"smeared" nozzle check

Just refilled my 1430 with a new set of InkThrift CL ink capsules and got this never-seen-before smeared pattern for the K position.



I then did an under-head cleaning, along with the wiper blade and capping station and got this:



This helped, but I noticed a rightward shift in the pattern, overlapping the Light Cyan and a pulling away from the Yellow pattern on the left along with some "spatter". I've hardly ever used the Alignment feature but gave it a try. It took thirteen steps but finally the K pattern was aligned properly, just touching the neighboring patterns. Numerous blank nozzles but just one application of the Head Clean gave me, finally, a perfect nozzle check on all nozzles.



I post this to see if any members can help explain the smeared K pattern and then the shifting to the right so that I can avoid this in the future. Thank you!

deposition on nozzle causing deflections. The sign of the beginning of a real clog on the external edge of the nozzle. Use the printer more often.

Thank you, @mikling, that's helpful... but which side of the nozzle check illustrates that? top, bottom, left, right?...

Interesting... when I did the underhead cleaning, what I call the shoe-shine method, I was a little surprised how little ink was on the paper towel. BTW, I was using Piezoflush. I've had good luck with that in the past...

Now that I look at the post by @mikling again, I suspect my response shows that I seriously misunderstood what is meant by "external edge". I bet I'm way off. Can I get some help on that? And this morning, I'm sorry to say, only 24 hours after I had achieved a good nozzle check, the smearing occurred again, even worse:

Perform a head clean and see what happens. If it improves and then returns again quickly get that ink out of the nozzles and replace it with something else. You know what is wrong at that point.

I did a nozzle check and now there's virtually nothing in the black position nozzle pattern.

Thanks for the tip, but I'm using IJM's capsules and keys, you're probably familiar with that. It's not feasible, as far as I can tell, to remove the ink from a capsule, and even I did, what ink would I use, and how would I fill capsule.

I'll do an under head cleaning again, but I'm not real optimistic at this point.

I suspect ink is pooling on the nozzle plate, misdirecting "spits". The ink may be incompatible with a piezo printhead. Clean the purge station again. Your purge unit may be defective (rare on Epson).

First, to follow up on my most recent post. This morning I did perform another underhead cleaning and sure enough, got the same smeared pattern for the black position. Yesterday afternoon I was getting a perfect pattern. So this is the third time I've had that smear pattern, each time only 24 hours after a satisfactory pattern. In addition, now the magenta pattern has some serious gaps - not the smeary pattern, just ordinary gaps.

But back to the thread... thank you @turbguy , for your post. As for the ink, it's in a set of cartridges from InkJet Mall and I find them to be a very good place to deal with. I've posted this problem over in their forum as well. I'm sure this ink was thoroughly tested with Epson printers before they put on the market. Can you tell me what the purge station is? Is that also known as the capping station? I've cleaned that as well. And what is the purge unit?

I'm seriously thinking of going the Canon route, but that's a whole other technology, learning curve, refill issues. I've become very fond of QTR's flexibility and ability to blend curves and would hate to give that up.

The capping station" is the purge station.