Artisan 837 firmware update

[Ink stained Fingers]

Please try one more thing , print this text pattern with grayscale option on, and high speed on/off with normal paper, and glossy and matte paper, I just hope that there won't be more strange effects becoming visible .

 

[Droidling]

OK. I edited the first magenta field to indicate the settings. Np - normal Paper, Gp - glossy paper, Hs - high speed, but I messed up the first one it says Np but should have been Gp.

Gp HSOff

Gp HSOn

Np HSOff

Np HSOn

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

oh well, I must admit, these printouts look about as I expected them, printing colors in grayscale means less ink to get it gray. The impact of the high speed option/bidirectional print now becomes visible in all boxes, and another effect seems to emerge - the overall dot placing becomes a kind of fuzzy . I have seen that with some inks more prominent than with others, and there is another effect - small residue at the nozzles seems to deflect the inkjet stream. Can I assume that you are printing quite a lot ? Are you using original Epson inks/cartridges or 3rd party substitutes or doing refill ?
I would to as the next step the cleaning of the timing strip and an attempt to clean the sensor from dust. I'm not familiar with the accessability in this printer model making such effeort easy or difficult.

 

[Tony McFarlane]

We have a PX730WD that we ripped the head out of that I don't think we've tossed yet. Happy to let you have the timing strip in return for a donation to MSF..

Will have a root around tomorrow to see if I can locate it for you.

Snail have you ever had problems with the 730 not picking up photo paper from the bottom tray? Also, I would be interested in any tips for cleaning the print head??

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I only can say that I gave up using photo printers feeding from the bottom, whether it was Epson or Brother. I did not work reliably, it is a matter of the paper, photo papers tend to bend in some direction, photo papers come in two classes - the budget ones cast coated with a paper like back - and the RC -resin coated ones with a thin PE foil layer on both sides of the carton - which gives a better grip on the back for the pickup roller, and prevents the ink solvent to diffuse into the carton , such papers stay flat much better than the CC papers. And it's these CC papers which caused lots of paper feeding problems.

 

[LAV8ORG]

As far as the firmware theory, it's unlikely. Consumer electronics are rarely supported for more than a few years... hell, a lot of them are barely supported at all after release. Besides, the latest/only FW for this available from Epson is from 2014.
Considering the intermittence and that it's restricted to one channel, I'd say your black ink is bad. You said you swapped it out, but did you stick with the new ink? The lines from the carts to the head hold a considerable amount of ink, it can take 4+ cleanings to evacuate the lines, or a Lot of pages.
These heads are especially sensitive, I myself have experienced issues with them that traced back to ink that had been fine suddenly kicking off. In my case the nozzle check also looked fine.
Another scenario I can imagine, if new ink doesn't work, is algae growth as mentioned previously. If algae were to make it past the cartridge ports and into the lines... you'd have quite a problem indeed. Algae can grow in brake fluid, so don't discount the notion on the grounds of an inhospitable environment.