Things You Need to Know Before Reading This!

To understand this page, you must understand how to access Printer Utilities such as the Nozzle Check facility, Head Clean cycle, and so on. Refer to your printer manual or Help to show you where these are if you are not already familiar with them. This page deals with advanced interpretation of these checks.

This page also concentrates on the results from Epson printers, but many of the points noted should also assist in problem resolution on other printer brands.

How to Read this Page

This page relies heavily on the display of nozzle checks and simulated nozzle check problems. They are all problems that we have seen! However, many of the images are large and impractical to have on the same page as the text... therefore we have placed small copies in with the text, and by clicking on each one, a larger copy will be displayed in a new window. You will almost certainly need to view the larger image to see what we are trying to show you!

Place the new window so that you can see the full-size image and read the text at the same time, then when you are ready, close the window and move on to the next image. In some cases, the large images may be larger than your screen, and some browsers will automatically resize them so that they fit. This will probably look awful! So, if you see this, hold your mouse pointer over the image for a few seconds, until a little ‘resize’ icon appears. Click that, and the image will be displayed at full size.

To get these images, we scanned a couple of nozzle checks at 600dpi; we then cleaned the scans up a little to make paper-white white, and clean up a little bit of dust and noise caused by the scan. We then used those real scans as the source for our simulated problem-nozzle-check images.

Introduction

This page focusses on the analysis of the nozzle checks as a means to understand flaws in your prints.

Normally, depending upon the way you work, you may start the day with a simple nozzle-check just as a quick status check of your printer before putting the expensive paper and time in to print. We agree that’s a good idea, though many people will not find it necessary... a lot of this does seem to depend on the printer that you have (and we mean, how ‘good’ it is compared to others of the same model, not so much which make and model you may have), the ink you use, whether or not you use a CIS, the last time you printed, and so on. Regardless, the nozzle-check before you start printing is a sensible first check to do, and it does not waste much time or paper.

In normal use, with a well set up printer, we normally just recommend the use of scraps of paper, the back of past sheets, whatever, just to get that quick check of performance. All you are looking for is a quick assessment that all nozzles are firing and are printing a good step pattern. Here’s what you might see:

We can see from this that a good step pattern exists, and all the nozzles are firing.

However, you may note that the nozzle check is rather blurry (see the full size image). This is because we used a scrap of paper to do the check, and the dot gain of the ink in the fibrous paper can actually hide problems that you may see in the print. Consider; you may be printing on to a glossy paper with very low dot-gain, but the test you have just carried out may not show a problem, because the spread of each ink droplet is far greater!

Again, we stress that for many people, and many printers, the test shown above will be indicative enough to show if the printer is working well or not. This page is intended to show you how to take the nozzle-check a step further as a problem analysis tool.

Printing a ‘Detailed Nozzle Check’

Before you can sensibly analyse the nozzle check print, you need to have a print that is good enough to analyse. We recommend that you use scraps of your smoothest inkjet paper, and only the printable side. We find that papers like Tetenal DuoPrint work very well, as do some art papers like Photo Rag (though this paper has a little bit of texture to it, it is not enough to really get in the way of this analysis).

Hopefully, you will see something like the following check (once again, please click the small image to see a larger copy in a new window):

You must be viewing the image at full size to appreciate it! You will see that the nozzle-check output is a lot sharper. You should be able to see slight gaps between each nozzle ‘step’ vertically. On some printers, the dots are small enough that you may even be able to see the individual droplets of ink that make up each ‘step’. In the images included on this page, there is some slight noise from a dirty glass on the scanner, but we have cleaned most of it up.

The following sections discuss some things that you might see in a nozzle check that show problems. We have simulated sections of the nozzle-check to demonstrate most of these errors; but they are all problems that we have seen in use of this procedure.

An Example Good Nozzle Check

Here’s a good Magenta nozzle check (again, click on the image to see a larger copy);

We can easily see that each nozzle is firing, and that the vertical step between them is good. Even on this smooth paper, there are slight amounts of dot-gain, and spread of the ink along some fibres, but this does not get in the way of us seeing a good check.

Some Basic Errors

The following check shows a couple of basic errors, that we would have expected you to be able to see on virtually any paper that you print on:

It is easy to see the missing nozzle, slightly less easy to see the deflected nozzle on the third-row down, near the right hand side, and easy to see the deflected nozzle on the fourth row of steps.

These simple errors are more normally cleared with Cleaning Cycles, and nozzle checks in pairs. Remember that on the whole, we do not recommend running more than two or three cleaning cycles in quick succession. Sometimes, a small print is a good tool to clear nozzles too, a cleaning cycle may in itself be too vigorous, causing a nozzle that was not firing to fire, and one that was firing to fail! If that happens to you, this suggests poor ink flow to the print head, or air bubbles locked in the printhead. Allow the printer to sit for the ink to settle into the head.

Minor Deflections

This image shows a couple of errors:

First is the second step on the second line, which is thinner than it ought to be. As the thickness of each line is dependent upon the paper we have printed the check on, we can only tell that it is thinner than it ought by close comparison with the neighbouring lines. We’ve shown this one thinner, but exactly where it ought to be vertically.

In practice, we have found that we see this in conjunction with the second error shown, on the second-step in on the fourth set of steps (you will only see this looking at the larger image). This step pattern has been deflected a tiny amount from the vertical position that it ought to be on, and you can certainly only tell this by close examination of the gaps between the lines. This kind of problem will not be visible in all prints; but is certainly the cause of some problems on some papers or systems, it all depends on how the printer driver in question lays dots on the page, in conjunction with dot-gain and so on.

We have resolved both of these types of error by cleaning off the parking pad, placing a few drops of cleaning fluid on there, and letting the head sit for a while... followed by a clean cycle a couple of hours later.

Complete Head Misfire

This is a rather unusual error, where none of the nozzles fire for a nozzle check:

This could indicate a major head failure. However, it can also be caused by other things, perhaps forgetting to tear off the plastic strip off a new cartridge (thus preventing air into the cartridge, thus preventing ink getting out), or a major air-bubble caught in the printhead (one of the toughest things to clear, but Cleaning Cycles are probably the way forward).

This error is particularly unusual - more often we might see a perfect nozzle-check but in fact, a total head failure in actual printing of an image. That might be down to poor ink flow, an air bubble, or just... being extremely low on ink. Consider that to print a successful nozzle check requires a tiny amount of ink... that can settle into the print head in a short time. A typical graphics print will require massive amounts of ink in comparison, and so if you have the slightest problem with an air bubble or being low on ink, this could be the extreme result.

Ink Absorption

This is an unusual one (on Epsons - relatively common on Canon printers):

You can see that some of the nozzles have printed an unusual colour. The nozzles have picked up some ink from the parking pad, and are now firing a mixture of inks. We have never had a problem with clearing this with a simple clean cycle... but it may also indicate that you might need to clean off excess in from the parking pad.

As ever, the best way to notice this problem is to know what a ‘normal, good’ nozzle check looks like, so that you can quickly see when something has changed. On Canon printers, we have seen whole print heads take on the colour of another printhead!

Please note that MWORDS has closed. We aim to retain these support pages in the hope that they may benefit our past customers, but regret that we can no longer offer further comment or support in relation to the information above.