Digital BW, The Print

Craig,

Good luck!

I'm on my third spongless color cart in my 1280. The first never did
work properly and I soon replaced it with a second. It worked briefly
at first, but then began to drive me nuts. The black cart has worked
virtually flawlessly from the beginning. 

Like you, I kept thinking it was the print head, but others here and
MIS tech led me to the same conclusion that you've arrived at.

I eventually gave up on my second spongeless cart and asked MIS for a
replacement. They sent me a pre-filled cart instead. it worked
flawlessly until it ran out of ink. At that point, I decided that I
must have had two faulty color spongeless carts. So, I decided to
order a third one.

I used the same standard fill procedure I've always used and it worked
 great for a few weeks even after refilling. No problems at all. I was
elated and emailed MIS to let them know that I finally had one that
worked. 

I probably shouldn't have done that! It, too, has begun to fail
intermittently. Sometimes it's serious banding on one or two colors,
but more often it is completely dropping one or two colors. Usually
it's the LC or LM, but sometimes it's the Y or C. Never, until this
morning, has the M dropped out completely on this cart.

Sometimes the cart works and sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't,
it's baffling. For example, yesterday I needed to print a couple of
restored photos for a client and printed a purge pattern for a few
seconds to make sure the cart was working. It was. I put the
Hahnemuhle paper in the printer and sent the file to the printer. The
printer did a quick head cleaning and started printing. The LM didn't
print at first (about ¼") and then it did with some banding (about ¼")
and then it quit completely.

I took the cart out to pull a little LM ink with the bottom fill
adapter and tried printing the purge pattern again. Still no LM and
now the LC was banding badly. I removed the cart and pulled some ink
again and then printed the purge pattern again. The LM spurted a
little ink and then quit entirely, and now the LC and C were gone too!
I tried another head cleaning and got perfect M, LM and LC but no C or
Y. I pulled the cart and pulled some C and Y ink and printed the purge
pattern again. Nothing changed. So I let it sit overnight. 

This morning, when I printed the purge pattern, nothing had changed. I
was surprised. Often, letting it sit overnight will help. So I did a
head cleaning and printed the purge pattern again. This time only the
LC and M printed, but the M was banding badly. This was the worst I've
ever seen—only one color working properly—from any of the three carts
I've had. Subsequent efforts this morning have resulted in the M, Y
and LC printing perfectly on a regular basis, but no C or LM at all.
I'm letting it rest again now. (By the way, the vent holes are clear
and clean.)

I've always followed the MIS fill procedures. I keep the cart level
and fill slowly with the needle down near the bottom of the cart to
avoid the creation of bubbles. 

When I remove the cart to pull some ink, I keep it level. Sometimes
when pulling ink, I'll get quite a few bubbles and sometimes I don't.
There is no discernable pattern that I can identify. It seems to be
random, and a simple head-cleaning can cause one color to return and
another to drop out.

My first 1280 with a NoMoreCarts CIS and MIS inks worked flawlessly
for a few years until the printer died of old age. This second 1280
with the spongeless carts and UT2 inks has been nothing but a royal
pain in the butt. 

The fact that the pre-filled cart worked so well indicates that the
problem is the carts and not the 1280 printer, but I can't afford the
pre-filled carts.

Bottom line: I wouldn't recommend that anybody try to use these
spongeless carts in a 1280. They're a great idea, but not worth the
hassle. They've been detrimental to my business.

Tom Keesling
Hoosier Recollections


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Craig Roberts
<crgrbrts@...> wrote:
>
> A few days ago I was whining about my Epson 1280's printing problems 
> when using MIS UT2 inks in spongeless manually-reloaded cartridges.  I 
> attributed missing tones and uneven printing to easily clogged print 
> heads which required repeated cleaning cycles and short idle times.
> 
> Well, I may have the culprit all along.  The problem may not have been 
> clogging print heads, but "vapor lock".
> 
> After refilling one of my cartridges a couple of nights ago, I noted 
> that a LOT of air remained in the chambers despite my having filled
them 
> to overflowing.  That's because I filled the cartridge as it rested 
> nearly level on a table top.  Tilting the cartridge about 30 degrees 
> down toward the nozzle end, however, revealed that the chambers were 
> actually only about half-filled.  Refilling the chambers with the 
> cartridge tilted resulted in much more complete job and few, if any,
air 
> bubbles.  I've also adopted the technique of purging my syringes in the 
> bulk ink bottles by immersing the needle, filling the syringe, then 
> pushing the plunger home and repeating the filling while the needle is 
> still submerged.  I'm also inserting the needle deeply into the 
> cartridge chambers and filling them very slowly to avoid  creating air 
> bubbles and froth.
> 
> Since adopting the new ink refill routine, my Epson 1280 has been 
> working as it should.  I'll let you know if the old problems reoccur.
> 
> All the best,
> 
> Craig
> Washington, DC
>