

I had exactly the same experience when making the second print, but at least I knew the sheet would eventually feed. Since then I've made a number of prints on boxed sheets of CIFA Baryta; those fed perfectly. I still don't know why my cut sheets, after smoothing the cut edges, provided such a challenge.

  --Jay

Minimum Print Size

I'm in the middle of a painting repro job. The client has provided two "full sheet" size watercolors, each slightly larger than 30 inches high x 22 inches wide (76.2 x 55.9 cm). The watercolor paper has "deckled" edges, so I'll crop to 30 x 22 and my prints will have clean edges. I've completed the photography, and the color matching and other Photoshop work. I've printed some test strips, which is where this story gets interesting.

First, of course, I had to prepare the printer. Due to travel and some local photography work I'd not used the 7900 for 32 days, a long (for my machine) idle period. Seven channels showed problems on a nozzle check print. I'm fairly sure that's the worst I've ever seen. Two of those channels had only small nits missing, but the remaining five were at least 50% blank. I spent about two hours doing pair cleanings (all of them "powerful") and swapping low-quantity ink cartridges for fuller ones, but finally I had the danged thing cleaned up and ready for use. Just the usual hassle, magnified.

I planned to make a full-width test strip, but I needed only a few inches of the image's height, so I made a custom paper size of 4.5 inches (11.4 cm) high on the 24-inch roll. I set up in the usual way to make that print. Here's a screen shot of the Photoshop print dialog box (double-click to enlarge):

This clearly shows the dimensions, the image to be printed, and its location on the paper. I clicked the Print button, and then the printer produced and cut a perfectly blank 5 inch high piece of paper. This sort of thing has happened before, and it's always a WTF? moment. If you dig around in past postings here you'll find at least a couple of similar occurrences. I've never been satisfied I've found the cause, but in each case I did eventually complete the print job.

This time I decided to dig in to see if I could find any reports of similar problems and perhaps a solution. These kinds of Web searches often turn up plenty of interesting, but tangential pages. That was true of this one, too, but I got no answers to the original question.

"If all else fails, read the instructions" is never bad advice; I did that, and found nothing of use in the U.S. manual (PDFs of the manuals are available via the Web). In the European version of that manual I found this:

"Depending on the paper type, the minimum length of paper you can cut is set from 60 to 127 mm. You can not change it."

That's also less than helpful, but it set me to thinking differently about the problem. I remade my test strip so the print area would be slightly over 8 (20.3 cm) inches high. In setting up the print I made a custom paper size of 9.5 inches (24 cm) on the 24-inch roll, with the rest of the set-up identical to the first (failed) print. This printed perfectly.

That may indicate there is a minimum print size, or at least, a minimum paper size, below which the 7900 will pretend to, but not really print, generating only a blank piece of paper. There's nothing conclusive here because nothing ever is with these machines, and because I changed too many variables (both print and paper size) when doing the experiment. I don't have time to pursue this now, but perhaps next time I need to make similar test strips I'll play with only one variable at a time. If I do, and if I learn anything useful, I'll post it here. Right now I need to get on with making 12 prints for the client.

  --Jay

The Slowest Prints Ever

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

Ink Cartridge Error

I've spent much of late spring and early summer preparing for the three-day outdoor "Arts in the Park" show organized by the Hockaday Museum of Art, in Kalispell, Montana. The show would run July 15, 16, and 17. I'd not exhibited in an outdoor show since 2014. I have a lot of work that's new since then; to prepare I needed to make a number of prints in an array of sizes. This included prints for frames, and also for the 'matted and bagged' pictures that are popular with summer visitors.

It's a juried show and competition is tough, so I was quite happy back in May to receive the acceptance email. That's when the work started.

I determined early on which images I'd display, and the sizes of prints needed. The 7900 performed very well. As is often the case when printing daily or nearly so, I experienced very few nozzle issues. Run these things a lot in the conditions they prefer, and they'll behave nicely.

We did well at the show, and while there I was talked into exhibiting in another show, this one running two days, at the end of the month. To prepare for that I need only print replacements for some of the pictures sold at the Hockaday show, plus a couple more that weren't shown there. I made the first of these prints two days ago, and once again had no problems with the printer. I wasn't so lucky yesterday.

