User_264089

<p>Philippe,<br>

Thank you very much for the info on the details of what was wrong. I could not come up with that when I was researching the problem earlier so just got a new printer. Next time if it happens I will take it in for repair.</p>

<p>Thanks again,<br>

Jon</p>

<p>Charlie, I feel your pain and frustration. I replaced mine when Epson was running a $300 rebate that allowed me to buy (from B&H) at the time for around $800 which was really about $400 out of my pocket considering the ink costs. I don't print professionally so could wait to replace when there was a sale and rebate running. As an amateur I continue to be amazed at the quality of the prints off this machine but I have to admit I might look very close at other brands if it happens again. I keep reading other post from pros using it daily without issues so maybe this problem is not that common. If you do switch to another I would love to hear your experience.</p>

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<p>Joe, thanks for the information. Your explanation of ink delivery problems certainly make sense and I did not think to call Epson support since it was out of warranty. That cost might make it worth repairing and passing along to my daughter who has developed the photo bug like me but lacks the resources for a really good printer. I will look around the Houston area for an Epson repair place and take it in for an estimate. Again, thanks for a good explanation of the problem.</p>

<p>Margaret, I guess it is nice that I found someone with a similar issue because in my search I could not find anything like this to give me a clue but I do hope you are lucky and the problem does not come back! </p>

<p>Margaret, mine is 2 1/2 years old and while I regularly use it I do not sell prints so it does not get used like a professional would use it. I use it several times a week but much of that is usage for business related things.<br>

Don, I have in fact just recently replaced the maintenance cartridge so I don't think that is the issue. When I open the top lid I do see a bunch of foam material surrounding many little pieces of plastic (don't really know what they are) that does have ink in it but I don't know if that is normal.<br>

I played games with the platen gap setting as suggested by Mac and that did not seem to change anything but (I went from standard to wide then wider) on the wider setting the first print through was very off in the color so I stopped it and ran a head pattern check and the yellow pattern while filled in was in fact black. Three cleanings later it was back to yellow so I did another superA3 print and there were again areas of black blobs of ink.<br>

Thanks all for the responses. It would be nice to better understand the issue here but like I said earlier I have gone ahead and ordered a new on. Margaret I hope you don't see the problem come back but if I were a betting person I would not bet on it. Good luck.</p>

 

<p>Hey Mac I again appreciate the response. I can assure you that you did not hex it as that was something that happened before but was so rare I did not mention it. A sheet of paper does in fact come through the printer unmarked but I will change the gap setting and see what happens for the next several prints.<br>

I agree the repair probably not worth it and just the shipping would be pretty expensive. The Mrs. is good with the ordering of the new one (be here next Friday) since she realizes my hobby is what keeps me sane and therefore able to continue making enough money to afford the hobby in the first place. Again thanks for taking the time to comment and I will print for a few days changing the platen setting to see what happens and if that helps I will post for future searches.</p>

<p>About a month ago I posted a question about head clogging on the 3880 and trying a few of the suggestions resolved that issue. That problem finally cleared up after about 7 head cleanings with a power cleaning as well. Right after that black ink began to come out in blobs ruining the print and then the head clogged again. Multiple cleanings later I got it to run but now with almost every print job large amounts of black ink get smeared on the prints sporadically. So the question is whether that type of problem is worth the repair cost. I cannot find any info in a web search of this problem and while I have given up and ordered a new one I might fix this one as a back up if that is a reasonable thing to do. Thanks for any comments you would like to share.</p>

<p> <img src="../photo/16657412" alt="" /></p><div></div>

<p>Thanks again for the reply and comments. Yes, I did the math as well and the backup idea is attractive for the printer cost of under $400 when factoring in the inks. The wife does raise her eyebrows occasionally but in general I am pretty frugal even with my one weakness of photography related items (well I do like a good single malt as well). Thanks for the chuckle! I am still using a large old sub-woofer as an end table but she has never really bought into that. And you also answered one other questions I was going to pose and that is whether you can take the unused cartridges out of an old printer to start up a new one. Really appreciate that you took the time to respond. </p>

