EPSON Stylus Pro 4900

Issues

Vendor Manual

Maintenance

EXP396

Aug 28, 2021All nozzles were clogged when we arrived. We were able to unclog all, but the C and LLK again, but over night the clogging came back. IT was decided to send the printer to shore for repair.

EXP395C

Aug 2, 2021Unfortunately, even working with EPSON Support, I was unable to unclog the nozzles. It is recommended that this Printer gets a service. Please refer to the Confluence manual (http://confluence.ship.iodp.tamu.edu:8090/display/LN/Epson+Stylus+Pro+4900+Maintenance) about cleaning to note the regular and extreme Nozzle head cleaning that was undertaken to try and unclog the blockage. A poster was also made for easy reference to these procedures.

Jun 16, 2021 Two severely clogged nozzles (cyan and light light black) were noted during the second week of the expedition. It is highly likely that the cause is from expired and dried ink.

It was decided to dispose of all the (really) expired ink and order fresh ink cartridges, which should be available for the start of the next expedition. There was a total of 88 unused, but expired (2016-2018 best by dates) cartridges that were recycled. In response to so many expired ink cartridges, the inventory sheet was changed so the ROP was only 2. Some ROP's were as high as 13 for one cartridge color! The printer status hold the number of total prints, which is only 11589 for it's 9 years of operation on the ship, which explains why majority of the expired ink cartridges were marked with EXP356. Maybe the printer was under utilized, but it has now been determined that you do not need to store this much ink onboard.

Recommendations from the EPSON website "Epson ink cartridges come with a “Best If Used By” date. This date appears to be approximately two years after the date of manufacture. Epson recommends replacing your installed ink cartridges after six months, whether they're empty or not, to ensure high quality prints and to avoid clogged nozzles".

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