When setting up to print, a nozzle check showed some missing nozzles in PK. This is paired with LK, and my LK was at 1%, so I swapped in a new LK and ran a cleaning cycle on that pair. When I tried to print a nozzle check after the cleaning, the printer's LCD showed this:

VLM is installed, and should have about 20% remaining.

A few days prior to this I'd noted the ink levels in each cartridge, and VLM should have had something over 20% remaining. Nothing I'd done, as described above, touched the VLM cartridge. I opened the right cartridge door, removed the VLM, gave it a shake, reinstalled, and after the inks pressurized checked the LCD. It showed the normal VLM, so I tried again to print a nozzle check. This failed to print and the LCD again showed the "NO CARTRIDGE" message for VLM.

Again I removed the cartridge, and this time I lightly rubbed an ArtGum (tm) eraser on the cart's chip contacts. I reinstalled the cartridge, and have been printing without issue since.

Just for fun I had a "chat" with an Epson support person via their Web site. He suggested this: "Ok, please try pressing the Pause button like 4 or 5 times some what fast then see if the printer goes to a ready state." Of course, by then I'd already used the eraser and the printer was working, so I don't know if following his instructions would have made a difference. In the end he suggested I call their "Professional Printer" support line because they may want to replace the VLM cartridge.

I made the call, explained everything from the start, and was told to buy a new VLM, install it, and see if the problem returns. If it does, it indicates a sensor fault in the printer. If it does not, it points to a failed ink cartridge, which Epson will replace.

Since I need to do a bit more printing for the next show I did order a VLM, which will be here tomorrow. In the meantime I've made more prints and experienced no problems.

  --Jay

A Long Overdue Update; Roll Printing Failure

In July, 2016, I posted here about a problem I had printing multiple images across the width of a roll. My computer (Macintosh) and OS (10.11.6, "El Capitan") have not changed, although I have installed several security and other updates from Apple. Epson's OS X driver and the 7900's firmware have received no updates, but both are the current versions. However, the problem occurred with Photoshop CC 2015.5. I've got the now-current version 2017.1.0, and I can report success printing 2-up across a 24-inch roll.

Yesterday I wrapped up a job making 48 prints, each 10 inches by 15 inches (25.4 x 38.1 cm). I printed these 2-across, with the printer cutting the paper after each pair of images. This resulted in a sheet 24 inches wide by a little over 17 inches high. I then cut each into 11 x 17 inch sheets with the picture centered (I use a Dahle 444 cutter, which I'd describe as "the right tool for the job").

When setting up to print, I sized and optimized each image file, and then pasted a pair into a new Photoshop document 24 inches wide by 17 inches high. I put guides in the appropriate places, pasted each of the two images into a new layer, cropped to the edges of the image pair, and then printed on a custom paper size (17 inches on 24-inch roll, centered, with standard margins).

The 7900 printing a client photo 2-across on 24-inch roll paper

This worked exactly as I expected. No errors, no truncated prints. Whatever was happening back in July seems to be resolved. I can't know with certainty since I never did further testing with the older version of Photoshop, but it seems a fix was made in some version after 2015.5.

In any case, I'm happy, and the client's happy.

  --Jay

Exercising the Printhead During Slow Periods

Problem: Nozzle clogs.

Solution: Greeting cards.

For an explanation, see the February, 2017 article on my Web site.

  --Jay

39 Days

I've not made a print in some time. I've done little photographing lately, and it's a slow time for client jobs. Here is western Montana we're in the middle of what is, so far, the third-coldest winter on record (more about our recent weather, and some photos, in my latest article). We've also had lots of snow, on par, I think, with the snowiest winter I've seen in my fourteen winters here. That's not a complaint, as I love the snow and getting outside in winter. It's just that I've not been doing much of that this year.

Two days ago I wanted to make a couple of small prints. I had MK loaded from the last client job I'd done back in December. Because the 7900 had been idle for some time, I knew it would punish me, as they do, for that lack of use. And it did: the first nozzle check showed about half of LLK missing, and a couple of blank spots in VLM. The LLK cartridge is fairly new, while VLM has been at 1% for a long time; I temporarily installed a new VLM. Rather than try to clear these I did a MK to PK swap, which does an auto-clean. When the swap finished I made another nozzle check print. This showed ALL of LLK missing, a large section of VLM missing, and a couple of blank nits in PK.

