Artisan 1430/ Photo 1500W: blurred prints, but 100% clog free; satellite drops

[anazoolik]

Hi,

i have a problem with 2 Epson 1500W. The tests shows no clogs, but the prints are really blurred, because there are everythere cyan satellite drops around black and cyan areas and text.
The service check printout shows massive problems with cyan and black (see attachment).
Has anybody an idea for reason? Is the print head dead (both printed only 5-6.000 sheets A4 Color)?

Thanks and regards
Holger

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I'm not really sure to see the problems you are addressing. Could you please just scan a small part of a printout showing the problem with higher resolution and more contrast and post it again. What type of ink are you using ? Did the problem show up suddenly - e.g. after switching the ink supplier or the type of ink ? Did you try a printout with the 'high speed' option turned off (the bidirectional printing ) ?

 

[anazoolik]

Attached 2 crops, scanned with 600 dpi. I use a CISS with Epson Ultrachrome D6-S/Fujifilm DL.
The Problem show up after ~ 5-6.000 Sheets and is permanently. Printing Resolution makes no difference (also bidirectional), only the horizontal lines in printouts are a little bit less visible.

 

[The Hat]

Here is @anazoolik printout, I dropped it into Photoshop to improve the quality a bit...

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

the patterns look quite irritating, I'm wondering whether it didn't build up slowly over the last hundreds of pages. I first assumed that it could be some issue with the timing strip which gets gets fogged with ink dust over time.That band stretches over the print width over the print area, it is a small dark gray plastic band running through a sensor on the back of the printhead. It can be cleaned with a small piece of kitchen paper and a window cleaner. I then would try to clean the printhead, the black and cyan channels, closing the vent holes on the CISS, unplugging the tubes from the cartridges , sucking out the ink, replacing the ink with some cleaning liquid and printing some pages black and cyan depending on the size of the cartridges and checking and refilling them after a few pages, and repeating that several times.

 

[anazoolik]

Maybe it build up slowly over the last hundreds pages, but i just noticed it. I used cleaning cartridges with OCP cleaning fluid and printed a lot of sheets. I already cleaned the timing strip and made this a second time. And with 6 cleaning cycles (light Magenta was clogged after cleaning cartridges) there are some changes. Not solved but noticeably better So i will try it a second time.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

that's a pretty difficult one I must admit, you may try a cleaning recipe by @pharmacist, e.g. here https://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/epson-7890-internal-cleaner.11573/#post-97339 the essence is the addition of some small amount of ammonia which apparently helped some people. Some of the available cleaners on the market come with ammonia as well I have seen. And you need to consider that it took quite a while as the contaminations were building up over time, so it may take some days of soaking and trying as well to remove/reduce them again. I wouldn't know another remedy at this time.

 

[websnail]

Hesitating to suggest this but it's possible that your problem is the inks themselves contain something biological or similar that is deflecting the inks.

The only reason I'm hesitating is that the deflection I've seen historically is rather random, not this weird almost wave like distortion. Cyan was implicated with the historical issues though so it's not completely ruled out.

I would certainly want to rule the inks themselves out though by replacing the black and cyan inks with something "fresh" and seeing if the problem goes away.

Part of me is looking at the way the distortion is happening and thinking "magnets" for some reason.. It's completely out of left field but could there be some kind of field and/or ingredient in the ink that could result in a dispersion like that?

 

[anazoolik]

After a second printing/cleaning session with cleaning fluid, the Printer works again Thanks.
@ websnail: i use only original inks of Epson and Fujifilm and these inks are developed for such a printhead. But who knows, now it is working I will see, how long...

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

After a second printing/cleaning session with cleaning fluid, the Printer works again Thanks.

That's good news after all those efforts; you may check for these problems now and then before they really build up and become that serious again.