Artisan 837 firmware update

[Ink stained Fingers]

This is a screen copy of the R265 status monitor with the extended cartridge information

showing the manufacturer, a mfg date code, ink color and cartridge number. I have not seen this data
available on younger Epson printers anymore. This is a pretty new CISS in an old R265, that works, I had to swap out one cartridge - the one with an older date code because that one had a clogged filter in front of the ink outlet. It is easy to imagine as explained above that printer firmware is checking this date code and rejecting those being too old - against a moving date limit depending on the firmware updates.
O.k. so much for that , let's look for the degraded quality

 

[Droidling]

There are so many different cartridge types in the field, and in some cases even different generations of chips for the same cartridge which makes it difficult to make general conclusions anyway. But your point is a degraded print quality - what is it - what is different - missing nozzles - wrong colors ?

If you look back to the third post in this thread I posted a scan of the problem. You suggested cleaning the ribbon used to align the print head horizontally. I've done that multiple times. It seemed to help on my first test print but the problem came back immediately.

What I haven't done is post a scan showing that this only seems to effect black.The effect seems to very throughout the page, and from one page to the next. one section of a line of text may be very unclear while a line or 2 down the print may be quite sharp.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

An Epson driver has an option to print 'fast' or not, maybe it's called 'quick', anway that activates the bidirectional print which is the standard option. Try to turn it off and print that text again, and check whether there is any difference to the 'fast' option. If so that would indicate a problem with the alignment, and that adjustment is done individually per color in most cases, or for black and one color depending on the nozzle arrangement in the nozzle plate. Please scan and post as well the nozzle check, just that part of the page.

 

[The Hat]

If was suggested to you earlier in the thread to clean the timing strip, but have you considered trying to clean the paper timing wheel at the left side of the printer.. ?

 

[Droidling]

An Epson driver has an option to print 'fast' or not, maybe it's called 'quick', anway that activates the bidirectional print which is the standard option. Try to turn it off and print that text again, and check whether there is any difference to the 'fast' option. If so that would indicate a problem with the alignment, and that adjustment is done individually per color in most cases, or for black and one color depending on the nozzle arrangement in the nozzle plate. Please scan and post as well the nozzle check, just that part of the page.

This is what I have been seeing. It is all 6 pt. text to highlight the problem. Note that the colors all have decent sharpness. Black goes from almost acceptable to un readable and back in the space of a few lines.

This is with High Speed unchecked.

I switched back to High Speed checked and got this.

As you can see the print quality improved a lot when I switched off bidirectional printing. I was surprised at the change so I wanted to confirm that something else hadn't changed. When I switched High Speed back on I got a print that was just a little bit worse than without it. Not anywhere near as bad an the top print which was done, with high speed on this morning.

Here is the Head Check you asked for.

If was suggested to you earlier in the thread to clean the timing strip, but have you considered trying to clean the paper timing wheel at the left side of the printer.. ?

You can see from the scans that the major problem is in the other direction. Once I get the main issue I'll look into taking the side off and cleaning that as well.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

In think your test shows it very well that the effect is related to the nozzle firing, and this depending on the print direction. The nozzle firing, the exact firing at the correct position , is controlled by the timing strip. And the timing strip is read by a sensor on the back of the printhead carriage. The nozzle check looks clean to me , no location iregularities of the nozzles, no deflected nozzles. I have seen two effects with the timing strip - ink deposit from the ink fog in the print room under the cover - this can be cleaned away by cautiously wiping off the triming strip. And I have seen a little fibrous dust ball in this sensor, between the timing strip, being rolled in and out by the movement of the printhead carriage and depending on its direction, the printing errors were stronger on one side of the paper than on the other . The printhead is probably moving back faster when not printing, and this could change the position of that dust ball there. I saw it but couldn't really get there. Finally I could remove the dust with a blow of canned pressured air. Depending on the printer model it is not easy to get to this sensor, it might run close to a bracket of the frame of the print mechanism. It might help as well to run the printer without the 'high speed' option for a short while hoping that the dust resettles somewhere else, not on the timing wheel...and then testing normal operation again. And it is recommendable to check the timing wheel for any contamination and dust at the sensor there, I have seen that as well.

 

[Droidling]

... your test shows it very well that the effect is related to the nozzle firing, and this depending on the print direction. The nozzle firing, the exact firing at the correct position , is controlled by the timing strip. ...

I agree with what you are saying, and I will try to blow out the sensor again. What I can't understand is why a dirty timing strip or it's sensor wouldn't effect the color nozzle equally?

I really do appreciate all the effort you are putting into this. This probably wouldn't be worth it, even to me, if I had any other choice.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

it could be that the printer firmware just does not do bidirectienal printing for colors, only for black to speed up text printing. And you may use your above text test pattern with different paper settings, it could be that the bidirectional printing is only activated for the 'normal paper' setting but not for matt/photo(glossy paper settings, this would be a simple test, and quite interesting.

 

[Droidling]

it could be that the printer firmware just does not do bidirectienal printing for colors, only for black to speed up text printing. And you may use your above text test pattern with different paper settings, it could be that the bidirectional printing is only activated for the 'normal paper' setting but not for matt/photo(glossy paper settings, this would be a simple test, and quite interesting.

I tried it, and got some odd results. Printing on HP glossy photo paper and using Best Photo setting in the driver I got the results below.

Glossy Paper with High speed checked.

Glossy Paper without High speed checked.

The first one seems odd to me. The black text isn't great, but I've had a lot worse. The thin black lines are worse than anything I've got before. Without the bidirectional (high speed) printing the text gets a lot better but I still see problems with the vertical lines. Just to be certain that there is a difference between black and the other colors I did a test print where I changed the cell boarder colors. the following is with High speed off.

The next step is trying to clean the sensor.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

that quite an interesting result indeed which I didn't expect like this specifically that the vertical lines start bending. I can assume that it is somewhat difficult to get access to the timing strip and the sensor, a partial dissassembly may be required.