Bad printing results on Workforce Pro WF-5620DWF aka WF-4630

[Yann]

After one year of working my WF-5620DWF (nearly identical to WF-4630) produces a very bad printing look.
B/w text has smears and letters sometimes are slanting to the left. The nozzle test shows gaps at black and magenta. Normal head cleaning showed no improvement. I have always used original Epson cartridges. product warranty is still valid.
Has anyonone any ideas?
Thanks
Yann

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

yes, your nozzle check shows some missing nozzles, but those would not create the smeared and slanted letters. Could you please make a scan of a small part of text showing these effects ?

 

[The Hat]

@Yann, I would recommend you clean the bottom of your print head and capping station, plus give the timing strip a good wipe of a cloth soaked in window cleaner, then do another test print..

 

[websnail]

While I may be asking the most obvious question here but... Do you need to do a printhead alignment?

 

[Yann]

Here are the text samples. It is noticable that slanting and smearing do not occur at the same time. There is always one whole line which is either slanted or smeared.

 

[Yann]

While I may be asking the most obvious question here but... Do you need to do a printhead alignment?

Printhead alignment has already been done with no improvement,

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

please redo the printing with the 'fast' option in the extended driver menu settings off, that stops the bidirectional printing. If it is getting better with this test you should clean the timing strip , a gray plastic strip going from left to right across the printing range and passing through a sensor on the back side of the printhead carriage. You would need to release the printhead from its resting position - turn the unit off, then on again and pull the power plug as soon as the printhead starts moving away from the base position. As The Hat suggested above wipe off the timing strip with a piece of kitchen paper/towel and window cleaner and then repeat the printout.

 

[websnail]

Looked at the nozzle check again and there's at least 2 nozzles in the black (right-most) that appear to be deflecting although that doesn't explain the issue properly.. Wonder if there's something clumped in the nozzle or just at the nozzle exit that's contributing to this... Nozzle isn't blocked but deflection does appear to be present...

 

[Ionlab]

For the slanted lines I think fast printing maybe the culprit. For the smearing maybe it has to do with the feeding mechanism and the distance between printhead and paper. Is the paper too "thin"?
Does the smearing occur in the same spot between different pages?

 

[Yann]

Thank you all for your advices. Due to the valid warranty, today epson exchanged my printer against a new one.