<p>Mac,<br>

Thanks for the suggestions. The re-install of the printer and driver from the Epson site did seem to fix another issue I was having printing out of CS 5 after moving it to my Windows7 computer with the death of my older XP (printer was not recognized after sending one print). And I was miss-interpreting the nozzle check so it turns out the head not printing was the PK not the MK. I also went back to a short usb cable from the long one I needed to reach the old computer but that did not seem to matter. So my problem still exist with the PK head even after several more attempts at head cleaning and replacing the cartridge. I also tired the glossy paper suggestion............................well one last nozzle cleaning while typing this and amazingly I see the PK ink again so it looks like I am good to go.<br>

I would like any opinions<br>

on whether this might be symptomatic of the head failing since B&H has a good deal right now on this printer and I might consider replacing it if that is the case.</p>

 

<p>I was in the middle of making several prints of the same picture when the MK head simply stopped working and cannot be seen on the status monitor (grayed out). I have tried everything from replacing the cartridge to head cleaning to power cleaning and the head simply is not available. I assume that means it is clogged but that seems odd while in the middle of printing. I have searched for head cleaning advice but not found much. Has anyone had a similar problem and possibly offer a solution? The printer is only about 4 years old but maybe that is the lifespan. I do not use it professionally.<br>

Thanks for any help,<br>

Jon Huggins</p>

<p>Thanks all for the comments and sorry I have not responded until now. I guess it must be that I am just not paying attention to the last thing I printed. I have it set in the driver to just bright white paper and photo black because I do use it mostly for simple work printing of documents and such. As it is a weekend I am back to some photo printing and I just put in some Epson premium glossy and like described by Matt it made some noise as if changing ink and ended up saying ready with "matte Black" so I guess I am still confused as I would think glossy would use photo black. And as Patrick suggests my PK cartridge is shrinking quickly!<br>

I decided to proceed with printing the glossy I was getting ready to send and I see now that I had the matte paper profile selected in Photoshop so the noise earlier was not the ink changing as it is doing that now. Bottom line is I need to just pay more attention to the settings and like suggested try and print with one or the other in a more organized fashion. And Glenn I had considered your suggestion but the 3880 pretty much eats up all of my table top space available but still love it so far. Thanks again to all and the comments.<br>

Jon Huggins</p>

<p>I am a fairly new user of the Epson 3880 after years with a 2200 and cannot seem to figure out the Photo Black and Matte Black usage. In the driver I have it set to use Photo Black (I think) and it will use that some but for some reason it will switch back and forth all of the time. I use this for work as well as printing photos and just now I printed something from the internet and it switched from PB to MB. I have printed pdf files where it will use Matte but other times it will use Photo. I would guess the constant switching is wasting a lot of ink so any suggestions would be appreciated.</p>

<p>Thanks,<br>

Jon</p>

<p>Michael,<br>

I went through a similar exercise looking a few years ago and gave up because I could not find one that was enough lighter from what I already had to justify the cost so I will be interested in any suggestions you get. Edward, the reason I was looking for something that tall is because I am 6'6'' and the back begins to suffer with a short tripod even when used as rarely as I do. <br>

Jon</p>

<p>Frank,<br>

Thanks for taking the time to respond. Since the first print I have not had a problem so whatever it was seems to have gone away or more likely I did something different I was not aware of so yes I am now printing at a speed I would consider fast and what I had expected. All of your suggestions make sense but I don't believe it is a computer issue as I now have a separate computer for work and play and the only thing running was Photoshop and while a bit old now it is a Dell 650 workstation with all of the RAM it can hold (4) and has the fastest SCSI hard drive available a few years ago. No significant background programs were running as I had thought to check for that. So again I thank you for taking the time and if I have the slow issue develop again I will try a couple of your other suggestions.<br>

