Firmware HN111E8

I've been traveling lately, and am about to leave again for a week. Because of recent absences I just noticed on the U.S. Epson site there’s a firmware update, from 4 September. As usual, they offer no clue what it does or why one would install it (except that it’s there, of course). Well, they DO say “This update improves printer functionality.”, which is about the same as saying nothing. On the other hand, who wouldn’t want their functionality improved? I mean, we obviously have unimproved functionality today.

Sometimes Epson sites outside the U.S. will have more detail, but it can be hard to find. Searching for the exact firmware version (HN111E8) gets me one hit, the Epson US site, leaving me still in the dark about this update.

I've still got packing to do and optics to clean before leaving in the morning, so further investigation will have to wait until I return home next week.

  --Jay

PK to MK Swap

I rarely print on mat (matte) papers. But now and then I must, usually because a client job requires it. I had just such a job yesterday. I made 36 small prints on Epson Ultra Premium Presentation Paper, known long ago as Enhanced Matte. I keep this paper in my inventory of sheet and roll stock primarily to service three clients who, for their own reasons, insist upon it.

The MK in my printer is the only remaining ink cartridge that came with the printer, a 90 ml "starter" cartridge. It's well past its expiration date. Until yesterday, the last time I did a PK to MK swap was 23 March, 2014. I swapped back to PK on 4 April.

Yesterday I initiated the swap, and then performed a nozzle check. The 7900 does not automatically clean after this swap; it DOES auto-clean after swapping from MK to PK. The nozzle check showed about 50% of the MK pattern missing. I performed a standard cleaning of the MK/LK pair, followed by a nozzle check that showed a tiny nit missing from the MK channel. I ran the print job, finding no problems with any of the prints.

When finished, MK showed 4% remaining. Obviously I need to order an MK cartridge, which will be the standard 130 ml, which will likely last as long as I own the printer. Heck, the current 4% cartridge could very well serve for many more months, although at that low a level the printer will refuse to do any cleaning that includes the MK channel, hence the need to buy an MK.

As long as MK is loaded, I'll make a few prints of my own work, These are pieces that sell reasonably well, look best on mat paper (I'll use Epson's Hot Press Natural), and which I print several of on those rare occasions when I've got MK loaded. I'll swap back to PK with the next print job that needs it.

  --Jay

My Oddest Print Job—Wrap-up

My plan to post daily while completing the job described in my last posting went the way of best-laid plans, due in part to a visit by family that took us on several day-trips. But the job got done even if my planned postings didn't; what follows is a wrap-up of what turned out to be a completely uneventful printing project.

As mentioned in the earlier posting, the job consisted of making 40 unique small prints. I'd planned to print ten per day over four sequential days.

Day two: Nozzle check was perfect. In the print studio relative humidity (RH) was 63%, quite high for here, temperature 70°F. Ten prints made, all perfect.

Day three: Due to other commitments the printer sat idle yesterday. Today's nozzle check was perfect, RH 54%, temperature 68°. Ten prints made, all perfect.

Day four: Nozzle check was perfect, RH 55%, temperature 67°. Ten prints made, all perfect.

You might think this proves the "theory" that printing daily prevents clogs or other ink delivery problems. That theory is certainly bandied about the forums and is, I think, widely accepted. I find otherwise, however. There's plenty of evidence that regular printing, while it may make for a less-troublesome life with the x900 printers, does not eliminate clogs. As proof:

I got a job to print four small (26 inch/66cm wide) panoramas. I printed these the day after I completed the movie stills job (that is, the day after "Day four" above). Studio conditions: 56% RH, 68°, right in the middle of the conditions over the days of the movie stills job. The nozzle check showed the lower 1/4 of the LC channel missing. Since standard cleanings rarely solve these problems for me, I did a powerful cleaning of the LC/VLM pair. This improved the LC channel, but still left six small voids in the pattern. I then did a standard cleaning of the same pair, which cleared the problem. The panoramas printed fine.

Two days later, after a thorough inspection of the movie stills prints, I decided to reprint five of those, after making some exposure and color adjustments to the files in Photoshop. Once again the studio conditions were similar to the previous days. Nozzle check was perfect, as were the prints.

I think I've proved only what I've often said: printing with the x900 series Epsons is a completely random experience. You can't know before you start any job whether that job will be smooth, easy, and fast, or require spinning your wheels waiting for cleanings to clear ink delivery problems. One must accept this as a condition of membership in the Stylus Pro x900 club. To make up for that, the prints are outstanding. Each of us must decide whether that's a fair bargain.

  --Jay

My Oddest Print Job—Day 1

I received a call a few weeks ago from the writer and director of a movie that wrapped up shooting here in Montana several months ago. She'd been referred to me by another client (always a nice thing!). The job would be to print 40 stills from the film, one copy of each. A number of back-and-forth emails nailed down the details of paper choice, print size, delivery date, and, of course, pricing. The prints would be made on letter-size sheets of Epson Luster.

The director would be away for a couple of weeks, after which I was on a shooting trip for a week. Ordinarily I leave the printer in standby mode, but since I was gone I'd powered it down. While I was away the print files arrived. I've no idea what software was used to grab the stills from the film, but the files sent were .pct, the old Macintosh MacDraw format! I hadn't seen any of those in years. Each file was 8.3 megabytes. Photoshop CC refused to open these files. Several programs are available to convert .pct to other formats. The only application I already own that'll do the job is the Mac's Preview app; the only format it will convert picts to is PDF. Hardly my first choice, but I learned through experimentation that Photoshop opens these PDFs just fine, I can make the necessary adjustments as usual, and print.

