At 11:54 AM,  Anonymous said...

Gee, Pete, I hate to say this, but my 4800 doesn't clog. I'm afraid you may have a "lemon".

What irratates me though, is all the "self-cleanings" this printer goes through.

By the way, I always keep my 4800 "ON", as I have with all the printers (regardless of brand) I've owned.

Scott

 

At 11:56 AM,  Pete Walsh said...

Hi Scott, I don't think it's a lemon - read around, it's a common gripe re the 4000 and now the 4800. What do you think all those self-cleanings your printer goes through is about? :)

 

At 2:11 PM,  Stephen Best said...

The fact that you're getting gaps in previously clear colours seems to suggest feed rather than head problems (other than in the cyan). You may want to take all the carts out and given them a shake. I haven't seen anything other than very occasional clogs (and just for one of two gaps) on my 4800 or 7800. Humidity is generally low here.

 

At 2:15 PM,  Pete Walsh said...

Thanks Stephen. I haven't seen the above behaviour (of clear ones going 'bad') for sometime now. But then again, I generally don't run an auto nozzle check these days, just do the manual check. If you read around online other 4000/4800 users report the same behaviour with Auto Nozzle.

 

At 6:49 PM,  Ted said...

Pete, do a google search on MIS Autoprint. It's a very simple utility that lets you print a test strip everyday [or however you schedule], and my printer hasn't clogged. I had to modify one of the JPEGs that come with the software to print 8 strips instead of 7 using photoshop. I also reduced the size of the strips to minimize the ink usage. According the printer utility, it uses about 15cents of ink/print. That's far better than 20ml of ink that the printer flushes out during auto cleaning. Give it a try.

 

At 7:24 PM,  Pete Walsh said...

Thanks Ted, great tip, I'll check it out.

I haven't used Auto Clean for some time now based on how much ink it uses, as shown in the above scan which is from around the time I was having the 0088 error problems with my previous 4800 and was pretty much trying everything to get to the bottom of it.

Generally I try to print every second day max excepting the weekends or when I'm away. When I don't have any work to print I try to do a manual nozzle check every second day, which I would guess doesn't even use 15c of ink

 

At 4:16 PM,  Anonymous said...

I just read your notes on the auto print head test on x800 series printers and thought I'd throw in some minimal experience I've had with a friend's new 9800. He's only had it about a month and has been printing every day. We recently noticed a clogged head so we ran the auto nozzle check. The output looked scary... many missed boxes in the patterns... and once it failed the cleaning after 5 passes (it gave up). We later ran a manual nozzle check and to our surprise, it showed only one or two missing nozzles and passed the second check after a manual cleaning. After a few tests back and forth between auto and manual nozzle checks... it appears for some unknown reason that the auto nozzle check always produced the appearance of a bigger problem, when a manual nozzle check would pass visual inspection. Not sure what's up here but thought I'd offer our experience (although not thorough in the least... just 3-4 runs of each in one evening).

Mark

 

At 6:21 PM,  Gerard said...

Hi Pete,

I've had my 4800 for 5 months and in this time only printed one nozzle check. The print out showed that the Yellow, Light Black, Light Cyan, Light Megenta & Light Light Black were blocked. Fortunately, all were cleared after the clean, but, gee it does use some ink!

I might try Ted's use of MIS Autoprint to prevent any clogging.

Cheers

Gerard

 

At 6:37 PM,  Stephen Best said...

I run an "auto" every time I power up ... and leave the printer powered up for the rest of the day if I'm going to use it again. If I haven't used the printer for 3-4 or more days, I do a power up anyway then just do a nozzle check. On the few occasions it's asked for a "power clean" (generally after I've been away for a week) I've said "no" and just done an "auto" instead. According to the readout, an "auto" by itself consumes about 0.4ml of ink. The printer will go through a cleaning cycle if it thinks it's due for one and there's nothing you can do about this.

Certainly, I wouldn't start a big print job without a full nozzle check first. There's so many nozzles on these new machines that it would be hard to pick one or two dropping out with a casual glance at the print. It continually amazes me the number of people who complain about crappy output on EpsonWideFormat@yahoogroups.com only to then discover that a nozzle check shows lots of dropouts. If you're going to print with pigments, "wasting" some ink with nozzle checks is a fact of life ... all IMHO.

 

At 12:54 PM,  Pete Walsh said...

I'm not sure it comes down to being a 'fact of life' of using pigment inks.

I think you can only compare how fickle a machine is based on other ones you've owned. The 2100 I've had for over three years now has been incredible when it comes to clogging - virtually non existent over that entire period... using pigment inks.

