Epson time between prints

What is the longest time you've had between using your inkjet printer? By that, I mean generally it seems to be OK if you only print once a week, but has any one left the printer turned off a month or two, and got it working again without too much trouble?

Best wishes,

Ray

Ray, Hi!

Which printer. Anyway, it also depends on where you live and the humidity. In dry climates it is a real issue.

Asher

Hi Asher,

its an r1800, last used mid-July. I may fire it up in the next day or so. I have a cis, so I can see the ink levels drop as it attempts to clean its nozzles. I used to use it at least once a week, but for snaps a colour laser is good enough, quicker, cheaper, and in some ways better.

Best wishes,

Ray

I have an Epson 2200 in a pretty uniformly medium-dampness climate, and have frequently left it off for several weeks to to month. When firing it up again, I've rarely had any problems of any sort, not even nozzle clogging. From talking with other folks, however, clogging seems highly dependent on humidity, with very dry climates having more clogging problems.

Lisa

Ray, I hate to be negative but a colleague left his r1800 off for 3 weeks and he had a major problem with the gloss black print head using cis. He resulted to stripping the head out and soaking it in cleaning fluid.
I'd fire it up at least once a week and run a test print through it for peace of mind.

It clearly depends on the printer in question and where you live. I live in Silicon Valley, CA and the RH here hovers around 60 percent most of the year. I have left my 9600 printer sitting unused for two months and only needed the basic nozzle clean before printing. My 7800 has not set that long without use, but I did have about a four week period of no printing with it and had no problems at all.

Cheers,

My R1800 annoys me with nozzle clogging, mainly because I will go for three or more weeks at a time between prints. When I start it up, I do a nozzle check (uses very little ink for that) and tend to find at least one or more colors are clogged. Then starts the clean/check cycle, which uses a fair amount of ink. So much so, that typically, even though there may be 5% or more ink left in a particular cartridge, the machine refuses to do another cleaning cycle, unless I replace the cartridge (grr).

A couple of weeks ago, I ended up replacing two or three almost-empty cartridges before finally getting a clean bill of health. All the cartridges I replaced were listed as having enough ink left in them to do at least a half-dozen or more pages of 'similar content' according to the epson print status, but I was forced to replace them to get the machine to do any cleaning cycles.

At 12 bucks a pop for the tiny cartridges, this has been the most annoying aspect of using the R1800.

Dave,

There is a utility at http://www.ssclg.com/epsone.shtml (ssci utility - free download) it lets you reset the printer in different ways, reset chips (via simple interface) and more importantly reset the waste ink tank/sponge. It may let you get the last drop out of your cartridges. It also does a more frugal cleaning cycle for some printers. It invalidates guarantees of course, but I never have worried about that, being too much of a hassle to claim in most cases. Just because I use this software does not mean you need to use it, but it may be of use. The silly prices for the ink is why I bought a cis system.

It is my intention to fire up my 1800 in the next few days, so it will either be 'epson are wonderful' or 'why the **** can't printer manufacturer's ....' sort of reply from me.

Best wishes,

Ray

I'd be curious to find out what you experience with your R1800, Ray. Thanks.

I'd be intereseted in the utulity mainly to cure the 'you must switch inks to a full one' when I'm trying to do a cleaning cycle when the Epson-provided utility clearly shows a significant amount of ink left in the cartridge.

Thanks!

Everything comes to he who waits.....

As mentioned above, I have an epson r1800 ink jet printer, and it was powered down on July 20th. On Sunday evening, 26th November, I thought it may be time to get it going again, a period of no use of about 20 weeks, I guess.

So, what to do? Turn it on, of course. It does its usual shuffle, put in a sheet of paper, print nozzle check, nothing. Out of all those little nozzles, not one fired. A couple of ink clean cycles - one of the blacks decides to play, firing on about 60% of its jets.

I remember someone saying about using 'Windex' on the foam pads before shutting the printer down, - I didn't do that, back in July. Googling for r1800, repair, and so on got me to the 'inkrepublic' web site and others, which went into detail about squirting cleaning fluids down the nozzles, etc. Now, I have a continuous ink system from 'Fotospeed' in the UK, running their pigment inks, so I have a bit more control over the ink flow situation, compared to cartridges. I can raise the external tanks to increase the ink pressure, I can shut off an individual ink line, if that one is flowing OK, saving ink on continuous cleaning cycles, and I can see the ink going through the tubes in a cleaning cycle (if there are air bubbles in it, like now).

Anyway, as I was not bothered about the time taken to get the printer working, and as I didn't want to be messing with the ink, I simply dribbled some clear window cleaning fluid (being in UK, we don't use 'Windex', I used some cheap stuff called 'W5', which looked like a weak solution of washing up detergent and water) onto the foam pads and turned the machine off, leaving it overnight. The next day, after a few cleaning cycles I had yellow, magenta, cyan and the two blacks running pretty good, but not a squirt from the red, blue or gloss optimiser. More soaking of the foam pads, power off for a few hours, clean cycle a couple of times and nozzle check, same result. Trying to print large blocks of the faulty colours gave a striped effect, and it was not possible, after the icc profiling, etc. to hit the exact cartidge colour. However, last night, the nozzle check showed some spots (about 3%) of the red and blue heads firing. I guess that was after a half a dozen of my soak, wait, clean, test cycles. Today, after another long overnight soak, all jets firing.

