I got the images for the show printed on the first replacement 4900 using the USB port. I printed about 20 sheets of 17 x 22 Epson Exhibition Fiber paper, using the manual feed port in the top rear of the printer. I had a lot of trouble with my previous 4900 not liking the way I loaded the paper; on average, I get every other she loaded to the printer satisfaction, and on occasion it took five or six tries.
With that history, I was surprised and pleased when the first eight or nine prints on the replacement 4900 executed with no paper feed errors. I was beginning to think that my difficulties with the previous printer had been due to a sample variation rather than the way the printer was designed, when I got my first paper feed error. After that, I get a paper feed error every third try.
The second replacement printer arrived Monday night. It took me until today to find people to help with the unpacking of the second replacement printer and the packing of the first replacement printer for shipment back Epson. We do learn from experience, and the swap of the printers took about 20 minutes, about a third of the time that the first printer swap had taken.
I fired up the new printer, and printed out a network status page so I could get the MAC address and program a reservation into the DHCP server. The test page was illegible, and had ink droplets stains in the upper left-hand corner.
I ran a nozzle check, and found almost complete dropout of the black and light black, plus many gaps in most of the other colors. I ran the standard cleaning cycle on all colors, then did another nozzle check. Things were better, but they were still a lot of dropouts. I ran the “powerful” cleaning cycle on all colors. Another nozzle check revealed no dropouts except for one cyan, one magenta, one orange, six or seven LK, and about a dozen in the LLK ink. I ran a powerful cleaning on just the Y and LLK inks and got no improvement. I ran a powerful cleaning on the LK and black inks and got the dropouts down to three. I went back to yellow and LLK and gave them another powerful shot. No change.
I tried an auto nozzle check. The printer announced that eight nozzles were clogged. I told it to do an auto cleaning process. After it completed, I ran another nozzle check. The LLK situation was unchanged, and there were a couple of random dropouts in other inks.
I took the LLK cartridge out, shook it gently, reinserted it, ran a powerful cleaning on LLK and Y to move the ink along the tubes, and printed another nozzle check. No change. I swapped out the LLK cartridge, did a powerful cleaning, and ran yet another nozzle check. Same old same old.
The nozzle check pattern taped to the printer, performed on 4/17 before the printer was shipped to me looked good. I don’t know what could have happened to cause the nozzles to clog in shipment. I now have a printer that has all good nozzles but no Ethernet capability packed up in a box waiting to be shipped back, and one that has a dozen clogged nozzles and is unknown otherwise on my desk.
I decided to see if the printer worked otherwise before calling Epson about the nozzles.
I printed a network status sheet. The printer had gotten IP configuration data from the DHCP server, but it was the wrong IP address. I made a reservation for the printer on the DHCP server with the right IP address, power cycled the printer, and printer out another network status sheet. It had picked up the right information from the DHCP server. I printed a document (this document, in fact), using the USB port. It took a long time to print because the printer decided to do a cleaning cycle, but it looked fine. I printed out a C-sized copy of an image with lots of subtle greys, using Advanced B&W printing. I used Exhibition Fiber so that I’d have a better chance of seeing the LLK dropouts than with matte paper. I inspected the print, with extra attention to the Zone VI areas. There was obvious banding. I rotated the image ninety degrees, and printed it again. The banding was still there, in the direction that the print head moves in both pictures.
There’s no way I can use this printer as it is. This is very frustrating. Time to call Epson.
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