Clearly the 4800 is not a 2100 - it's built for pro level usage so it's a little disappointing that it is proving far more prone to nozzle blockages vs the 2100. Whether it's due to the different ink transport, the head, the K3 ink, a combination of any number of factors - who knows - but my guess is Epson knows, and that it reflected in how aggressive the printer is when it comes to recommending power cleans and the auto checking/cleaning it does on power up.

It's not a deal breaker for me - I guess I just imagined the 4800 would perform as good if not better vs the 2100 re nozzles. Like I've mentioned - now I know, I just make sure I keep the printer ticking over one way or another.

 

At 8:57 AM,  Anonymous said...

As a technician who has worked on several different brands of wide format inkjets I must say it is a fact of life that you will get blocked and missfiring nozzles form time to time, because of the type of market the Epson 4800 is aimed at users tend to be fussy about this so Epson probably think it is better to self clean the print head regularly than to risk substandard prints.

 

At 11:48 AM,  Pete Walsh said...

I think it comes down to the frequency of 'time to time' as you call it. Every now and then might be ok, but regularly? I don't think so. YMMV.

 

At 8:33 PM,  Stephen Best said...

The point Anonymous was making is that the 4800 (and up) are "Pro" models and, by necessity, designed for higher tolerances and heavier use. If you're going to defeat offers to do a "power clean" you have to expect occasional clogs. There's so many environmentals/usage patterns that come into play that it's hard to predict when clogs will strike. But if you can clear them, no real harm done ... other than the cost of ink used. I simply factor this into the cost of prints I do for clients. Same as I would for a maintenance contract ... if I had one :-).

Don't feel too bad ... my 7800 went through four pages of nozzle checks the other day. But it was really hot/dry the last week.

Stephen Best
www.macquarieeditions.com.au

 

At 10:16 PM,  Pete Walsh said...

It's an interesting point Stephen. The 4800 being way more prone to clogging probs (in my experience) than my old 2100 over three years is a little like implying a 1 series EOS dSLR should be more temperamental and prone to day to day glitches than a 20D because it's built to higher tolerances/for heavy use - of course, it ain't so :)

My point (and I don't feel too bad about it, just find this an interesting glitch) is if I'm using a 4800 daily it's not acceptable in my book to have recurring, frequent clogging problems. Obviously everyone is going to draw the line in a different spot.

Leaving room for waste of any type in pricing is obviously a good move - but I don't like unnecessary wastage, and I don't enjoy unnecessary babysitting of expensive hardware that should require little maintenance.

 

At 2:30 AM,  Anonymous said...

I have owned several Epson Inkjet over past five years and It is very annoying that if you do not use the printer frequently it clogs the head. Finally I recently boight HP Photosmart Printer and it never have this clogged ink problem. Even if I don't use it for couple of weeks it still prints clean and crisp page.

My guess is that HP does it's head cleaning automatically when needed.

I love this HP Printer. I still own one Epson Printer and the headache continues since I do not print very frequently.

I have been looking for some utility that I can schedule to clean head regularly like every 24 hrs or so but no luck so far.

 

At 12:11 AM,  Steven Benjamin said...

Pete, we use an auto macro program to click on the nozzle check button to print an auto check every night at 5:00am - By doing this daily we have never had a printing problem. Do a search on google for auto macro and you will see many programs (they usually cost about 30 bucks.)

 

At 12:20 AM,  Anonymous said...

I have a 4800 that is about two years old. It get used only every month or so and I now find that one of the heads is clogged. I've tried two 'power cleans' and the manual nozzel check. It remains clogged. Do any of you guys have a suggestion? Thanks for your help!

Michael

 

At 7:20 AM,  Anonymous said...

Ok I see the 4800 clogs for everyone not just me. Here is my pickle... everytime I start a print job of 2 or more pages it prints that silly test page in between each page. How do I turn that off? Its wasting my good hammermill paper and my precious ink. Anyone???

signed: Hate to Waste

 

At 7:33 PM,  max said...

Hello to anyone, Kindly help me to my printer epson stylus pro 4800. the black ink didn't comes out. I cleaned already the bumper, changed the head, strong cleaning, head cleaning and etc., there is no warning to my printer that its had a problem. cyan.magenta, and yellow is ok but the black is not because it didn't comes out even a little one, nothing black to print, Please kindly help me?

 

At 4:26 AM,  Altar Imaging said...

I talked to a Technical Rep at ImagingSpectrum about the plugged nozzle issues with Epson 4000 and 4800..it's a known issue and I was told that it is caused by air getting in the lines..the new prints from Epson have a pressured system which minimizes the problems we are experiencing..it is very annoying to be throwing money out the window with these ink wasters...think I'll replace this piece of crap in 2010

Gary

 

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