Digital BW, The Print

Recently I experienced a significant drop in density printing Piezo 
inks on my Epson 7000. I had Epson clean the machine and replace 
heads, dampers, wipers, and do a firmware update. This procedure has 
restored my printer to it's original condition.

What I found during the maintenance was a buildup of sludge in the 
printer. First let me say that normall we see Piezo ink sludge build 
up on the cleaning station. This also occurs with certain pigments 
other than Piezo from what I am told, but I have no first hand 
knowledge of this. What we did find was that the sludge had built up 
in the dampers and heads and resulted in the clogging of these parts 
resulting in the decreased density problem.

We have spoken much about whether or not this is an Epson problem, or 
a Piezo ink problem. Unfortunately, I am not an expert in ink 
chemistry nor am I experienced enough with other printers and inks to 
come to a viable and objective conclusion. In all fairness to Cone 
Editions and Inkjet Mall, there are large numbers of users that 
haveno problems at all. However, locally (South Florida) there at 7-8 
Piezo users that frequent the Palm Beach Photographic Centre of which 
I sit on the Board of Directors. As an aside, these comment and 
opinions are my own and have nothing to do with the centre in anyway.

Jon Cone and Bill Bergh have been very forthcoming with information 
regarding this problem. I promised them that I would not publicly 
divulge some of what I was told and will keep my promise.  However, 
Friday I told Bill that I would give Piezo inks one last try. I was 
very hesitant because my printer is now working like new.

Friday afternoon I purged the Epson inks and flushed the system. I 
loaded fresh Piezo carts into the printer. The next 3 hours were 
spent trying to get an acceptable nozzle check. Please keep in mind 
that the Epson inks were working fine. I was now frustrated beyond 
belief. I did cleaning cycles, KK2 cleanings, and 2 initial ink fills 
from the service mode software all to no avail. About that time I 
received a call from a friend who was experiencing clogs with his 
system and asked me to come over and help him.

I purges the Piezo inkset, flushed the system once more, loaded the 
MIS FS inks that I had just received earlier in the week from MIS. I 
installed a new CIS and got a perfect nozzle check with only one 
cleaning cycle after loading the inks.

I them went over my friends and we tried to load his Piezo inks into 
his 1280. We fought with is for 2 hours. As I was already late for 
dinner, we removed the Piezo inks and installed the MIS VM inkset. 
First run we had a perfect nozzle check.

At this point, I have decided to use the MIS FS inks. I reported 
earlier at Paul's request on my initial comparison of Piezo and MIS 
FS densities.

The PiezoBW24RIP for the 7000 is a great well written software 
printing solution. I believe that the inks may be problematic and I 
sincerely hope that InkJet Mall can work out the issues. As I 
mentioned, Jon and Bill have been helpful, genuinely concerned, and 
are trying to get to the bottom of these problems. They have shared 
with me news of new products that are very exciting and will do much 
to continue the evolution of this technology. But, I feel that the 
state of the art is such that we need to perfect the mechanical 
problems before we tackle additional aesthetic issues and 
advancements.

I know some have asked why I have flip flopped in my views on the ink 
issue. The truth is I was trying to be diplomatic and be fair to all. 
I don't want to see any business suffer and wish all well.

Regards
Mike