Faulty print head on Pro9000 II?

@The Hat
I did try letting the printer do the cleaning initially - two basic cleans, then a couple of deep cleans, then let it stand overnight but, in the morning, there was no difference and, even though ink is much less expensive bought through OctoInkjet, there comes a point when you have to say that method hasn't worked. I also considered a faulty cartridge but, as I said earlier, since the nozzle check indicated that, if there was a problem, it was present on three different cartridges, I discounted that.

I'd have run a service mode test print before starting to clean the head had I known about this and how to do it.

@ Mikling and Turboguy
I am kicking myself for not trying a head alignment, it never occurred to me that this might go out of sync after initial setup and in the middle of printing.

Anyway, this is another day and the cyan is now back and working fine but there's still a problem with the photo-cyan which is still patchy. I'm not sure why that should be when it had been fine before but I will persevere for a little longer.

I had photo cyan problems and it turned out to be the ink. Peter BJ persuaded me to try a new OEM cartridge. The problem vanished and a new bottle of IS was also OK.

After cleaning the printhead and installing a set of purged and refilled cartridges all colours - with the exception of photo magenta - are now showing, to my eyes, a perfect result from the nozzle check. Quite why the photo magenta is now showing problems is beyond me and very disappointing because it had been working fine before :-( I'll give it a day or two to soak but I've a nasty feeling a new head may be on the cards. If I cannot resurrect this head I've decided not to go the way of new Pro100 just yet because, excellent though it clearly is, I've a lot of ink, spare cartridges and printer profiles invested in the Pro 9000 MkII and it's still capable of great photos when working as it's meant to.
One problem this has highlighted: if one of the colours won't print properly, it's not possible to do a head alignment because the printer reports an error and stops. I've just reprinted the house (see my original post) and although the cyan now gives a perfect result the lines are still there in the sky so, if this is an alignment issue, there's no way to check with the photo magenta now playing up!

Well, I bit the bullet and bought another print head. I did umm and aah a bit as to whether to do this or just splash out on the Pro 100 but now that the Pro9000 II is back up and running again I've no regrets. I don't do much black and white and I've just made a couple of printer profiles for the XPS driver followed by a test print and the quality of output is just fabulous. In fact, it's so good, I am currently figuring out how best to print a panorama of Green River Canyon in Utah where I was last year. The limitations of print length with this printer mean I will have to find a way to spread the image over four separate A3 pages but it should be worth it.

paulcroft said:

Well, I bit the bullet and bought another print head. I did umm and aah a bit as to whether to do this or just splash out on the Pro 100 but now that the Pro9000 II is back up and running again I've no regrets. I don't do much black and white and I've just made a couple of printer profiles for the XPS driver followed by a test print and the quality of output is just fabulous. In fact, it's so good, I am currently figuring out how best to print a panorama of Green River Canyon in Utah where I was last year. The limitations of print length with this printer mean I will have to find a way to spread the image over four separate A3 pages but it should be worth it.

Click to expand...

You may already know this, but the Pro9000ii can print longer than the listed 19". I think up to 25" is possible. Of course you will need roll stock, not normally a problem.

I have not done it, but have read many comments attesting to the practicability of driver settings for a longer print.

RS

Thanks Roy, yes I was aware, one of the very few disadvantages of this printer.

I tend to think that this is an alignment problem , does the distance vary when using a different quality setting in the driver ? If it is an alignment problem, it should show up with all colors equally, you may print a pattern of color bars , run the printhead alignment function and print again such test pattern.

Ink stained Fingers said:

I tend to think that this is an alignment problem , does the distance vary when using a different quality setting in the driver ? If it is an alignment problem, it should show up with all colors equally, you may print a pattern of color bars , run the printhead alignment function and print again such test pattern.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure if you realise that my last message on this was March last year but, fwif, it's academic now. The new printhead suffered from the dreaded PhotoMagenta blockage before too long and I called it a day on the Pro9000II and moved on to the Pro-100 which has been faultless.

paulcroft said:

I've a lot of ink, spare cartridges and printer profiles invested in the Pro 9000 MkII and it's still capable of great photos when working as it's meant to.

Click to expand...

The Pro 9000 is nice printer i have one myself, just to clear things up -> when you change printhead new profiles needs to be made all over again. This can seem strange but every printhead prints different.

I agree. There's not much point having a good printer then failing to take advantage of what it can do. I have a ColorMunki which makes it really easy and I do this regularly for the papers I use. Makes a huge difference to the quality of the output, especially when using non-OEM inks which, with profiling, can produce prints which, to my eyes, are every bit as good as OEM prints.