Digital BW, The Print

Jim,

I didn't do a definitive study. The 785 is a much cheaper printer, and
perhaps the springs are less effective, if the head is further from the pad.
I was getting clogs every day or so, and they'd take multiple cleaning
cycles or sometimes Windex treatments to unclog, when I had the lever in the
"+" position. Now, with the lever on "0" except when I'm printing on thick
paper, I get a clog every week or so. In both cases, I'm doing the same
amount of printing, on average.

I don't account for it. I'm just saying that on my particular machine,
moving the lever to "0" (which is where the manual recommends I leave it)
solved the clogging problem. Your mileage may vary.

As for warranty problems, in my very limited experience Epson seems much
more willing to swap out machines than it does to spend time solving a
problem. Maybe it's cheaper for them, in the long run.

- David

-----Original Message-----
From: jimhayes361 [mailto:jimhayes@...]
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2002 7:09 PM
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Digital BW] Re: +/0 lever, Leaving your Epson left on/off

This is an interesting theory. I have some questions:

1) Is this something you have observed and recorded in some way,
removing other variables such as time interval between prints,
humidity changes, etc? If so, can you give a rough percentage of
getting a clear nozzle in both "+" and "0" positions, that is, can you
say that if left in "0" position, you tend to get clogs only "x % of
time" vs "y%" of time in "+" position? You may also have to account
for alignment operations, which whatever position the lever is in,
move the head up and down relative to it's old position. For example,
a good test might be to align the printer with very thin paper on "0"
and compare with the printer aligned to a thick paper on "0". Then
repeat on "+" , yada, yada.

2) How then would you account for the large amount of travel possible
in the parking pad, being spring loaded to the large extent that it
is (I'm going by the 1160 and the 1280)? My guess (based on my ex-HP
mech eng experience) is that Epson engineers would design the printer
to take up head height variation due to lever position with this
design, as they could not guarentee where customers would leave the
lever or paper thickness alignment, and they wouldn't want warranty
problems. And it looks to me as if one function of the springs may be
to do exactly this.

I'm not saying you're wrong, I would just like to carry the
supposition further. I often leave the lever at "+", and would like
some clarification before I go off and design experiments around this
idea.
Thanks for the notion,
Jim H.