I decided to print five to ten images per day, in part to spread the job out and exercise the 7900 over a period of several days, and in part to allow time for other work. I'll document each day's print run, mostly out of curiosity to see if similar runs in similar conditions produce similar results, or if the Epson will behave in its well-known random fashion, producing good nozzle checks one day, showing clogs another, along with any other weird behavior.

Speaking of conditions: we've had wetter than normal weather here, with nice rains in June and early July. That's kept the humidity somewhat higher than usual. However, there's been no rain for a week, and it's very warm (near 90°F most days), so things are drying out.

Day 1:

Last printing was twelve days ago. The 7900 had been powered down for the last six days. Upon powering up the nozzle check perfect. In the print studio relative humidity (RH) was 55%, temperature 70°F. Ten prints made, all perfect.

I'll post again when the second batch of prints is complete.

  --Jay

A "New" Mac OS X Driver 9.17?

According to Epson's U.S. site, the driver for OS X is shown as being updated 14 July, but the version is still shown as 9.17, which was released back in September, 2013. As usual, the site gives no information about the driver. It's not clear what, if anything, has changed to warrant a new upload date.

The downloaded file is named "epson16258.dmg".

  --Jay

Maintenance Cartridge Swap

Life with the 7900 continues as usual here. A part of "usual" is printing in batches, that is, I'll print a lot for a week or two, and then have a similar idle period where the machine sits in sleep mode, waiting for a call from my Mac Pro to wake up.

Another part of "usual" is the completely random nature of clogs, or as I prefer to call them, ink delivery issues. A month ago I ran a print job of a dozen or so prints, all in one afternoon. The printer then sat unused for three weeks. (We have a new toy, which has had us on the road perhaps a bit more than usual this spring.) When I started things up for the next print job, the nozzle check showed no issues, and the prints were fine. Three days later I ran the usual nozzle check prior to a print job, and found the VM pattern about half empty. A standard cleaning made it worse, taking out most of the rest of the VM channel. I then ran a "powerful" cleaning of the C/VM pair, which resolved the problem.

Two days later, another print job (a batch of 20 small prints, ten each of two images), and the VM channel was once again half AWOL. I find standard cleanings rarely clear a problem, so I did a powerful clean from the start, which took care of it. I don't know why VM has suddenly become cranky, but it's something I'll keep an eye on.

Prior to that cleaning my maintenance cartridge, the original that shipped with the printer, was at 1% capacity. The cleaning finished normally, and I started making prints. I printed all ten of the first image, and the first two of the second. The sheet for the next print loaded normally, but instead of printing, the 7900's LCD displayed a message indicating the maintenance cartridge must be replaced. The printer would not release the sheet; nothing I could do from the control panel, including the "e-platten" button, would drop the sheet.

Following the manual's instructions, which require powering down the printer, I replaced the cartridge. After powering back up I was able to release the paper sheet. I inserted it again, and printing continued where it had stopped. The remaining seven prints completed without issue.

The original, completely full maintenance cartridge. This weighed about three times what the new, empty cartridge weighed. I assume the cotton pads below the surface row are saturated; disassembly seemed dangerous, so I didn't attempt it.

I got two years and eight months use from the original maintenance cartridge. Time has little to do with the cartridge's life, of course. It lasted through the initial machine set-up, a great many channel-pair cleanings, and a number of PK-MK-PK swaps. Not bad.

  --Jay

Print Size Failure

Despite the "radio silence" on the blog lately, I've been making prints as usual, in quantities typical for my own work and for client print jobs, for most of this year. The 7900 has performed well, with minimum hassles. I've swapped from PK to MK and back to PK a couple of times. There's been the occasional need for cleaning head channel pairs, but nothing out of the ordinary for these machines. Until earlier this week.

I got a commission to make a small framed print of one of my snowy owl photos. The picture was made during the irruption of these birds we had here in northwestern Montana in early 2012. Looking through those archives during a recent file purge, I found the raw file and decided to do a little work on it. I liked the result and made a small print. It was still hanging on the display booth in my print studio when a visitor saw it and requested a slightly larger version. This would be framed in one of my "standard" frame sizes.

The set-up is described in a posting from February, 2013.

For this standard size I make two prints on a 13 x 19 inch sheet. The prints are 8.2 x 12.2 inches (about 21 x 31 cm), with about one inch between prints. I cut the sheet across the center, leaving half-inch margins. Margins at the top and bottom of the sheet are a little less than one inch, more than adequate for hinge mounting the prints. I mount these in mats with 8 x 12 inch openings (overmatted, so the mat covers just a bit of the ink). The resulting framed prints are economical to produce. They are clearly larger than the 8 x 10 pictures I often find in the local galleries, so I can sell them at somewhat higher prices. These are the smallest framed prints I make; they've sold quite well locally.

I set up to print the owl picture and another, as usual. When the files were sized and then optimized for printing in Photoshop I pasted them into a template I've used many times. This is a simple, empty Photoshop document with guides setup for the two prints. I drag the pictures so they snap to the guides, and then print as usual.

This has worked fine, but this time the images on the sheet were very slightly less 8 x 12 inches, which means they were too small for my mats. I've no idea why this happened. I did everything just as I have many times before, but to be sure I checked all settings, sizes, etc. It all looked right.

I've not had time to reproduce the process and make another print, but I will do that in an attempt to understand and fix the problem. To complete the commission I made a new, single print on a smaller sheet. This resulted in a print of exactly the expected dimensions. I've since made several others, all of which were fine.

  --Jay