Epson R800 Gloss optimiser

[PeterJay]

Hi All, Im new to the forum (and new to printing). Ive no doubt that this issue has been raised many times before. Apologies in advance.
My printer was a gift and apparently was working well before I got it.
Im getting magenta banding and the nozzle check shows the GO to be faulty. All the other colours are good.
Is there any way I can turn off the GO cart in the software?
Thanks, any help be much appreciated.
Pete...

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

you have an option field in the driver on the extended settings tab to select various GO modes - no GO, GO in unprinted areas, or complete GO , but only if you select a glossy paper which may benefit from the GO. The GO option is not active for matte papers or normal/copy paper

 

[PeterJay]

thank you vey much for your prompt reply, I appreciate it.
You'e cleared up another area of confusion for me re matte papers.
Just need to get some refillable carts and half decent ink at an affordable price.
Marrutt look good but still expensive in comparison to some of the others?
Best wishes

Pete...

 

[martin0reg]

...
Im getting magenta banding and the nozzle check shows the GO to be faulty. All the other colours are good...

That happened to me quite often with two r800, which I have dumped. Bad printhead or bad waste ink station, I don't know. I had to print some sheets with only GO until it cleared up... After some days of no printing the mix of GO with ink came back, same procedure: some sheets of pure GO...

R800 with no (or almost no) issues of ink flow and clogging are hard to find - but finally I found one.

One common problem was cleaning / waste ink station (where the head is parking) with pads completely smeared up by matte black ink. I guess that's because the printer is ab-used as an office printer, as for text and documents only MK is used

 

[PeterJay]

Hello Martin, thanks for this. Im beginning too understand that the R800 has its problems although in that it was a gift I can't complain.
Im pleased to report that after changing the GO cart, 2 cleans and many nozzle checks, the banding appears to have disappeared. The first print still showed a little bit but the second print is good, if a little dark.
At least I feel like persevering with it now.
Ive been thinking about getting some refillable carts and bottled ink to reduce costs but there are so many on eBay I don't know where to start.
Marrutt sell them and pigment ink and Im minded to give them a go.
Have you any recommendations?
thanks again

Peter...

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I was using a R800 with a CISS for about 6000 pages , mostly A4 image prints which worked fine.
R800, R1800, R1900 type inks are available by several suppliers - e.g. octoink
http://www.octoink.co.uk/categories/*-Epson-Printer-Products/R-Series/R1900/
and I got refill cartridges and the CISS via Aliexpress from China
and yes, the R800 needs some regular cleaning, as well at the left side of the print path inside where pigment ink smear is building up.
I did quite some testing with the R800 to find out the effects of the gloss optimizer, it does several things - I found out that the effect is the best when you print a GO layer separate from the image print - a few hours later, printing a white sheet with the GO option turned on to get full page coverage.
Pigment inks tend to show a bronzing effect - changing colors against reflecting light - mostly colors with cyan ink and the photo black in some cases, GO is removing these effects. Pigment inks tend to have a slightly different gloss than a bare glossy paper sheet, and different levels of gloss depending on the color and ink density, the GO is equalizing these gloss differences, and a GO overprint further improves the long term stability, it reduces fading effects from ozone or UV, pigment inks are very good with that but a GO overprint further improves it. Please be aware that not all glossy photo papers look very good with pigment inks overall - you need to test some different types and compare the look of the printouts.

 

[martin0reg]

...Have you any recommendations?

Same as ISF already mentioned. R800 and R1800 have the same carts and ink set, but I'm not sure about R1900. You may ask octoink.co.uk, the seller knows what he offers.
At aliexpress I have bought several sets of refillable carts for R800/1800, mostly working. But you may find different sets for the same R800, different designs and even shapes. Problem is, they oftenly don''t know what they are selling, regarding the structure and correct refill process for the stuff they sell

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

you may download a utility 'WICReset' which allows you to run a status report telling you some details about the prior life of an Epson printer - number of printed pages - status of the waste ink container - the last 5 major error conditions