Ink Separation and shelf life.

[GoonerGary]

I have some concerns about ink shelf life and wanted to know would ink separation be really noticeable or is it microscopic?

[Benn81]

Hey Gooner,

Funny you mention this, I was having blockage headaches and decided to flush the Ciss tanks out and buy new Ciss system. While doing so I took a couple of photos. A towel covered in congealed ink drops and the other photo is the ink tank where i have circled large blobs. The worst of it all went down the drain before i decided to take photos.
I'ts no wonder I had so many issues.
the inks where in date but shows that Storing your ink is very important - lesson learned

vB_ID:3116

inkmuck.jpg (15.9 KiB) Viewed 26 times

vB_ID:3116

inkmuck.jpg (15.9 KiB) Viewed 26 times

[GoonerGary]

Thanks for the photos. Were you getting good nozzle checks or was it obvious there were major problems? I'm trying to figure if my banding is caused by dried up ink in the print head, bad ink or duff Epson printers.

I'm getting perfect nozzle checks, but banding in the reds, so not sure whether I should be using my old ink in the new printer due to arrive. Trying not to spend hundreds on new ink!

[Benn81]

My printing was on and off. Id get good nozzle check then bad, but i have always had this using Artainium ink and i blamed it on using CISS also. I would get it working again but then id have issues after 50 pages or so. The ink lines eventually blocked up and i could not purge ink to the cartridges, Thats when i had enough.

I once had the problem with banding, this was due to installing windows 64bit, I had to download from epson an update to match . I was on Epson Chat and they provided the link. The banding stopped.

I presume you have check all your printer settings. Perhaps install your icc profile again and make sure all settings are correct. I'm far from an expert and I am sure somebody else will correct me and provide a better answer

Price of inks! Tell me about it!.

[GoonerGary]

I suspected the driver after reading something online the other day. Tried to install the original driver from the CD on a laptop without a CD player! I thought an automatic update might have been the culprit. The banding is very different depending on the media setting I choose, Epson matte, Epson Photo etc. Tried different papers also.

Was it the most up to date driver you installed to fix the 64 bit problem?

[Benn81]

Hey Gary,

Yes the most up to date driver for 64bit windows at the time, This was back in the middle of the year. I have managed to find the driver they provided, If your using 64bit windows 7, PM me with your email I can pass the file on, May not fix the problem but would rule it out.

Epson Matte works fine for me with ciss but refillable cartridges drip on that setting. You have not changed any settings in coreldraw?. check your print settings, basically go through everything like you were starting from scratch.


Benn

[GoonerGary]

I'm still none the wiser after today. I downloaded two different drivers from the Epson website, but one had half the options missing and the colours were way out, so my custom profile would have been tied to to my normal driver. But there was no change to the banding.

I had a good look at the ink, but I couldn't see any real separation. There were tiny 1mm bubbles, but any lumps I think were due to dust in the container. So I'm not sure. Maybe I'll ring the technical department for the ink manufacturer.