an easy clog to clear on one cleaning but still a nuisance

[stratman]

Suisse is one of the richest countries in europe, famous for expensive clocks

Not to mention chocolate. Also, was the first place I ever saw coin-operated milk dispensers machines (like soda pop or cigarette machines) at roadway stops while motoring in the Swiss mountains back in 1969!

rather poor cities still suffering from lost cole mining industry

That is what one political party has pledged to do in the USA - put coal mining out of business.

 

[Paul W.]

@martin0reg: It may be a little while before I have the chance to implement your suggestions... for which I'm very appreciative! First, however, I just now refilled my carts but for the K position I used a brand new refillable cart - I think I left a message to @The Hat to that effect. I'm playing a hunch... that a brand new cart might solve my problem. I'm a little doubtful, I'm afraid the clog might be further down - we shall see.

Well, our family didn't live on the wealthy side of Geneva. This was only ten years after the close of WWII. My dad was a Lutheran pastor... his job in Geneva was helping resettle refugees from the war. The experience enriched our lives immensely. So, no Rolex watches or black money for us!

 

[Paul W.]

@martin0reg: This is an old thread, but you and others helped with the purge files in the other thread recently. The purge file question came up as a result of this thread and now I'd like to go back to it if you don't mind: (the issue was that my K cart always clogs even after just a day of non-use... all other carts never clog. The K cart cleans easily, however.)

Another idea is to fill a cleaning cartridge, e.g. with your cheap ink diluant or with the gray mix for Y (which is more than 90% of diluant I think) Then print some purging patterns of K only until it will print only the very light gray of Y, which means the channell is filled. Leave it for some days and print some purging patterns every day. Hoping that the returning clog would be dissolved over time.

Doing this with your actual cartridge for K would clean the cart too, but afterwards you might get some lighter black with the first refill...

Just so I understand: I'm not printing with K only, I'm printing whatever is in the K position, right? The contents are the very light gray... and it may not print the light grey at first, it will print the residual black in the head,and then print the light grey, OK? Am I understanding this correctly? And lastly, what is meant by "the channell is filled"?

Thank you so much, all of you. Truly appreciated. I feel like I'm asking dumb question! But that's how I learn!

Paul

 

[martin0reg]

"the channel" means the way of the ink, from the outlet of the cartridge to the nozzle. With the carts sitting on the printhead (no tubes from stationary carts to the moving printhead like some other models) this path is very short and so one or two cleaning cycles will replace all ink in the internal "tubes" of the printhead.
What you call a clogged cartridge may be (so I think):
- a returning stubborn clog somewhere in the printhead "channel" or
- returning air bubbles in this channel, caused by a bad sealing anywhere or any sort of bad iinkflow from the cartridge.
BTW with my r800 I have missing nozzles in the nozzle check and stripes in the prints almost every time after refilling a cart, and I think that's because the inkflow from the cart into the head is so easy to be disturbed, especially with refill carts instead of OEM .

Now regarding my idea.. as you seem to have two spare sets of refillable carts, take one of these and fill it with any sort of cleaning solution. Add some ink so that the printing with clear solution is not unvisible in the purge pattern or nozzle check.
So you don't need to use your ink. If you had no spare carts you could in fact swap Y and K and see if the high dilution of Y takes any efffect on the "clogged" K channel. But note that you have to swap the chips of Y and K for doing this (most refillables have removable chips, but some have fixed)

And most important: any cleaning (in carts, with syringes, on wet paper towels) only can help,
if it is in fact a clog - and not air or bad ink flow...

 

[The Hat]

The controversy of switching the matte/photo black in the Epson Pro printers and always causing problems keeps on coming up.

Why not fill both black carts with the photo black ink, then there will be less of a chance for the heavier pigment to settle and bung up the whole system, just my two-cent worth...

Thank you so much, all of you. Truly appreciated. I feel like I'm asking dumb question! But that's how I learn!
Paul

By asking these dumb questions is how everybody becomes an expert in time..

 

[mikling]

The issue is that the diluant ratio for the lighter blacks is higher and this diluant is more volatile and possibly in this case has a shift in surface tension that causes the meniscus on the nozzle printhead to break down faster and more frequent. This breakdown or tearing of the liquid film allows air to enter each time it occurs. The ingested air slowly builds up inside the printhead to the upper regions and in this case builds up to the point that it causes a bad nozzle check. So to clear and flush out the air a head cleaning must be performed. On the R800/1800/2400 printheads and similar wide format machines in that era, a similar problem exists but to a larger degree. If the buildup is low, a good nozzle check can be had and good printing can happen. The suddenly if the ink useage is drawn out enough that the inks cannot get past the air trapped in the printhead, the air moves down into the nozzle chambers and you will get banding. Each time a head cleaning or reprime on these machines is performed it performs a heavy draw of ink, and this is the reason why you get bad nozzle checks with each change in cartridges.

