The Danger of Old Inkjet Ink

The danger of old inkjet ink is that it gums up your inkjet printer. It's taken me years to learn this lesson!

In November of 2015, I purchased new black and yellow inks. Prior to this my black and yellow inks were over 7 years old. I was constantly adding water to these 7-year-old inks to make them flow better. Stubborn guy that I am, I would not break down and buy new ink.

It has been 6 months (almost) since I purchased new black and yellow inks. Finally! My print heads are now clear and I get a perfect black ink pattern and a perfect yellow ink pattern. The perfect patterns for yellow and black have perfect stair-steps.

I may be stubborn, but when faced with overwhelming evidence, I have to change my mind! About an hour ago, I re-ordered all new ink for by Epson R200. I ordered from inksupply.com.

My 6 new ink colors only cost $22.95, including shipping. Why did it take me so long to order 6 new 2 oz ink bottles and throw out the old inks that are over 7 years old? Incredible stuborness. Dogged, persistent, unyielding stubborness.

Having now learned my lesson, I plan to go in the completely opposite direction: I will be reordering new inks every year. Inksupply.com recommends that you only keep your inks about a year. I'm finally ready to absorb the wisdom of that recommendation.

Why I would think that the people who actually formulate inkjet ink would not know what they are talking about is now hard for me to understand. What took me so long to come around to their point of view?

I can apply this lesson to many other areas of my life. If something is not working, be willing to pursue the most obvious solution. Try something new!

I'm humbled.

Ed Abbott

Purging Only One Color at a Time on a Six Color Printer

For a long time now, I've wanted to be able to purge one color at a time with my six color Epson Stylus Photo R200 printer. Why? Because sometimes a single color will stop working.

Here are full-page images of nothing but one color. To get the images to print properly, do the following:

1. Right click on the image
2. Observe the drop-down menu that appears
3. Choose to view the image in a new tab
4. Observe that the image now fills your browser window from top to bottom
5. Type Control-P to print the image.

The above steps work under Google Chrome. I've not tested other browsers. However, they should have something that is equivalent or nearly equivalent. There should be a way to do this in other browsers.

Here's black:

Here's cyan:

Here's light cyan:

Here's magenta:

Here's light magenta:

Here's yellow:

Now I have a way to purge an individual color with minimum impact on the other colors. Why do I care? Because this means I can fix one color without tinkering with all the rest.

As ink ages, it is likely that one color will act up and start clogging while all the others work fine. So, being able to purge one color at at time in order to get that color working again can be quite valuable.

Usually I have an 8-1/2 by 11 piece of paper that is now obsolete and I can now purge on top of. In effect, I'm using an old piece of paper as an ink blotter.

Another advantage of the one-color purge technique is that it is easy to tell when the color is working again. When all banding is gone and the color prints as a smooth consistency, the print head for that particular color is now clear.

There's always a way, isn't there? You just have to find out how.

Ed Abbott

Parts Inside Your Printer Are at the End of Their Service Life

Today, while printing with my Epson Photo R200 printer, the following dialog box popped up:

parts inside your printer are at the end of their service life

Ok. I thought. I've used my printer enough now to wear out some major part like a motor or a cog wheel or a print head. I figured it had to be something major.

Next, I googled parts inside your printer are at the end of their service life and I found the following YouTube video. The video is wonderful! The video totally convinced me that I have nothing major wrong with my printer:

Why Replace The Epson Waste Pads?

In the 2 minutes and 33 seconds it takes to view this video, it shows you what a waste pad is and why you may not need to replace your waste pads at all.

For a slightly different point of view, see this video:

Clearing Parts Inside the Printer Have Reached the End of Their Service Life

The second video, which is 3 minutes and 48 seconds long, takes a more conservative approach. It seems to be suggesting you replace the waste pads as long as the cost does not exceed the cost of the printer itself. However, it also makes allowances for those who don't care that much about their waste pads possibly because hey are about to buy a new printer anyhow.

This webpage makes it easy to reset the waste pad protection counter on your Epson printer:

SSC Service Utility

The above page is a download page for some software that you can use to reset the protection counter. It is the protection counter that tells you when your waste pads are likely used up.

I've tried the SSC Service Utility and it worked! It reset the waste pad protection counter ---- no problem. At first, I was slightly confused by the utility. Then I referred back to the download page and read that you right-click the utility on the task bar to reset the waste pad after selecting your printer from the pull-down menu. See instructions on the download page above.

