I have the R1800 Chuck, and it produces very fine prints. But I'm sure
that's true of the majority of modern printers. With the gloss
optimiser it does a mean gloss finish. B/W is not meant to be as good
as some, which is worth considering if you'd like to lean that way. It
won't print an address on an envelope though, which annoys me no end.
James
On 16 Mar 2008, at 19:18, Chuck Norcutt wrote:
> For the past day or two I have been trying to come to grips with
> spending money for a tabloid size printer since my little Epson letter
> size printer apparently died. After performing its last 8x10 print
> (at
> which it did a very fine job) it informed me that the yellow cartridge
> was empty.
>
> I changed the yellow out for a new one and then noticed that the
> nozzle
> check test was showing no yellow ink at all. I ran the cleaning cycle
> and a new nozzle test only to discover that the cyan and magenta were
> now having noticeable problems and the black was looking a little
> faint.
> Clean and recheck and instead of getting better it got worse again.
> Many more cleaning cycles later (perhaps 12-15 altogether) the yellow
> was still completely non-existent and the other colors weren't far
> behind. Pulled the cartridges and reseated them several times and
> still
> no change... worse if anything.
>
> Got on the horn with Epson tech support who were sympathetic but not
> particularly helpful. They advised me I clearly had a "hardware"
> problem and that I needed to send the printer for service. No, says
> I,
> the printer is too old and too cheap to be economically serviced. To
> keep me happy and in the family they pointed me to their "loyalty"
> site
> where with a special pass key you can get some price deals on selected
> products. I finally ended up instead at the refurb shop looking
> over an
> R1800 for $399 with shipping included.
>
> But before handing over my credit card I decided to get a bit more
> drastic with the old printer. After all, if it was truly dead, I
> wasn't
> going to cause it any more harm by inadvisable repair techniques. To
> make a long story a bit shorter: I removed the cartridges which, like
> many other Epson printers, insert into the printer by being forced
> down
> over a pointed ink supply tube that feeds the print heads in some
> mysterious way. At first glance these feed tubes appear to be a solid
> acrylic cylinder about 3-4mm in diameter and 10-15mm long with a
> rounded
> tip on the end that inserts into the cartridge. But, on closer
> inspection, they seem to have a series of extremely fine slits
> arranged
> in a radial pattern around the tip.
>
> I reasoned that perhaps these very fine slits were clogged with old
> pigment ink. This didn't seem terribly likely (actually, very
> improbable) given that all of the colors had failed almost completely
> and nearly simultaneously but I had nothing to lose but a little bit
> of
> time trying to see if I could remedy that. So, I gathered up some
> cotton swabs and got the tips quite saturated with water and just
> started swabbing around the tube and over the slits on the tip. I
> used
> both ends of a clean swab on each color. When swabbing around the
> perimeter of the tube for the most part all I was picking up was clean
> looking ink. But when near the base of the tube or the tip I was
> picking up quite a bit of black. Not as dark as the black ink but
> something that clearly didn't look like nice clean cyan, magenta or
> yellow ink. Old, concentrated pigment perhaps? I don't know.
> Amazingly, after reinstalling the cartridges and running the nozzle
> check I managed to get some yellow for the very first time from that
> new
> cartridge and there was a bit more of the other colors as well. Tried
> it again and got momentarily discouraged since the nozzle check
> showed I
> has lost some ground. But I persevered and applied both ends of
> another
> 4 swabs to each color with a cleaning cycle and nozzle check after
> each
> and finally got a perfect nozzle check.
>
> So, if your old Epson printer seems to have kicked the bucket maybe
> you
> can bring it back to life. Still thinking about that R1800 though.
> When I was in Boston I had free access to two 24" wide Epson pro
> printers plus a tabloid size Epson as well. Even better, I had free
> access to someone who knew how to use them much better than I did. I
> didn't even have to pay for paper or ink (within reason). Now I don't
> know if I really want to spring for a tabloid size printer or just
> farm
> out the smallish quantity of large prints to the lab. I knew the
> answer
> a few hours ago. Now I don't.
>
> Chuck Norcutt
>
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