aarrgh, stupid horizontal lines on Epson R1800

[Vickko]

When it works, it is great, but this afternoon, I'm getting horizontal bands on my Epson R1800.

I've cleaned the heads almost 10 times, and you can imagine how much ink that has used (I dare say wasted).

Are there other magic tricks and chants to get this working again?

I haven't done an alignment yet; I read on the web that it might do the trick.

I've changed the gloss optimizer, both blacks and now the yellow is too low to permit a cleaning.

aargghhh......

Vick

[Johnmcd]

Hi Vick,

Sorry I can't help. But I can sympathise. I just bit the bullet and went CISS as I was sick of the vicious circle of head cleaning that continued as each colour got lower and lower.

So far so good and the colour prints look great but I can't seem to get a 'grey' B/W. Always a green tint. How are your B/W's?

John

[mdarnton]

I loved the prints my Epsons made when they were working, which wasn't often, so I switched to Canon. It doesn't print B&W well, but at least it prints. I can't tell you how much Epson ink I flushed trying to clear banding.

The best hint I ever read was that a child's ear syringe will perfectly fit the nipple that comes up from the head into the cart. Fill the syringe with windex, slip it on the nipple, squeeze, and leave it for an hour, then come back and squeeze again, and reach under and wipe off the printing face. Then try ink again.

[Steve M.]

Epson printer owners should have a 12 step program. The printers will drive you nuts AND broke. I've had this banding issue on the 1280, 2200, and 1400. Never had much success getting the problem to stay fixed, unfortunately. In my case, the ink waste from cleaning was minimal since I was using black only printing. Only one ink cartridge had MIS Eboni black ink, the others contained MIS solvent, and were never in use except in head cleaning cycles. But I sure wasted a lot of good paper and a lot of time. Now, my prints come from the darkroom or I upload things to online printing services.

[Vickko]

So I printed a bunch of 4x6's this morning, just to use up the yellow cartridge. It works.

No streaks.

Maybe it was its way of saying to me "I'm tired".

Vick

[shadowfox]

Switch to the comparable Canon printer.
I did, and I'm glad, why? user-replacable printer heads.