Here's a general discussion on the protection counter:

Parts Are at the End of Their Service Life

I have some thoughts of my own as to why Epson has a protection counter. It occurs to me that some people will print one thousand pages in one month and other people will print one thousand pages in 3 years.

Also, some people live in Florida where the air is wet and some people live in Arizona where it is dry. So, depending on how often you use your printer, and depending on how dry the air is could factor in as to when the waste pad needs replacing.

I'm going to guess that the waste pad may or may not need replacing when the protection counter triggers depending on where you live and your pattern of printer usage. In all probability, the protection counter is conservative to be on the safe side.

I'm sure Epson would rather have a protection counter than have customers complain about ink leaking out of the bottom of their printer. Hence the conservatism of the protection counter.

When programmers write programs, they program for the worst case scenario. The protection counter is probably programmed for the worst case scenario. Just a guess on my part.

Ed Abbott

Unclogging My Printer ---- Again!

Once again, I'm unclogging my Epson R200. Don't get me wrong. It's a great great printer. However, it's also an old printer --- over 7 years old.

I use refillable ink cartridges and these do tend to clog. I suspect it is because of the age of the ink. Some of my refillable ink bottles are years old.

The black ink is especially old. If I recall right, it is at least 5 years old. I'm noticing that it is starting to stick to the sides of the bottle rather than appear to be fully liquid.

As odd as it sounds, I suspect that some of the clumping is due to water evaporation. Even though the bottles appears to be fully sealed, the water must be escaping the black ink refill bottle one molecule at a time.

So, now, once again, I'm experimenting with adding distilled water to my ink. My ink cartridges take about 10-12 milliliters of ink. I just added 3 milliliters of distilled water to the cartridge. Therefore, the cartridge is now at least 25 percent added distilled water.

That might sound like an alarming addition of water. However, inkjet ink is mostly water anyway. So adding enough water to the ink to make the ink 25 percent added distilled water may not be as outrageous as it sounds.

I have no idea whether or not this is going to work. One reason I do not know is that the symptoms are a little bit different this time. This time, the black test pattern prints just fine except that it is a little skewed

It is a little skewed in such a way as to make some of the stair steps extra long. As many as 3 stair steps on the test pattern are together as one level stair step. Clearly this is not right.

Is this because the black ink is clumping together? I'm not sure. It may take a while to find out. If the ink is gumming up the works, it may take a while to fully clear the problem.

In the meantime, my printed documents look okay. The problem shows up as a certain amount of subtle banding in the type face. It's perfectly readable but not perfect. I'm going to observe the type face in the coming month to see if this problem clears up.

I've extended the life of my Epson R200 printer far beyond the point where most people would have given up. Can I extend its life a bit further?

Update: September 23, 2013

Adding 3 milliliters of ink to my ink cartridge has worked better than I dared hope. I no longer see banding when I print documents. Before, the banding was quite noticeable.

Furthermore, the test pattern that I produce when I hold down the formfeed on my R200 and hit the power bottom to power up seems to be almost, but not quite, perfect. When I first glanced at it I thought it was perfect.

Later I notice a slight skew in lines 2 and 3 (line 1 being at the bottom of the pattern). The stair steps are almost perfect, but not quite.

Since the printer is printing more or less perfectly now, I could probably afford to add a milliliter of water, or so, each time I refill the ink cartridge. I can also add a milliliter of distilled water to the remaining open ink bottles.

In this way, I might be able to solve the problem at its source which is old ink that does not seem to be fully hydrated. That's the theory.

In actual practice, I don't care. Since my R200 is 8 years old, it seems to me it is at the end of its useful life. Therefore, destroying the printer in the hopes of fixing it is a reasonable option.

I'm certainly not recommending anyone else add distilled water to their ink cartridges. I'm just saying that, so far, it appears to have worked for me and I appear to be getting away with it.

Update: March 14, 2014

A miracle occurred this morning! For the very first time, a perfect black ink pattern printed when I powered on my printer while holding down the form feed button at the same time. All the little black stair steps are perfect!

As I reported above on September 23, 2013, they were almost perfect on that day, but not quite. Now, careful and judicious adding of distilled water to my black ink cartridge has restored black ink printing completely!

