New 1500w + refillables = ink drops

I need your collective wisdom once more....
I finnaly received my brand new 1500w a couple of days ago
I immediatelly removed the side panel and rerouted the waste ink tube to an external bottle.
Filled up the refillable cartridges to about 80% taking care not to create air bubbles. Put them in the printer and all was ok. I saw ink being dumped into the bottle and nozzle check after 2 cleaning cycles to charge the ink was perfect.....printed about a dozen 10x15 photos and went to sleep for the night. The following day i tried to print another photo...what a mess...cyan ink drops on the paper. We are talking normal drops, not small ones....nozzle check was a mess from gaps mainly on the cyan but on other colors as well....fired up a couple of cleaning cycles printed a few test pages and redid the nozzle check....all ok! Printed some photos and left...
After four-five hours i did a nozzle check....it looked messy again with almost half the cyan nozzles absent....yellow nozzle check had a part of black....random gaps in other colors as well (few but the printer sat for hours not days).

I removed the cartridges and toped them up once more tapping them lightly to make sure no bubbles are there.... The phenomenon continued... Each time the printer is left idle for more than a couple of hours cyan ink is pooling on the head and when printing photos ink drops appear on the paper.

Obviously i think that there is something wrong with the refillables. So i switch to the starter cartridges and they perform much better but i also saw ONE gap in the cyan nozzle check today after 15 hours of the printer being idle. Printed one photo (which came out ok) and redid the nozzle check...the gap is still there.

Now i am starting to think that maybe during transport/or during manufacturing there might be a problem with the purge pad, but i am leaning on something being wrong with the refillable cartridges.

The ones i use for the RX520 are clear inside...the ones for the 1500w are looking like these
http://www.inkowl.com/?S=25&B=3&product=1312&p=product
....with a grey square in the middle which could be just a filter (did not get them from there...).

Is there a cartridge design for the 1500w that is "better"?

On a side note i was very pleased with the printing result using the L800 inks...but will report on that when the teething problems have been resolved.

These refillables are
all but [..learning english at printerknowledge..] anything but / far from hassle free.
I know the blotting as well as missing ink flow.
Could be simply a bad one... very often it is due to some wrong filling procedure, air hole .. fill hole.. which is plugged which is open, while first fill... while refill,
I use to fill the first time with negative pressure, air hole closed, syring with ink (half full) stuck tightly in the fill hole, then PULL the plunger and release, let the vacuum do the filling.
Second care for priming: stick the syringe (carefully) into the outlet and pull some ml out.
This is for priming, mainly to avoid no or weak ink flow.
But the blotting means there is too much ink flow... the reason may be hard to find, assuming that you plugged and unplugged the correct holes.
I have some really bad refill carts for an old stylus photo 950/960, but can not find any better for this printer. When I have refilled the carts sometimes I have to print 5 to 10 A4 purging patterns until the blotting finally stops..
But for my r285, similar to the 1500 regarding the cart design, I just bought a new type: with the priming chamber (last chamber before outlet) in the upper half, instead of the oval chamber at the bottom:
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/T080...0-PX710-PX720-PX810-PX820-R265/562203223.html

It is five years ago when the "oval" type was new, refillable without vacuum:
http://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/which-refillable-cartridges-for-epson.4942/
Both types of this old thread, to prime (which are now hard to find) and not to prime, CAN work properly... as well as my newest (link above) which hopefully are suitable for pigment: I filled it with a pure carbon ink set "eboni-6" ... ink is flowing without issues so far...

PS: here are the three types I have used so far, from left to right:
- old style, priming needed, 2005 (which mikling explains in detail in the other thread)
- "new style", mostly offered until today
- the new ones I bought from aliexpress, seem to have a priming chamber design similar to the "old style"

I see that on the thread you mentioned there is a reference that the plug has to cover two holes otherwise ink is dribbling...so will have to try again tommorow and report....


Thnx for the pointer though...

Just noticed that wicreset gives me a print head id error....although i suspect this is more a wicreset programming error and not an actual head id error.
"Print head id is broken. Register with index 0 is out of range"

Looks like wicreset is expecting a smaller/different format number

Ignore that WICReset error, you hunch is correct...

Regarding the ink droplets, if your cartridge is the self-priming type the chances are high that the problem is simply that there's a bit too much ink in the cartridge and gravity/pressure is forcing ink through. If I'm right, you should find that when you do a head clean and print off a reasonable amount of blue output, the ink level will drop off and another quick clean will result in equilibrium being restored.

It's basically the design of the self-priming cartridges which remove the need for priming but neglect to allow sufficiently for the head of ink sitting above the outlet.

Oh and as for the two plugs required... This is incorrect... One plug is the fill hole (this does need plugging) the other is the vent hole and this needs to be open. If you don't allow the cartridge to breath it will slowly create a vacuum in the cartridge as the air is needed to replace the ink as it's used up and thus if it can't, nothing moves.

Actually here ( http://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/which-refillable-cartridges-for-epson.4942/ ) mikling mentions the two hole design and i believe he is right because the ink hole plug does indeed seem to plug the outer and inner hole. I believe the cyan cartridge is defective...it somehow works after 2-3 clean cycles but whenever it rests on the parking posistion for more than 3-4 hours somehow ink leaks out. Too much/too little ink is not the reason this happens. I am expecting new cartridges soon since at least the cyan is obviously defective and hopefully the problem will be fixed.

Ah... Ok, I misunderstood your "two hole" reference. I assumed you meant that you were plugging up the vent hole too, hence my reply.

Top picture = EPSON 1500w original Claria inks/Epson Premium Glossy Photo paper

Bottom picture = EPSON L800/1800 inks/Epson Premium Glossy Photo paper

The difference though small is most apparent on the trees and grass. Will try to upload the ooc jpg somewhere because it is large for here

I will post more as soon as I have all the problems regarding the refillables sorted out.

A comparison of L800 and fuji DL ink on the same paper:
http://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/which-pigment-ink-for-epson-1500w.9323/page-11#post-89632
In both cases the L800 color seems to be on the cold side.

But a similar difference may occur with different paper.
So color matching of any other ink, or paper, without profiling is a matter of luck.

Yes, it is indeed on the colder side...
Will have to do some more testing to confirm BUT for 9,5eur per 70ml i can live with that shift. As much as i would like to get my hands on the fuji ink because of the size of the cartridges the price is very high....unless there is someone that sells smaller quantities.
Photos look quite better than from my rx520 using the same l800 ink...i just hope that the cartridge replacement will solve my flooding problem.