Epson Stylus Pro 9600 - occasional Paper Jam Error

[guymark]

I am generally speaking very happy with the 9600 and the print quality really is very acceptable for such an old machine that doesn't have the new orange, green and red inks etc.

There is one annoyance however and from time to time, it throws up "Paper Jam Error" - at which point the only remedy is to switch the printer off, clear the jam and restart.

Now that sounds fair - except in each case it has happened to me, there is no jam whatsoever, the paper has been flat, smooth, coming off the roll nicely and has nothing observable in the path. The roll is free to turn with VERY little resistance - and usually it works just fine.

If I only printed A1 and below it would not worry me too much - annoying but not the end of the world. However when it throws an error when 9 feet into a 10 foot banner, then there is a lot of wasted ink and paper.

It has done this with both a heavyweight matt paper and a coated polyester "paper". Every now and again - perhaps every eight prints or so, it will generate this error.

I have looked at the circuit for this and if it was caused by undue friction pulling it from the roll I could "fudge" the current sensing by changing the value of the load sensing resistors. But I do not think this is the issue - as even with a 45 metre roll, it pulls through effortlessly. I do not think this is a fault triggered by an over current flag - though if need be, I could certainly check to be certain.

The printer is in a room with quite low levels of lighting (I gather bright light can upset paper sensors) and, as I say, usually it works superbly - just terribly frustrating when a long print fails - especially if it has already completed most of the print as then there is considerable waste.

I have looked online and checked manuals but other than "make sure nothing in the paper path, make sure roll can turn easily and make sure room not too bright", I am at a loss as to what to try next.

I *did* see someone suggesting using a vacuum cleaner on sensor holes but I am not sure where these holes are - and as the thread was VERY old, unsurprisingly, the original poster has not yet replied to my query about where the holes in question are.

If anyone has a 7600 or 9600 and has had this problem from time to time and/or knows what might trigger what is basically a false alarm, I would very much like to have your thoughts please.

Many thanks.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I'm not sure that we have the same 'problem', I get an error indication once in a while during a print job, after several pages, almost at the end of a job etc - 'Reload paper - paper skew' - I know it's not fun.
The paper is not running perfectly straight after a while, it's not with all papers, I think there is something how the paper has been rolled up , with some uneven tension slightly sideways. I made a few small and ugly cheap plastic guides I place onto the printer like this

I made a few of those with varying thickness, those fix all my paper skew problems and I can print banners any length. The printer is pretty sensitive to skews , something you just might ignore otherwise when you do borderless with some overprint.
The roll off tension should not be too small so that the paper would not lift off the base plate, the service manual should tell you where the paper out sensor is located.
And I think you shouldn't worry too much about the missing green etc colors, if you do refill with the current HD like inks and use a good paper you should get already a pretty wide gamut.

 

[PeterBJ]

In case you don't have the service manual, one is found here.

 

[guymark]

Thank you Ink Stained fingers and PeterBJ.

Although I do have the service manual it DID take me some time to find so I think that could be potentially extremely helpful for others.

I really like the idea of the paper guide system to help keeps things running true - and this *IS* an issue on my old HP Designjet 500 - but the 9600 seems (so far) to behave quite well in that respect - and although I do not print a great deal, I have not (yet!) had a paper skewing issue to deal with.

As a side note, when it happened on the HP DJ 500 so much that towards the end of the print, the margin on the far right had completely gone - I realised that although in a rather grim way, I had achieved full bleed on one side. I have not played around further but it seems only to check alignment when the roll is first loaded and I suspect there may be a way to fool the sensor. I do not really need to now as I can do full bleed on the 9600 - but nonethless for others it would mean that two sheets (one printed upside down) could be placed edge to edge for a double width print without need for an exceptionally long trimmer IF the sensor could be nicely fooled into detecting a "phantom paper edge".

The Paper Jam error continues to challenge my thoughts though - as when it is printing, even if I apply MODERATE additional load to the CR motor by gently resisting it turning, it keeps going happily enough - and yet when I am NOT trying to test it in such a way, it triggers the JAM - the roll can be turned freely (far less effort than when I was gently holding it back and it worked ok).