I had not dared hope that it would turn out this way. But it did. So, now I'm ready to make some assumptions.

I assume, based on my experience, that ink dries out over time. That is to say, microscopic amounts of water evaporate from the bottles as the bottles cannot truly be considered vacuum sealed. After all, they are cheap plastic bottles. How could they possibly form a perfect seal that stops all water evaporation, one molecule at a time?

I further assume that inkjet ink can be re-hydrated. It has taken me over a year to re-hydrate my black ink. Perhaps this is because I was doing it experimentally and incrementally so as to not overdo it.

For me, this is very empowering information. No longer do I have to throw out ink or an entire inkjet printer because the ink won't flow. Water is the universal solvent. It appears to me that it is definitely the universal solvent for inkjet ink.

Please be aware that you can almost certainly ruin your printer by adding too much water to the ink cartridges. The natural tendency of water is to flow out of ink cartridges because ink cartridges have a hole in the bottom.

Inkjet ink is viscous for a reason, I'm guessing. It's viscous to keep the ink from leaking out of the bottom. For this reason, I was very careful to add only little tiny bits of distilled water at a time.

Just because I added distilled water to my inkjet cartridges does not mean you have to do it too. As they say on TV, Don't try this at home!.

I was willing to sacrifice my whole printer on my distilled water experiment. The reason I was willing to do this is because my printer was not working and I was going to have to throw it out anyway. You may feel very differently about your printer, especially if it is working.

Also be aware the leaking water can cause electrical shorts that could lead to electrocution and possible death. Again, no one is recommending that you add water to your inkjet cartridges. Call your printer manufacturer's 800 number for better advice than I could possibly give. They know what they are talking about. I don't. I'm merely experimenting.

If in doubt, don't do it. Don't add distilled water to your inkjet cartridges. That's my best advice.

Update: April 16, 2014

I've been working on a formula for re-hydrating ink. The formula is this: Add 1 milliliter of distilled water for every 1/2 fluid ounce of ink.

This seems like a fairly conservative formula. Since my ink cartridges are about 12 milliliters, 1 milliliter is less than 10 percent of the total. I've added at least 1 milliliter of distilled water to my ink cartridges many times. In fact, I've added up to 3 milliliters of ink to an ink cartridge in order to get the ink flowing again.

1/2 fluid ounce is almost, but not quite, 15 milliliters. So, adding 1 milliliter per 1/2 fluid ounce is well under 10 percent dilution of the ink.

I have 3 black ink bottles, all of them with old ink. One of them is 2 fluid ounces, the next one is 4 fluid ounces and the third one is 16 fluid ounces (1 pint).

The following table can be used to hydrate these 3 ink bottles using the above formula:

Bottle Size	Add This Amount of Distilled Water
2 fluid ounces	4 milliliters
4 fluid ounces	8 milliliters
1 pint or 16 fluid ounces	32 milliliters

Recently, I more or less did exactly what the above table would suggest to my 3 bottles of black ink. Except that I made a mistake.

I miscalculated and added twice as much distilled water to my 2 fluid ounce bottle and my 4 fluid ounce bottle as I should have. However, I doubt my printer will suffer because of my mistake.

Doubling up on the amount of distilled water will probably not hurt the printer as the above table is, by design, a fairly conservative one.

Ed Abbott

Printing on Both Sidesof My Epson R200

I often forget how to print on both sides of
the paper. I'm writing down the steps here
as much for my memory as for anyone else's.

Here are the steps I use:

1. Control-P to print (in most applications)
2. Look for the print dialog to appear
3. Checkmark Print on both sides of the paper
4. Choose the Flip on short edge radio button
5. Load as many sheets in the printer as needed
6. Click print
7. Let the paper pile up as it comes out of the printer
8. The pile of paper before you is printed on one side
   of the paper but not the other side
9. Hold in your hands the pile of paper oriented so that
   you can read the first page from top to bottom. In other
   words, orient the pile of printed paper the way a person
   normally does when reading.
10. Flip the paper in such a way as to feed the blank
    side of the pile of paper with the top of the flip side
    going into the printer first. In other words feed the
    printer from the top of the pages but flipped over.
11. By now, a resume dialog has appeared
12. Click resume after feeding the printer the
    flip side of the pile of paper
13. The flip side of the pile now starts printing

These steps are for printing an Adobe Acrobat Reader document
(PDF) with 8-1/2 by 11 paper (standard paper). It's probably
pretty similar in other software applications.