My conclusion is that if the heads get blocked, then it can be simple to unblock them, if you are patient. It can be done more quickly, by using special fluids, some dismantling, etc. but in this case, it was not required. Of course, this was a blockage caused by the ink pigment carrier evapourating, not by paper debris, or dust, whatever. I read, that if you use pigment cartridges, then the dye based cartridges are a good substitute for cleaning fluids, but I think that maybe 'Windex' is cheaper.

Best wishes,

Ray

Ray West said:

My conclusion is that if the heads get blocked, then it can be simple to unblock them, if you are patient. It can be done more quickly, by using special fluids, some dismantling, etc. but in this case, it was not required. Of course, this was a blockage caused by the ink pigment carrier evapourating, not by paper debris, or dust, whatever. I read, that if you use pigment cartridges, then the dye based cartridges are a good substitute for cleaning fluids, but I think that maybe 'Windex' is cheaper.

Best wishes,

Ray

Click to expand...

Hi Ray,

A great report! I thought you'd have lifted the inmk reservoirs!

Do you now recommend using a moistened sponge with windex on the heads when the printer is rested for more than a few days?

Asher

Hi Asher,

The only thing I know about 'Windex' is from the comedy film - 'My big fat greek wedding', (I think it's called that) .

I think it would help in some situations. If off line for a peroid of a couple of months, or more, then I would be tempted to put the whole thing in a polythene bag with a wet sponge, or similar idea to keep the humidity up. Before this, I had not used it for a few weeks at a time, as mentioned by Jack, above, and it was OK, after a cleaning cycle or two. Ideally, it needs to print something every week.

In my case, I just thought I'd leave it as long as I could, in the name of science, of course. I was prepared, today, to remove the three non functioning cartridges, and squirt some w5 down the nozzles, and try again, but I think it realised it wasn't going to win, so it surrendered last night. Of course, its not just clogged jets, but air in the system, when its left standing for a lengthy period, and if I'd bothered to check, I may have found it was air locks causing the delay in the last three heads to function.

I reckon that this printer, with a continuous ink system, and Mike Chaney's profile prism and qimage, is about as good as it gets for this size of print. This combination gives a tremendous amount of control, and independence, if that is what you want.

Best wishes,

Ray

ps - the sponge is built in, its in the area where the head comes to rest. There is a thin rubber seal around the sponges, that lightly presses against the print head when the printer is turned off. That is the sponge to which I referred - not 'a' sponge, but 'the' sponge, I guess.

Hi Ray,

One thing of note about modern Epson inkjet printers is that they have a parking mechanism which seals the heads from evaporation when the machine is turned off.

Asher

I just fired up my 2200 after sitting (on) for over a year. Half the heads gave no pattern at all. Took a dozen nozzle cleans to get everything working but I didn't have to resort to windex or anything. I haven't used my 2200 since getting my Kodak 1400 which for "non fine art" stuff just blows the epson away, but tonight I was printing a slide scan for an old friend's 60'th birthday and thought the inkjet might look better. Guess what, the Kodak blows it away.

- DL

I'll need to set mine up again! I had put my R2400 away about 6 weeks ago as I was selling my flat and I've just not taken it out again. Will be setting it up again tonight I think...... Hope it's ok!

A year later

Well, I've dragged this old thread up again? Why? Well since last November 2006 I have not used the r1800. I have got by on using the laser for the few prints I needed, mainly old snapshots of the kids, and so on. Still, it seemed a bit of a waste of a printer, so I thought I'd try and fire it up again. When I shut it down, a year ago, I squirted some of the window cleaner liquid (W5) onto the sponge, and just turned it off.

In the meantime, I've found out a few things. The nozzles on this and I guess the r800 are much finer than the r2400, for example. It appears. from various forums, that the nozzles will readily clog even using the Epson brand pigment ink. A dilute ammonia solution is a favourite for clearing clogs, or dilute Isopropyl Alcohol. Dye based inks do not tend to block the jets so readily, and can be used to unblock the pigment blocked jets, sometimes. Just turning on the printer once a week, gets it to run the power-on cycle, which performs a head clean, but uses ink. Some folk have a time switch in the supply lead, just to do that. I tried a few places, to see if a replacement print head was available. I acquired a copy of the r800 service manual. I considered replacing the r1800 with a canon, or hp printer.

Anyway, I wanted to see if I could get it working, and decided if I could do so, I would replace the pigment cis system with a dye system. On last Monday evening, I brushed off most of the dust, turned it on, and did a nozzle check. Black printed pretty good, but no others worth mentioning. The ink looked pretty thick inside the channels of these cis cartridges, but still seemed to be fluid. Half a dozen cleans, with plenty of W5 on the sponge, got at least some of the jets firing on all the colours, and also the gloss enhancer. (A handy tip, a blue LED torch will show up the yellow dots very clearly). Far from perfect, but I thought it was still possible. I did not see much of an ink flow through the cis tubes while performing the cleaning cycles. It was marginally better on Tuesday.

I considered my options, and yesterday I purchased a new cis system, and dye based inks, at a knock down price, on the understanding that if it didn't work out, I would get a sort of discount/refund, if I bought a new r2400 printer from the cis supplier. I was also given a set of spare cis cartridges, to fill with w5, to clean the jets before I used the dye ink.

Tonight, I spent five minutes removing the pigment based system, and replaced it with the dye system. I didn't bother to use it printing with w5. After three or four cleaning cycles, it's all systems go with the dye inks, apart from a couple of magenta nozzles. I am hopeful that those will clear within the next day or so.

So, now to get them all cleared, then down to profiling again.

Jammy, or what?

Best wishes,

Ray

(PS - this is not a Friday joke....)