p.1 #1 · Epson SC-P700 not printing Cyan — any ideas?
Hello everyone,
I’ve been a happy owner of an Epson SC-P700 for the past couple of years, but recently it started acting up — it’s no longer printing any Cyan during nozzle checks.
I regularly run nozzle test cycles, and the Cyan channel is completely missing — not a single drop shows up. However, when I print a Cyan-only test patch, it does print correctly. That made me think it might just be a driver issue — maybe the Cyan channel isn’t being addressed properly during nozzle tests.
At first, that seemed to be the case since my regular prints looked fine. But lately, I’ve noticed that some blues are off, and my most recent contact sheets look noticeably wrong — for example, blue skies sometimes print correctly, but shadows appear brownish or purple.
Has anyone experienced something similar? Any suggestions on how to diagnose or fix this — or is this possibly a sign of something more serious?
p.1 #3 · Epson SC-P700 not printing Cyan — any ideas?
TomU_CH wrote:
Hello everyone,
I’ve been a happy owner of an Epson SC-P700 for the past couple of years, but recently it started acting up — it’s no longer printing any Cyan during nozzle checks.
I regularly run nozzle test cycles, and the Cyan channel is completely missing — not a single drop shows up. However, when I print a Cyan-only test patch, it does print correctly. That made me think it might just be a driver issue — maybe the Cyan channel isn’t being addressed properly during nozzle tests.
At first, that seemed to be the case since my regular prints looked fine. But lately, I’ve noticed that some blues are off, and my most recent contact sheets look noticeably wrong — for example, blue skies sometimes print correctly, but shadows appear brownish or purple.
Has anyone experienced something similar? Any suggestions on how to diagnose or fix this — or is this possibly a sign of something more serious?
p.1 #4 · Epson SC-P700 not printing Cyan — any ideas?
A proper clean is probably needed, rather than the test chart.
Before that, however, are you sure there is enough ink in the cyan cartridge ? Are the cartridges reasonably fresh? If not, then remove one at a time and shake it like you would a new cartridge minimise sedimentation. Maybe hold it in a plastic bag in case it leaks.
The standard cleaning options vary but have one thing in common is that they work on all of the ink channels at the same time. You cannot isolate the cleaning to only one colour. That's a bad design choice by Epson, at least from a customer perspective.
A basic cleaning may achieve nothing but try it two or three times at most, and then wait a day before trying again once or twice. Repeat as needed. That's because the new ink being sent to the head might gradually dissolve the older dried ink. I've seen it work. However, too much cleaning too soon can damage a print head with excessive pressure.
A power clean may or may not work but it will definitely try to use a lot more ink from every cartridge. All up it will use about 15–20% of total ink capacity. i.e. it will discard the equivalent of almost two ink cartridges. And you still can't isolate it to a single colour. It might even fill the maintenance cartridge, in which case it will stop until you replace that and then it will resume. There seems to be no stopping a power clean; it will always continue or resume until it is done.
Your cyan-only test patch might be using the wrong cyan cartridge. Try a range of cyan tones from pale to full saturation.
p.1 #6 · Epson SC-P700 not printing Cyan — any ideas?
I would try getting a hypodermic needle and 95% Alcohol and inject some of the solution into the line and try and see if tthis cleans the nozzle. The other thing is to wet a paper towel with windex and place this over the ink nozzles and let it set overnight. I have used the alcohol method and got my Epson printer working. Also call epson tech support
p.1 #7 · Epson SC-P700 not printing Cyan — any ideas?
I would try getting a hypodermic needle and 95% Alcohol and inject some of the solution into the line and try and see if tthis cleans the nozzle. The other thing is to wet a paper towel with windex and place this over the ink nozzles and let it set overnight. I have used the alcohol method and got my Epson printer working. Also call epson tech support
p.1 #8 · Epson SC-P700 not printing Cyan — any ideas?
Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling the printer driver on your computer? Sometimes random software updates make printers behave weirdly. On my Canon Pro10 it would manifest as the magenta not printing.
p.1 #9 · Epson SC-P700 not printing Cyan — any ideas?
I differ from most people and think that if you can print the cyan channel with a test patch but not with a nozzle check, I don't think it's a printer head/ink problem. I would first suspect software/drivers, but as you found, getting answers is the problem. Inkjetmall has a lot of articles. Reloading the software would be my simplistic approach.
p.1 #10 · Epson SC-P700 not printing Cyan — any ideas?
The problem with printing our own "cyan" test patch is that it may be using one or both of two cyans that are available in some printers, or maybe some other combination of colours. It looks like cyan but is not the specific cyan required to exercise the jammed nozzles. afaik there is no easy way to make a printer print only the ink from one specific ink cartridge, while preventing it trying to create the colour by combining multiple inks.
The cyan and light cyan actually look pretty similar.
Someone at Epson should be able to whip up a suitable tester program pretty quickly; one that controls the specific ink colours directly. We cannot do that with our photo software.
jay w wrote:
I differ from most people and think that if you can print the cyan channel with a test patch but not with a nozzle check, I don't think it's a printer head/ink problem. I would first suspect software/drivers, but as you found, getting answers is the problem. Inkjetmall has a lot of articles. Reloading the software would be my simplistic approach.
