What causes this?

[printfan1138]

I was running a few photographs through an Epson c88+ this morning and I had to change some of the cartridges. The prints were just fair but did have some banding so I was taking cartridges out and reinstalling and cleaning etc then on the very next print I got a page with solid magenta.I could see the outline of the picture and it was sharp but it was all magenta. The next photograph was also solid magenta. Then not really understanding what was causing this I went into the utility section of the printer software and printed a test page which looked good except for some banding in all colors. After that I printed another photo which came out good and was back to the proper colors, just some of that banding. I don't understand why my print head suddenly fired on just magenta and then went back to normal after printing a test page. Have any of you had this happen and what was your experience? Thanks in advance for any input! Years ago I had a canon i960 that went from excellent photo's to suddenly all magenta but on that occasion I never did get it to print anything but magenta and it dumped a lot of magenta actually soaking the pages.

 

[qwertydude]

Sounds like a flow issue. Sometimes when I print a bunch of consecutive color heavy pictures I get banding in one or several colors due to the print head sucking in some air, it's rare and only happens if I seem to print 50 or more prints without letting the printer rest or run a manual cleaning cycle. Never to the point where a color wouldn't flow anymore, but the bubbles are very difficult to remove, even several cleaning cycles in a row I'll inevitably have a couple missing nozzles. It's not recommended here but I use a cleaning cartridge and syringe filled with windex to gently, and I do mean gently, pump windex through the print head while in ink replace mode over the overspray pad, never while on the park pad as it forces air and contaminating ink into the other print heads. I've done this several times with no issue. But it's been reported this isn't ideal for the new generation of print heads due to the smaller nozzle geometry.

 

[printfan1138]

Hmmm? I'm not sure I follow you on that. Banding is not the main problem I questioned, it is the way I got a solid magenta on the entire page. The Picture is there but it's as if the entire print has been painted over with a magenta brush! Then all I did was to print a test page using the utility software and it returned to normal colors. Before I did that I was into the second page of all magenta and I got the impression that if I had not printed a test page I'd still be getting solid pages of magenta. Also, why printing a test page returned everything to normal escapes me . As I said I saw this only once before with an old Cannon i960 and I never did get that printer to stop dumping magenta. It looked as if I poured an open bottle of magenta ink onto the pages, they were litterly dripping with magenta ink!

 

[qwertydude]

Have you tried some new oem carts? If they work then you know more than likely it's in your cartridges. The Epson print head is a straight through design pretty much. It requires a slight vacuum created by the cartridges various valves and passages in the cartridges to keep the ink in the carts. If the valving becomes compromised or an air leak in the cart develops the ink can dump out, in some cases some peoples entire CISS tank can end up inside the printer.

 

[ghwellsjr]

Well, one thing's for sure, if it ever happens again, you know what to do to fix it. Printers are like computers, because they have computers in them, sometimes the software in them crashes or gets mixed up. I'll bet if you turned your printer off and back on, it would also have cleared up the problem.

 

[printfan1138]

Hey! Turning it off and back on, I never even thought of that but I bet your right, if it happens again I'll try that first. As for switching to OEM cartridges, I got the color back to normal with the 3rd party cartridges in the printer all ready so no need for OEM carts. I still have some banding on all colors especially black so I'm going to print several purge pages and if that doesn't help I have some carts with cleaning solution to run through the printer and try printing my way to a clean head. Once I get good nozzle checks and all is working properly I am going to install refillable carts with pigment inks as is called for in this printer. These carts are filled using the gravity method and then are filled while IN the printer from that point on. They hold 18 mils of ink but your only supposed to fill to about 90%. I have 4 Epson c88's around here and i want to get them all working. One has dye based inks and with Costco glossy paper the prints are really good. The one I'm now working on will stay on pigment inks and the others? I have to see what works best for my use! In the meantime my wife's Epson 1400 has been printing away happily without a hitch! What fun huh? Happy Printing gang!