The directions are for flipping the paper on the short side.
I find flipping the paper on the short side more intuitive
because I'm consistently feeding the printer the top of the
page first, regardless of which side I'm printing.

I've never tried flipping the long side. I would imagine
flipping the long side means you feed the second side
of the pile of paper the bottom first. In a way, this
makes sense as you are feeding back to the printer what
it just gave you by feeding it the other end of the pile
of paper.

I think of short-side flipping as other side flipping
and long-side flipping as other end flipping.

Another way to look at it that is probably even clearer
is short-side flipping is left-to-right flipping
whereas long-side flipping is end-to-end flipping.

In terms of reading the page, short-side flipping is
left-to-right flipping. Long-side flipping in
terms of how you read the page is end-over-end flipping.

A final thought: However, you flip the paper, you let the
paper pile up naturally. There's no need to worry about
what order the pages come out of the printer. The printer
takes care of that.

Page order is not your issue. Your only issue is flipping
the pile while, at the same time, leaving it in the same order
that it comes out of the printer in.

The miracle of natural order is it is self-correcting:

The first time the printer spits the pile of paper out,
the pile is in reverse order and the last page appears
first.

Then the reverse order self-corrects:

When you feed the pile of paper to the printer a second
time, it reverses the paper again, thus correcting the
order. This is a case of two wrongs making a right.

Because the printer puts the paper in the wrong order twice,
it ends up being in the right order. Make sense?

Paper that is put in reverse order twice is in the right
order. That's it in a nutshell. The one cancels the other.

What do you do to make this work? Absolutely nothing.
Just let the printer spit out the paper in whatever order
it wants to and feed it back to the printer in that same
unaltered order and it all comes out OK.

On my printer, regardless of whether I use short-side flipping
or long-side flipping, the obverse side of the stack (the first
side) comes out in reverse page order. After I flip the paper to
the reverse side of the stack (the second side), the pages start
coming out in normal page order.

Hope this helps.

Update: April 2, 2013

No wonder I'm confused by long side verus short side flipping. Upon closer examination, I see there seems to be a bug in the software relationship between my Epson R200 and Adobe Reader.

The bug is this:

If you choose long side flipping, which is the default, you have to feed the paper back into the printer, bottom-of-the-page first. In doing this, you are flipping the paper twice.

You are flipping the paper twice because you are flipping both the short side and the long side. You flip the short side to get the blank side of the paper. You flip the long side to feed the paper from the bottom of the printed side first.

The resume dialog tells you differently:

If you follow the schematic of the resume dialog, after choosing long-side flipping, you would only flip on the short side. This is wrong! It is clearly wrong based on the result I get.

The takeaway? Forget long side flipping on the Epson R200. Use short side flipping only.

If you use long side flipping, you are flipping the paper 180 degrees twice. If you use short side flipping, you are flipping the paper 180 degrees only once.

When I say flip 180 degrees twice, I mean you flip from side to side and then from top to bottom. In other words, you are flipping two different edges, the long edge and the short edge.

It's very confusing, isn't it? The way to get a correct result is to choose short-side flipping only and to flip on the short edge only. If you do this, you are feeding the paper to the printer from the top of the page on both the obverse and reverse side. To me, this is much more consistent.

Ed Abbott

Epson: Aqueous Versus Solvent Inks

Here's an article from Epson that
mentions aqueous inks:

Aqueous-Based Ink Breakthrough

Here's another article that mentions
solvent ink versus aqueous ink:

Solvent Ink Versus Aqueous Ink

This is something I need to learn
more about. I'm pretty sure that
the inks in my Epson Stylus Photo
R200 are aqueous inks. Here's the
2 reasons I think so:

1. The inks run profusely when you
   spill a drop of water on paper. In
   other words, the ink is very very
   water soluble.
2. There's no obnoxious smell to the
   ink, something I would expect with a
   solvent of almost any kind other than
   water.

I'm not an expert on this. In fact,
I'm just now learning about it this
morning. I'll try to learn more.

The basic difference seems to be that
solvent inks are carried by either
alcohol or oil whereas the carrier
for an aqueous ink is water.

