Having cleared my printer to a perfect nozzle check early on Monday morning I implemented a new active routine: using Harvey Head Cleaner morning and evening to automatically print a nozzle check, a wet sponge in the paper tray (no cover yet as I can't find a suitable anti-static vinyl cover or bit of polythene big enough and no one, not even Epson, sell a cover for the 4xxx series printers in the UK) and occasional printing most evenings. So on Saturday morning, six days on how is it going?
Well, all through the week I have had perfect nozzle checks and enjoyed being able to print on demand. Come Saturday morning the auto nozzle check print showed the LM channel about 40% missing - this despite it printing both prints and nozzle check fine last night.
Trying not to despair I thought I would run the lowest level (according to the Epson manual) KK0 nozzle cleaning cycle from the LCD display on the printer (see my SSCL posting for more info on this). I then ran a nozzle check to confirm that the nozzles were clear and now I find that it is worse - nearly all the LM is missing, and to add insult to injury it has used up 14.1ml of ink, more than the 4-9ml range that cleaning via the printer utility normally uses. Below are the nozzle checks from yesterday through to this morning after the clean.
On top of that when I tried to run a nozzle check from the utility after the cleaning cycle the utility refused saying that the maintenance tank was full, while telling me that there was 87% left. Also that all the ink cartridges were empty... turning it off and on again solved that problem.
In disgust I have set the head to puddle soak in distilled water...
Also it has prompted me to look for a cover again - I have just found someone on eBay in the USA who sells them, so I have ordered one.
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