On the one hand, a good aspect it that the motor is unlikely to be faulty as most of the time it works well AND had the power to continue turning under increased load without "tripping" the PAPER JAM fault - but on the other hand it is annoying as I could have desensistised it a little by simply decreasing the value of the load sensing resistor.

Well I am going to be doing a longish print today (44" * 10 foot) for a friend's music festival on coated polyester. I will perhaps "nurse" the printer so if it does fall over, there MAY be a clue as to some sort of jerk / power flicker / odd noise etc. One remote possibility could be a power wobble as I am not currently running it from a UPS and we DO have the odd brownout for a split second or so - but usually I know about these because the lights flicker in the house and the UPS for the PC and phone system beeps.

Thanks again for the ideas (and I do like the paper guide idea - simple and effective - I don't think I need it for the 9600 but I might use that idea for the DJ 500 as it DOES seem to skew a bit. Odd how one printer seems MUCH more prone to skew than the other - but here the 9600 is the "good one!"

 

[PeterBJ]

Freezer and fridge compressors are driven by single phase induction motors. These motors draw a high starting current for a short moment, often causing the mains voltage to dip causing the lights to flicker. You could try disconnecting freezers and fridges from the mains before doing a large and important print job. Remember to reconnect the freezers and fridges again after the print job, or else you risk

 

[guymark]

Good idea and worth trying.

Just waiting for the artwork to come through so I can get printing, might stick the freezer on "fast freeze" which locks the compressor ON (so no subsequent starting) - that way if I do forget it for a while, everything will be rock solid rather than squishy

As and when I change the fan (it works ok just make an awful noise), I might see if it is practical to hang an extra capacitor on the ouptut rails of the power supply. Apart from anything else the printer must be around 15+ years old so the electrolytic capacitors may not be at their very best by now especially if it has spent most of its life permanently "on".

 

[guymark]

Think I might have been steering myself wrongly.

It seems that I misunderstood the PAPER JAM notes. As it seemed (to me) reasonable to reckon that a Paper Jam would be to do with paper being fed through the machine - and affecting the LF motor, it is in fact to do with the CR motor. I was reading CR motor and foolishly translating it in my head to the LF motor.

I am going to have a look now and see if perhaps the guide rails are in need of some "Super Multi Oil, No.32" - hopefully this could be a really simple fix.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

o.k. - whatever - I hope you find the cause of the intermittent error message

 

[The Hat]

I made a few small and ugly cheap plastic guides I place onto the printer like this

This is where a 3D printer comes into its own, I make all sorts of these things now, and am enjoying every moment of it..

 

[guymark]

A little follow up just in case anyone follows this thread in the future with a similar error.

After giving the carriage rails a clean (or at least as best as I could without disassembly) using a lint free cloth and some isopropyl alcohol and being surprised at just how black the cloth became, I then repeated the process so the cloth was almost clean - and then applied some synthetic number #32 grade oil.

To do this properly, you are supposed to dismantle the right hand side covers and although it is only supposed to be a 20-30 minute job, I am not someone who always manages to reassemble things as easily as I take them apart - so found that I could do the nearest rail (top and bottom) fairly easily and the rear rail underside too. A little bit of electrical sleeving later I managed to make a small "crook" shape and could dispense dots of oil along the top of the rear rail too.

Gently took the carriage (printer off) from one side to the other several times and THOUGHT it seemed smoother - but was aware that that may have just been wishful thinking.

checked to make sure there was no surplus oil dripping anywhere, loaded up some ultra cheapo paper and made an image which had a thin bar at each end of the paper, lied to the printer that it was photo paper and set the highest resolution, high speed off and made it print. It used only about 10p worth of paper, perhaps 1p worth of ink, but had the carriage rattling backwards and forwards for about 20 minutes.

At the risk of tempting fate, the "Paper Jam" error is no more.

I *did* worry that had found a new problem later though - when I had some ink blobs appear on a printout - but once I had set the platen gap to wide (I was printing heavyweight polyester banner), the problem stopped.

It has been something of a labour of love with this printer BUT I can see why it has so many enthusiasts. Amazing quality prints and (paper jam errors now sorted) appears to be very reliable.

Going to get some custom profiles done I think for the Inkteck powerchrome ink for use with banner paper and Xatvia Matte. Not sure how much difference it will make but might as well get things as close as I can