Shake That Booty - With Epson Inkjet Printers

A scary tale with a happy ending.

I printed some business cards for myself over the weekend on my Epson R3000 printer. Those of you who have them know how versatile they are - digital art prints, plain parer documents, CD labels, etc. Well, you can also make some pretty nifty business cards for yourself with Pages - the Apple program that goes with their iMac products.

You need a stiffish sort of paper to do this. In my case I selected a box from the famous manufacturer " Whatever Is Left Over On The Shelf ". They make a lot of the paper around my place...I had the remains of a box of thick, rough paper that I had experimented with some years ago. Hated the look of the art prints on it but it would do for business cards.

As it was matte surface I needed to change the ink choice on the R3000. This is a series of deliberate commands - unlike the R3880 it does not automatically sense what is needed - you have to deliberately tell it what to do. Not unlike some teenagers...

The file went through the printer but the results looked foul. I ran a nozzle check and was horrified to find there was no matte black printing at all. I had visions of a new printer - ouch. But faithfully I started the cleaning cycle....and at each subsequent nozzle check more of the head squares reported for duty. At last they were all there - and the business cards were duly done.

This bugged me as the day before I had printed out some A4 pictures with no problem at all. How could a head clog completely in one day?

Aha. Then I thought - the previous day's printing was with gloss black, as had all the printing tasks been for the last 8 months. There was my mistake - while the printer was regularly exercising it's little electronic organs on all the other inks and I thought that all was safe, the MK had gone flat and stale. Indeed the spare MK ink cartridge that I keep on the shelf above the printer was getting on toward its use-by date. Time to print through it and the one in the printer to keep that line clear.

Nearly caught. Now I know I won't be caught again. Now you know - go print something with both types of black and make sure YOU'RE safe.