Digital BW, The Print

Peter,

I have had several serious clogs and ended up putting in the Epson 
carts.  Both times the clogs cleared in short order with a few 
cleaning cycles.  After the first, I pulled the Epson carts, taped up 
the vents and holes, and then used them again without a problem a 
month and a half later.  MIS sells Epson replacement carts for a 
fraction of the OEM price that they claim work just as well.  At the 
end of the day, it is probably easier than all of the Windex tricks, 
and in the hands of someone like myself who is mechanically 
challenged, there is probably a lot less risk of doing serious damage 
to the printer.

Steve

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Peter A. Klein" 
<pklein@2...> wrote:
> I use an Epson 1280 with the MIS VM hextone inkset.  I recently 
came 
> back from a 10-day vacation, during which the heat was off in my 
> house.  I ran a nozzle check, a couple of cleaning cycles, printed 
a 
> print, and then checked the nozzles again.  All the inks but one 
> cleared up nicely on the nozzle check, showing the normal 4-line 
> diagonal pattern for each ink.  But the lightest gray ink is only 
> showing the two upper lines.
> 
> I tried the Windex-on-the-sponge trick (from the Piezo website).  
No 
> help.  I then tried the more drastic cleaning, removing the "color" 
> cartridge and blowing Windex through the print head via a plastic 
> tube (stopping well before any air got into the print head).  I 
> believe the lightest gray is in the yellow position, which is the 
> rightmost intake tube in the print head, as you look down on it. 
This 
> was followed by a couple of cleaning cycles.  
> 
> This got the lower two lines of the light gray ink partially 
> displaying, but then they went away again after I printed a couple 
of 
> small purge patterns followed by more nozzle checks.  By then I'd 
> exhausted the ink cartridge and switched to a new one.  A second 
> Windex treatment had no further effect.  
> 
> The funny part of all this is that my prints look OK.  I'm probably 
> losing a smidge of highlight detail, but it doesn't make that much 
> difference.
> 
> Any thoughts on how to proceed?  Just keep printing and hope the 
clog 
> eventually dissolves?  Use Fantastic instead of Windex?  Buy some 
> Epson color ink and print color for a while, hoping the native ink 
> will dissolve the MIS stuff?  I'll send it in to Epson if I must, 
but 
> I'd rather not if I don't have to.
> 
> Thanks for any advice
> --Peter Klein
> Seattle