Horizontal banding issues that get worse over the course of a print job

[keep-it-real]

Hey all! K question for you. I have an Epson f6070 that starts printing with horizontal bands which get worse over the course of a print job. I can start with perfectly clean nozzle check and the first few images often look good before the banding kicks in. Especially on the darker colors, it seems to be over-depositing ink on one side of the pass and not enough on the other side. Eventually, consistent white streaks start forming that are painfully obvious. A nozzle check after the print job shows gaps across all of the colors, all at about the middle of the print head.

I've tried pretty much everything at this point. I'm using high quality and genuine epson inks that are well within their expiry dates (although they've been in their cartridges for about 5 months now). My printer room is humidified, I've done multiple cleanings, even a manual head cleaning. I'm using Wasatch SoftRip and it's printing uni-directional, highest quality, 4 passes (basically as slow and high quality as it gets). I've been trying to print at least once a week just to keep the thing well-lubed. This printer is old and well used so there's a decent chance that the head is failing and if that sounds like the case, definitely let me know. It may just be time to buy a new one. Any thoughts or recommendations would be sweet, thanks!

[GoonerGary]

Checked the head alignment?

Has your driver defaulted to a different media paper type or ICC?

If you are not using it a lot, you might have dried up ink partially blocking the nozzles despite a perfect nozzle check. A J cloth soaked in IPA and leave under the print head for 30 mins to 2 hours can often improve the print quality.

[pisquee]

I'd recommend getting it looked at - sounds like the ink system can't supply enough ink consistently to the head, so likely something wrong betwen the ink carts and the head - maybe the supply system is bit blocked, needs new dampers?

[keep-it-real]

Yup head alignment is good. I checked the paper type settings and they are correct. The paper type is set up on the printer itself and those settings are supposed to override anything from the RIP software.

I gave the IPA soaked cloth a shot and did another head cleaning afterwards. As well as mixing up the ink a bit with a turkey baster. As of right now, it's not printing with any white streaks but the banding with heavier streaks is still showing on darker colors. Which is just good enough for now. Thanks for chiming in Gary!

[keep-it-real]

Got it k this is good feedback, thanks pisquee. Nice to know there might be something else going on besides just the usual. I'll probably just move towards buying a new printer. This one just hasn't been consistent enough when it matters! Thanks so much for the help!