Epson 7900 adventure

[Grandad35]

If you have several hours free, here is a very long, very technically detailed thread discussing the adventures of a number of people working to clear clogs on their Epson 7900 printers (costing $3-4,000 and capable of printing 24" wide ). Even though I have never owned one, I can see why many people complain of clogs on Epson printers.

 

[ghwellsjr]

You don't have a Canon printer that uses pigment ink do you? I think that is the issue and it's not specific to Epson.

I have lots of Canon print heads that I cannot use because they have clogs in some of the pigment black nozzles that I cannot clear up.

I also have lots of Canon print heads that have electrical problems with the dye ink nozzles.

I also have lots of print heads that say "Wrong Cartridge" when you put them in a printer, in other words, they are electrically dead.

I also have lots of Canon print heads that damaged the printer when they died (and any other printer they were put in).

I have gotten rid of several printers that died and killed any other print head that was put in them (and which kill other printers when those print heads are put in them).

It wouldn't be so bad if I could buy replacement print heads from Canon (and ink absorber pads) for my old printers but those days are long gone.

 

[The Hat]

I used to have several Epson printers years ago and they were certainly more bitchy than the Canons are, however I switch over to Canon printers because they could be refilled a lot easier and cheaper.

I have only had one Canon printer die on me because of a purge unit problem
and none from any electrical problems unlike a couple of my Epsons.

I have two Canon pigment printers in my arsenal and they have never suffer from any clogs since I got them, (Touch wood) but I do a nozzle check and a test page every ten days or so to make sure they stay in good working order.

Another good contributor on this forum had a simple way of putting it;
printers are for printing and dont make good ornaments so use it or lose it.

+1..

 

[ghwellsjr]

Yes, I take good care of my own printers but I have supplied printers and re-inked cartridges to many of my friends and who knows what they do. One of them actually did not insert a cartridge fully which damaged the print head by the time I was made aware of it.

I have also purchased many used printers which have unknown histories and I'm suspicious now that there may have been a good reason why they were sold.

 

[cls]

I used canon printers for the while they wont had any chips in their cartriges after the chip-thing came tru i switched to single color cartige HP and Epson and its working great for me...

 

[Tin Ho]

I deleted my post i wrote last night. someone did not like it. That's OK. I agree I maybe wrong. I take it back. Sorry for the trouble. I'll rewrite it later to make it clearer.

 

[Tin Ho]

If you have several hours free, here is a very long, very technically detailed thread discussing the adventures of a number of people working to clear clogs on their Epson 7900 printers (costing $3-4,000 and capable of printing 24" wide ). Even though I have never owned one, I can see why many people complain of clogs on Epson printers.

Sorry for the wordy lengthy post I made last night. I probably did not make it very clear. It was late last night. If I said anything that offended anyone I apologize.

Let me make it brief this time. After reading Grandad35's post and spent 10 minutes, not hours, on the forum thread he provided I thought I should share a different experience and some opinion about the subject. Are Epson printers really so prone to clogging? I am not trying to argue with anyone about this subject. I just want to share what my experience was.

I disliked Epson printers before and favored Canon like a lot of people do. But after using an Epson R2800 last year I changed my mind. I belong to a community photography club. We had a photo shoot and print project last year through Spring, Summer and Fall months. I proposed a Canon Pro9000 printer for the project but there were a lot of Epson owners who were serious photographers and they preferred an Epson. We purchased an Epson. We obtained a set of refillable cartridges and I helped to purchase a lot of ink from Hobbicolors for the Epson R2800 we bought.

We initially had a lot of problems and the nozzle checks did tell us we had ink flow problems. The symptom were typical clogging symptoms that it was OK one day but not the other day and after some cleaning cycles it was OK. It came and went repeatedly for quite some days. The printer was a factory refurbished one from Adoroma Photography Store from NY city. I called Epson and was told we had one year warranty on the printer. So we had nothing to worry about. I also contacted Hobbicolors and was told that the problem might be in the cartridges that needed to be properly primed. To make the story short. After priming the cartridges with the information found on Inksupply Company's web site the problem simply vanished completely. I used to buy inks from WeInk before too. They had very detailed priming instruction on their web in the past. I realized it might be the problem. It turned out to be the culprit. We hardly ever needed to exercise cleaning cycles any more after the cartridges were primed. So the printer we got really never had any clogging issues. All the clogging symptoms in the beginning of our project was caused by the refillable cartridges that were not properly primed to begin with.

This is a limited experience with an Epson printer of course. It's definitely not enough to make any conclusive claim that Epson printers are not prone to clogging. It's not my intention to do so either.

I read the forum thread Granda35 provided. I found that the OP got his Epson 7900 used, and with a knowledge that there was a cluster of clogging before he got it. After reading his post for 10 minutes I felt that he might be dealing with dead nozzles rather than clogged ones. In my opinion it wasn't convincing to base on that experience to claim that Epsons are prone to clogging. The OP stated he has two Epson 4800s and they all had a large number of prints through them and have been problem free.

I have no intention to debate if Epsons are prone to clogging or not. It looks that Grandad35 did not intend to make any claim either. He was only pointing out an interesting article. I just want to point out that priming the refillable cartridges will make a huge difference and solve a lot of problems that look like clogging. A few of my club friends wanted to buy the R2880 too but found it no longer available. Despite the initial troubles nobody felt the printer was problematic.

Now if anything I said here offends anyone please tell me.

 

[Tin Ho]

Gees, it is still a long post. Sorry, I did not make it shorter still.

 

[ghwellsjr]

I also contacted Hobbicolors and was told that the problem might be in the cartridges that needed to be properly primed. To make the story short. After priming the cartridges with the information found on Inksupply Company's web site the problem simply vanished completely.

Can you please either supply a link to the information or summarize it for us?

 

[Tin Ho]

I also contacted Hobbicolors and was told that the problem might be in the cartridges that needed to be properly primed. To make the story short. After priming the cartridges with the information found on Inksupply Company's web site the problem simply vanished completely.

Can you please either supply a link to the information or summarize it for us?

I can try. I do not own the printer, the club does. I don't have access to the printer right now so let me try to dig out all about priming the refillable cartridges from the internet.

Here some web pages at www.inksupply.com. It shows a device called BADP on it. It is a fundamental tool for priming the cartridges. You first follow the refill instruction to fill up the cartridge first. This cartridge if installed in the printer without priming it will not work. You will get clogging symptoms all the time. The nozzle check will tell you there is a clogging. To prime the cartridge you need a syringe too. Adapt the BADP to the tip of the syringe in place of a needle. Insert the BADP (on the syringe) into the exit port as shown on the picture of the cartridge on the web site. You will feel resistance in inserting it. You need to push it in with some force. Once it is in just pull the plunger back out. It will suck ink out of the cartridge. Just suck a few CCs of ink and withdraw the BADP out of the cartridge. I think the ink injection hole needs to be unplugged and the vent plugged when you do that. After that the vent plug needs to be unplugged and the injection hole plugged.

After that is done the cartridge is primed. It worked extremely well for me. The printer will prime the print head when the cartridges are installed and the printer exits from the cartridge replacement mode. After that the nozzle check will be perfect. There will be no more clogging problems until when a cartridge needs to be refilled again.

Here is the inksupply's web page:
http://www.inksupply.com/instructions_epson_ar_1400_r260_r1900.cfm

Here is the BADP from Inksupply.com:
http://www.inksupply.com/product-details.cfm?pn=MIS-BADP&printerID=0