Overview
Here's an overview photo of most of the images, closeups of each are below.
The black and magenta heads are brand new and were professionally installed.
The cyan and yellow heads are old and have some damage, and are due to be replaced as soon as we sort out this problem with ink starvation in the new, black head.
The ink cartridges are all around 50% or more full.
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On Startup
On startup the test print gives a full pattern, everything looks fine.
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After 15 Minutes Idle
After starting the machine and letting it sit idle for 15 minutes, you can see the cyan ink test
pattern having problems, which was expected (this is an old head that shows indication of a head
strike). However, the black head is brand new and is also starting to show some problems.
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Reboot and Normal Clean
Rebooting the machine (turning it on and off) did not help at all. I
let it sit for another 10-15 minutes while I read the docs, then
decided to try a normal clean. The normal clean restored both heads
fully.
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Parrot Test prints
I let it sit idle for another 10-15 minutes while I found a test image, loaded into rasterlink and set up the job.
The print first was 2 passes, the second was 8 passes (the note on the photo is incorrect, it was 8 passes, not 16) and was much better, except for the lack of black and possibly cyan.
Then I did another test pattern, you can see the black is almost nonexistent and half of cyan is gone.
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Another Normal Clean
I did another normal clean, then fiddled with something for about 5 minutes, did a test pattern, then printed the 8-pass parrot again. You can see the print was much better, so soon after the normal clean.
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After Manual Ink Draw
I did a manual ink draw on the black ink line with a hypo, just to make sure there were no problems with the damper or lines. We saw no bubbles, although with black link it's pretty hard to see sometimes.
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Solid Black Test print
I printed a solid bar of black, expecting to see the black fade as it printed, but it didn't. The test print immediately after showed a good, complete test pattern.
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Parrot after Black
I printed some black again, then tried the 8-pass parrot again. It came out pretty well, maybe a little banding... and again, the black test pattern is almost noniexistent and half the cyan is gone.
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After Soft clean
Just before wrapping up, I did a soft clean and it's nearly back to a full pattern.
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