Read the above carefully, I explained this phenomena many times but it seems not to be understood what is going on with Epsons. Meniscus breakdown is a real issue for Epson. This has led to smaller nozzle exits, higher density piezo material, Teflon coated undersides ( PTFE) and to this point, listening to the nozzle chamber using the piezo material in reverse like a microphone. (Piezo material can both generate voltage with forced displacement like a microphone as well as create displacement like a transducer under a forced voltage ( transducer and printhead and ultrasonic humidifiers). This is one reason why Epsons are finicky about humidity and needs frequent use to both minimize buildup and flush out the air even during printing.

When you see an Epson printhead have an AMC head, it stands for Advanced Menicus Control. Each time a droplet is released or ejected the pool of ink at the tip of the nozzles bounces up and down like a trampoline or drum would after the ejection. Now if you try and eject a droplet of ink when it is moving in one direction, it will be different if it is already moving in the opposite direction, you're working against the bounce. To get consistent droplets, you want the ink to be relatively calm. So how do you get what looks like a small pool of liquid bouncing up and down to settle down quicker than it normally would? You put in anti resonant modes to settle it down quickly, so what they do is activate the nozzle at certain frequencies to dissipate the energy. Incredible technology on the better models.

 

[martin0reg]

@mikling
That explains why my r800 is so prone to what looks like "clogging". I've read it some time ago and to better understand it I found this pdf:
http://www.lorentzcenter.nl/lc/web/2011/466/problems/4/de Jong et al - 2006 - Air entrapment in piezo-driven inkjet printheads.pdf

But in this case it's the cart with undiluted MK, not the diluted grays, so I don't really know...

@Paul W.
BTW what sort of ink set are you using? As far as I know, "Eboni-6" is made from MK only (now "eboni v1.1"), diluted to the shades of grey for the 5 color channels, and 100% for K. The base ink is now in second generation, called "eboni v1.1"
But what is the PK / photo black in the second K cartridge, which ink is it originally at MIS?

I haven't tried to combine and use "eboni-6" with a PK for glossy paper. And I guess this would not work * . Because for glossy it has to be a set with PK, and dilutions of PK only - and for matte you would change to MK (your other K cartridge)

* okay, it would print, but the bronzing and gloss differential would not be much better, I think..

 

[mikling]

If it is the case that the MK is causing problems too frequently, then there is a simple experiment to perform. Use a diluted gray in the MK channel and see if it disappears. If it does, then the MK ink is possibly not ideal. Logic? Follow with putting MK in the diluted gray channel and see if the problem follows the MK. Depending on the result, then the solution will be known. It is also possible that the diluant is bringing the physical characteristics of the ink closer to what is needed. It all depends.

Experiment.

 

[Larryb]

I recently discovered a couple of things regarding random dropped nozzles in the nozzle check. The first was that cartridges may look identical from the outside, but the seal of the cartridge be very different.

cart #1
Poor seal:

cart #2
Good seal:

Cart #1 gave me terrible nozzle checks and required several cleaning cycles.

Cart #2 gives me perfect nozzle checks.

A second issue has, so far, solved all my nozzle checks. I noticed that the cellophane would extend far up into the seal, potentially breaking the seal between the cart and the nipple:

Once I trimmed the excess cellophane so the exit port looked like the "good seal" in cart #2 above. It requires a good sharp knife and a careful hand.

Larry

 

[Paul W.]

@martin0reg:

BTW what sort of ink set are you using? As far as I know, "Eboni-6" is made from MK only (now "eboni v1.1"), diluted to the shades of grey for the 5 color channels, and 100% for K. The base ink is now in second generation, called "eboni v1.1"
But what is the PK / photo black in the second K cartridge, which ink is it originally at MIS?

Well, perhaps it will help if I say I got the empty refillable carts from Inkjet Mall. The carts are actually seven refillable carts in number, two carts for black, one labeled MK and one PK. But the K carts are identical, same chips. You can use either cart with MK or PK but not both of course. The inkset is as you say, Eboni-6, and this inkset uses MK in various dilutants. This inkset is the original formulation, and is for matt paper only, so I simply put the empty unused PK cart aside. Apparently for inksets which have a gloss option, you have to swap out the carts, filling that extra cart with PK. Paul (Roark) has a 6 position gloss inkset and I think he uses an HP glossy ink in the K position. (I did fill my seventh cart once however with MK, thinking perhaps my first MK cart was defective. No luck there.) Since the base Eboni 1.1 is now a warmer formulation, Paul suggests a Cyan dilution in the Yellow position . The Yellow adds more warmth that we don't need now, due to the warmer Eboni 1.1.

@mikling: I'll try your experiment, thank you ... might be a couple of days, company coming.

Thanks all,

Paul (W.)