I wonder where the yellow went.....

[printfan1138]

Any old guys like me remember the ad for toothpaste years ago that went, "you'll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent" ?
Well, I'm wondering where the yellow goes on three printers I use around here. When I get a clog it's almost always the yellow and that becomes very obvious when I do a purge print and everything is perfect except the yellow.
I work hard at printing daily and usually several prints at a time with our Epson c-88+ printers while my sweet wife cranks out dozens of full color photographs on an Epson 1400 with ( so far), no problems at all except for the occasional fearsome ( paper spitting glitch) and that is easily fixed in short order.
Does anyone know why yellow is such a bugger bear? Are the chemicals that produce yellow different? I don't think I'm the only guy having the "yellow clog" problems. After the first clog I pulled my yellow damper out and using one of the empty dampers with the set up to take a small syringe I slowly pushed some clog buster through the yellow ink post.
When I finally ran a nozzle check it showed that the ink was flowing again but it was a weird dark green/yellow color and that stayed for a time until eventually after several purge prints it started printing yellow again, but not perfect yet! The good news is that my prints look much better at the moment but in my experience it will be just a matter of time when I need to attack the yellow post again. I try to do as few head cleanings as possible not because they use a ton of ink which they do. I have a cis system so the ink is affordable, (yeaaaaa). So far the Epson 1400 is doing great including the yellow so that is very much appreciated. I run both dye based inks and Pigment based inks in one C-88+ or another and yellow is always the problem either way. No, I don't mix dye with pigment so that isn't an issue. What is your experience with that yellow clog thing guys? I'll be looking for the solution. Happy Printing, PrintFan1138!

 

[qwertydude]

Pigment inks will always have clogging problems, especially the durabrite stuff Epson uses, but it may not necessairly be a clog. It could be an air leak, which present themselves like recurring clogs because once you get a bubble in the printhead it is a pain to get it out. It could just be in your cartridges and you've had bad luck with yellow. Could be a leaking micro passage inside the cartridge, bad damper screen, bad outlet seal who knows? But dye based CISS systems still cost less than a full set of OEM cartridges so it wouldn't hurt to just buy a whole new CISS to help isolate this problem. Also before installing your new CISS make absolutely sure the printhead is completely purged. I do this by slowly pumping through a whole syringe of windex or head cleaner through the print head using the cleaner CISS cartridge, but the important thing is not to do this while the print head is on the park pad. This ends up putting air bubbles in the other colors. Instead put the printer on ink replace mode and purge the print head over the overspray pad. If you move the print head across the pad it also has the benefit of rewetting the overspayed ink which you can later blot up with a paper towel and so you end up cleaning your printer up a little.

I wouldn't worry too much about the color contamination. Often when you push out ink or cleaner other colors bleed into each other temporarily because a large drop forms on the print head and it ends up mixing colors. If it continues to happen even with a brand new CISS then I'd begin to suspect the print head. It's possible the little spike that pierces the cartridge is damaged or you could have a micro crack somewhere on the print head which causes an air leak. The way you can see if you have an air leak is to reprime all your cartridges and then continue to do printing, if the "clog" returns check the priming chamber of the offending cartridge. It shouldn't have any more air in it than the other cartridges. If it does then you know it's an air leak and pretty much your printer is done for because you can't replace the print heads on these Epson's.