I then performed a powerful cleaning of the Y/LLK pair. With Y at 2%, I replaced that, temporarily, with a new Y cartridge.  When the cleaning finished LLK was perfect, but PK and VLM had not improved.

Finally, I did a powerful cleaning of the C/VLM pair. After that cleaning there was a long delay, and then the printer did an auto-clean (this is displayed on the LCD). When finished, a nozzle check showed a tiny gap in LC (which had been perfect before), and several small gaps in VLM, in different locations than the larger blank area after the previous cleaning.

I don't know how much ink all of this consumed, but the waste cartridge went from 20% after the first nozzle check, to 14% after the last one.

At this point I just wanted to get on with the job, stop wasting time and ink. I set up to make my prints, which would be two copies of the same photo, on letter-size sheets. I sent the job, and the printer did its "calibration thing", in which is moves the head verrrrry slooooowly the full length of the carriage, and back, a number of times. I didn't count, but I'd guess it made half a dozen passes. Then the LCD flashed "Auto Nozzle-Check" for half a second, and finally it printed. The print, and the second copy, looked fine.

I write the date, the relative humidity, and the room temperature on every nozzle check print. Looking at the last one I did back in December, I found it had been 39 days since I'd last printed. That is, by far, the longest idle period my 7900 has ever had in the five-plus years I've owned it. Also, because it's been so cold this winter, the room heat is running more than has been typical in recent winters. As a result, humidity in the print studio has been quite low, typically under 35%.

Today I set up to make two more small prints, same format as before, different photos. The first nozzle check, and the two prints, are perfect. Two days ago, getting this job done took most of an hour. Today it took no more than ten minutes.

  --Jay

Odd PK to MK Swap Behavior

The purpose of this blog is to document weird, unusual, or comment-worthy happenings with my 7900. This fills all of those categories:

I've been very busy with client print work over the last two months, with a couple of breaks for travel. I've just wrapped up a printing job for a long-time client. I made two large (20 x 30 inches) prints on an old roll of the "original" Ilford GGFS. The rest of the job consisted of 24 small prints (six copies each of four different images) on Epson Enhanced Matte sheets. This required switching from PK to MK.

I don't often print on matte papers, but over the five years (!) I've owned the 7900, I'd guess I've done the Epson Ink Shuffle several dozen times. I should know what to expect.

MK showed 62%, PK showed 61%, LK 51%, and LLK 1%. I initiated the swap as usual. After ten to fifteen seconds the printer stopped making the usual noises and required a replacement ink. Assuming the offending cartridge was the LLK (recall that the printer doesn't tell you which of your low inks it's complaining about), I replaced that with a new cartridge. The machine thought about this for a few seconds and then raised the same "not enough ink to continue" message. I then swapped all remaining low inks just to get on with the job. Those were Y at 9%, and VLM at 1%. The printer then displayed "Cleaning".

That's new; I don't think I've ever experienced a cleaning prior to the ink swap. The printer did the usual thing, moving the head around, making the expected "I'm wasting ink" sounds, but this went on, and on, and on. I didn't time it, since I'd no reason to expect this behavior, but it seemed to take three to four times longer than the normal "standard cleaning" I might initiate manually to clear a clog. When it finally completed, the LCD displayed the progress bar normally shown for ink swaps. It seemed all was well.

But wait, there's more: when the swap completed, the machine once again displayed "Cleaning" on the LCD. And once again this took a very long time. When this finished the machine appeared to be ready to print. The waste tank showed a drop in free space from 27% to 21%. As you know if you've read my increasingly infrequent postings here, I keep pretty good records of my 7900's numbers. I looked back to the last time I did a PK to MK swap, and found the waste tank had dropped only 3%, and looking at older records confirmed this is typical. I also found that every ink took a larger than expected hit during those cleanings, clearly showing the machine pumped ink through all channels, not just the blacks.

It's normal for the machine to clean after an ink swap, but not before. The after-swap cleaning has always seemed typical in terms of time required. I've no idea why it behaved differently this time. Once the machine made itself ready, the printing went perfectly. I made 18 of the 24 prints. One day later I printed the last six. Most likely my next print job will require PK; I'll swap back to that when the need arises, and report here if it seems warranted.

  --Jay