Jon</p>

<p>Howard,<br>

Thanks for the response and thanks to Matt as well. Howard I am connected directly to a USB 2.0 port so that is not it and it looks like the issue went away. Oddly I let the first print just run and after an hour and a half the status monitor went away as if done but the print never printed even though the readout said ready the whole time. I sent another print of the same size but set the driver to the "speed" under print quality and it printed as fast as I expected, just a few minutes. I went back to the original picture that I had set on "quality" or 2880x1440 dpi instead of 1440x720 when set on speed and tried to run it again and even with the higher setting it also printed in about the same time. I guess nothing can be concluded here other than it seems to be working now as expected and like so many things with computers, in my life anyway, sometimes stuff just doesn't work for no apparent reason. Thanks again.<br>

Jon</p>

<p>I forgot to mention that simple color print also was very slow but nothing like the B&W I am trying to do now. Jon</p>

<p>Matt,<br>

I am using it directly with a USB connection and the only other print I made was a color print with just plain white paper (11x17) as I use this printer for the few things I print with the work I do. I am printing today as I work and I got busy and forgot about it till now and after about 45 minutes, I think, the progress bar now shows it to be about 80% done and I now see a little message on the status monitor that there are 26 minutes left so clearly there is something wrong.</p>

<p>Jon</p>

<p>I recently upgrade the 2200 Epson I have to the 3880 for many reasons but one was the hope for better B&W prints. I have just begun to print a B&W (using ABW) I converted from a color image in Photoshop (CS5) at an A3 size and the progress bar is moving very, very slowly (at about 25% after 10 minutes) but I have yet to hear the printer do anything other then set the paper for print initially. The image came from a Canon 40D so it is not a terribly large file size. Is this slow print speed normal? I did not set high speed in the driver as I wanted to test that next but maybe that is necessary with this printer. Any feedback would be most welcomed. Thanks</p>

<p>Jon Huggins</p>

<p>I did in fact get it resolved via a call to Adobe. They were very kind and helpful even though, like always, I had difficulty understanding India (I am guessing) based support people. Thanks again to all that took the time to respond.<br>

Jon</p>

<p>Thanks for the quick replies. Patrick, I have the serial number on the DVD for CS3 but I don't have the older numbers. Edward, yes you are certainly correct about saving old versions and that is something I will start to do with all software. I will contact Adobe and hope for the best. Thanks again for the responses.</p>

<p>Jon</p>

<p>I recently purchased a second home in another state and wanted to load Photoshop on the computer I have there and after reading through several forums I found that this was possible without any additional purchase from Adobe. BUT, I ran into a problem in trying to load the software so wanted to ask if anyone had a possible solution. I began using Photoshop with version 6.0 and subsequently updated to 7.0, CS, and now CS3. When I tried to load CS3 on the second computer I ran into a step that said my serial number "indicates you are setting up an upgrade version of Adobe Photoshop CS3" so in order to continue I would need the serial number for <img src="file:///C:/DOCUME~1/ADMINI~1/LOCALS~1/Temp/moz-screenshot.jpg" alt="" /> one of the previous versions I had owned. After two years I cannot find that serial number, which is not something I ever thought I would need again. Has anyone run into this problem and found a solution? I have search several forums for the answer to this but have not tried calling Adobe, which I have heard is not a lot of fun to do. <br>

Thanks for any suggestions,<br>

Jon Huggins</p>

<p>Bob,<br>

Years ago I bought Memories on TV (www.codejam.com) and found it very user friendly and will do all you want. It will cost but that used to be pretty small. <br>

Regards,<br>

Jon</p>

<p>This a bit late in responding but take a look here <a href="http://www.atlex.com/">http://www.atlex.com</a> as well. These guys have always had the best prices on inks and papers I use.<br>

Regards, Jon </p>

<p>Travis,<br>

  Thanks for the response as well as the links to others.  Do you have a website up and running?<br>

Jon</p>