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by Steve Metildi on Sat Oct 28, 2017 3:29 pm
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I've owned an Epson 7900 for about seven years.  When I run the nozzle check program it shows no clogs and all 10 ink sets look fine or how they have over the last several years when I've prepared good quality prints.  However recently when I print photos they turn out like either the magentas or maybe orange channel isn't working correctly although the nozzle check shows no clogs and the prints have no banding or other issues.  I use an NEC 31" 4K calibrated monitor and soft proof the photos before I print.  Any advice would be most appreciated. 

Note that for some reason it shows that I only have two total NSN posts when I've been a lifetime member for years and have over 4,000 posts.  

Steve


Last edited by Steve Metildi on Sun Oct 29, 2017 8:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
 

by signgrap on Sat Oct 28, 2017 8:08 pm
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Instead of printing a nozzle check which only prints fine lines can you print solid blocks of colors.
Sometimes when you print an area it will show up problems such as you describe.
Dick Ludwig
 

by E.J. Peiker on Sat Oct 28, 2017 10:53 pm
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Weird on only showing 2 posts because when I go into your account I see 4369 posts! No clue what that's about. As for the issue, in addition to the tip above, it may be that one of your inks has gone bad or been contaminated somehow. You might want to print a color swatch with each discrete color of your ink set to see if one is really off. Or DL a color checker and print it and see if that reveals any clues.
 

by signgrap on Sun Oct 29, 2017 8:55 am
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I should have stated in my above post that the blocks of color need to be printed large i.e. about 1.5" square. (I use Qimage which allows you to print out blocks of each ink color.)

When my 4800 started to act up in a way that was similar to what you describe, Epson tech support asked me to print out large solid blocks of each color. Once I did that I was able to see Magenta and Light Magenta were "leaking" together. What was happening occurred in the printhead (4800 was more than 10 years old), somehow the ink channels in the head had eroded where ink in the magenta channel flowed into the adjacent light magenta channel. When looked at closely you could see an uneven color showing small areas of magenta and in the light magenta square. After hearing that Epson said the printhead needed to be replaced.
I went back and checked the the Nozzle Check print out with a 10 power loupe under a very bright light. When I did this I could see in the light magenta color that some of the fine lines were actually magenta and not light magenta the correct color. Only about 15% of the lines were magenta but when you looked at the Nozzle Check printout unmagnified the color looked fine as you weren't aware that 15% of the tiny lines were actually magenta. Remember that a nozzle check only shows if a nozzle is clogged, not that the color is correct.

I did not replace the printhead, as the 4800 was always getting clogged - I purchased an Epson SC 800 hasn't clogged once in 2 years.
Dick Ludwig
 

by Royce Howland on Sun Oct 29, 2017 9:38 am
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There are a number of things that could be causing your issue, Steve, from physical head problems like the one Dick describes, to colour management issues. I echo the suggestions to try printing out ink colour blocks and see if there's evidence of colour contamination between the channels. Depending on what that shows, you might also need to provide more details about your printing configuration so we can think about anything potentially going wrong in there -- what operating system you're running, what application you're printing from, your general colour management & specific printer profile settings, etc.

Also, you described the issue as "either the magentas or maybe orange channel isn't working correctly." Does this mean you're seeing too much or not enough of the colours in question? Can you post a crop of a test image along with a crop of a scan or camera phone photo of a bad print from the same area of the image?
Royce Howland
 

by Steve Metildi on Mon Oct 30, 2017 8:26 pm
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Dick, EJ, and Royce thank you for all your suggestions. I'm going to try printing some color blocks as recommended and I'll follow-up with the results.

Stave
 

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