In other words, all inks have a solvent.
Aqueous inks use water as the solvent
and solvent inks use something else
as the solvent.

Water is sometimes called the
universal solvent. Because
water dissolves so many things, it
is sometimes not thought of as a
solvent at all --- a paradox, it
seems.

I'll try to learn more later.

Ed Abbott

Unclogging Magenta On My Epson R200 Printer

I'm currently trying to get the following
image to print correctly:

It does not print correctly. Seems that my
magenta nozzle is completely clogged. I've
run a test pattern on it several times.

According to the test pattern, all the other
colors are perfect and magenta is non-existent.

What's weird is that the above block, which I've
created, is really not magenta at all. It's
really a dark red, a sort of rust color. At least
to my eye it is.

However, it is this color that seems to be the
most magenta deficient based on experimenting and
trial and error.

When the above color is printed, it appears to my
eye as yellow. So, the above color seems to be
relying on magenta and yellow exclusively, and does
not seem to have any dependence on light magenta
(the other magenta) at all. It only depends on
magenta and yellow.

However, if I change the above color to what I
would consider to be magenta, it prints beautifully.
Don't quite understand this.

In any case, it is the above color that is very
very deficient on my printer. I'm going to try printing
this image every day over the next few days to see
if I can clear the nozzle.

Here's my second try a creating a pure magenta image:

This second image, when printed without magenta ink,
produces orange. The first image produced yellow.
This one produces orange.

I'm getting closer to producing a pure magenta image.
I came up with this second image by spilling epson
magenta ink on newspaper and then eyeballing the
color, as it appears on top of newspaper print, to
see if I could produce a similar color. The second
image is the result.

Think I'll leave off and try this in a day or two
to see if time will clear the clog.

Update: February 18, 2012

I'm back at it again. Here's the new image
I"m working with:

The result is the same. I con't seem to get the
iamge to print correctly. This time the image
comes out lime green. As you can see, this image
is brown.

Once again, I've uploaded an image that makes heavy
use of magenta. Once again, magenta is failing to
print faithfully. Lime green is not in any way faithful
to brown.

This morning I had an idea. Since the problem seems to
be a dried out sponge in my printer cartridge, why not
reverse my approach? Why not inject ink into the sponge
directly, rather than indirectly?

My magenta ink cartridge has two ink reservoirs. One reservoir
is on the left, the other is on the right. One reservoir has
a sponge in it, the other does not.

I've just figure out a new strategy for re-inking the sponge
half of the cartridge. This is the half that is all dried
out.

Why not reverse the flow? Why not inject ink into the ink
outflow that feeds the printer ink?

I've done just that. Instead of injecting ink into the inflow,
I've injected ink into the outflow. The outflow is found at the
bottom of the ink cartridge and in the inflow is found at the
top of the ink cartridge underneath a plug that seals the inflow.

MIS Inks (www.inksupply.com) has supplied me with an attachment
that is normally used to suck ink out of the outflow. MIS Inks
suggests that you suck a little bit of ink out of the ink cartridge
each and every time you refill the cartridge with ink.

This morning, I reversed this process. I used the suction attachment
to inject ink into the outflow instead of sucking ink out of it. I
injected as much ink as I could into the sponge.

At the top of the sponge, there's a pinprick-sized hole that allows
air to enter the sponge so that ink can drop out of the bottom of
the sponge as air enters the top of the sponge. In this way, the
pinprick hole compensates for ink dropping through the ink outflow
at the bottom of the cartridge.

Basically, the pinprick hole is part of an air-in/ink-out system. When
the ink flows out, air has to replace the ink or the ink will sotp
flowing.

I injected as much ink as I could into the sponge without violating this
pinprick hole by filling it with ink.

I just tried printing a photo and the magenta is now working! Later, I'll
try printing something bigger that requires more magenta ink and see what
happens.

For now, I'm going to give my ink cartridge a rest to see if the ink on
the sponge side and the ink on the ink reservoir side can unplug each
other and start feeding each other again. The goal is to get the two
reservoirs flowing ink between themselves again.

I assume that is the problem. I assume that the flow from one reservoir
to the other is blocked because the sponge has dried out.

Update: February 29, 2012

I need a technique to recover a sponge that has dried out.
I'm working on that now.

Yesterday, I went to the grocery store to buy two items: I
bought a gallon of distilled water. In the pharmacy section,
I bought an eye-dropper.

Yesterday afternoon, I put 7 drops of distilled water in the
sponge side of the ink reservoir. I followed the following
steps to do so:

1. I pressed the ink button, the left-most
   button on my Epson R200
2. I waited for the ink cartridge carrier
   to move closer to the center of the
   printer
3. When the ink cartridge carrier
   has stopped moving, I opened up the door
   on top of the ink cartridge carrier
4. I took out the magenta ink cartridge
5. I placed a piece of paper on my desk to
   sop up any spilled ink or water
6. I place the ink cartridge on the piece
   of paper on my desk
7. In placing the ink cartridge, I balanced
   it so that the top of the cartridge was on top
   and the bottom on the bottom. It takes a flat
   surface to be able to do this and not have
   the ink cartridge fall over.
8. I grabbed a magnifying glass to look at
   the air intake hole which is just on top of
   the sponge.
9. I took the eye-dropper and got a few drops
   of distilled water out of the gallon jug I
   had purchased
10. I put precisely one drop of distilled
    water on the intake hole
11. Because the air intake hole has sides,
    capillary action caused the intake hole
    to very slowly, but surely absorb the
    water.
12. I watched the air intake hole absorb the
    one drop of water through my magnifying glass
13. When the air intake hole was clear, I put
    another drop of distllled water on top of the
    air intake hole
14. It took approximately 5 minutes between
    drops of water for the air intake hole to absorb
    the water fully.
15. I kept adding 1 drop of water to the air
    intake hole until I had put 7 drops of distilled
    water in the air intake hole

Watching distilled water be absorbed into the air
intake hole through a magnifying glass is quite
fascinating. The magnifying glass I used is quite
large, larger than most.

Later, I'm going to try to print with my printer
and see what happens. The goal remains the same.
I want to recover the ink cartridge for magenta
ink completely!

Update: March 1, 2012

I'm still working with distilled water trying
to get the magenta ink to print normally. Yesterday,
I tried putting distilled water into the air intake
hole on the cartridge.

This went OK but was terribly slow. Also, it did
not work. I waited 24 hours before trying to print
again but only a trickle of magenta ink was coming
out.

I then started reading about inkjet ink. I read that
glycerin is used to make the ink more viscous.

I was worried that if I added distilled water to my
ink reservoir, it would cause more surface tension
in the water and the ink would not flow.

My new understanding is that distilled water makes
the ink less viscous, not more viscous. If you add
distilled water, the ink should flow even better.

I feel this is exactly what I need to make my printer
work properly. I need for the ink to flow better
so that the sponge becomes saturated with ink again.
It appears to me that the sponge has dried.

This afternoon, I added approximately 2 milliliters
of water to the ink reservoir. It will be interesting
to see if the magenta ink starts flowing better now.

Update: March 2, 2012

It's been about 17 hours since I added 2 milliliters
of water to the magenta ink reservoir. Prior to adding
water, the magenta ink resevoir was more than half full.
After I added water, it was full to the top, all the way
up to the plug. I put in as much water as I could without
spilling any ink.

I just printed an Epson test pattern. That's the pattern
where each color prints separately and each color has lines
that slope downward from left to right.

When the test pattern prints perfectly, there are no gaps
in the line. When it prints imperfectly, it either does
not print at all or there are gaps in the lines.

Just now I printed this pattern and it is markedly improved
over what it was before. Now it is about 90 percent filled
in and about 10 percent gaps.

When I printed the test pattern yesterday, the gaps were much
more extensive. I'd say that the pattern was maybe 50 percent
gaps.

I'm going to try printing this pattern again later, but otherwise
I'll just let the printer sit and absorb ink. It will be interesting
to see if the printer starts printing a perfect pattern test
again.

Update: March 3, 2012

Today and yesterday, I printed the Epson test pattern. Yesterday,
the test pattern had 4 horizontal lines missing. Today the test pattern
has only 3 vertical lines missing.

Does this mean the test pattern is getting better for the magenta
ink? I'm not sure. All the inks, except magenta, have a test pattern
with 100 percent of the horizontal lines present.

Here I write about the test pattern:

Unclogging My Epson R200 Printer

I find it fascinating that when I print the test pattern twice
in a row today, the exact same 3 horizontal lines are missing.

For each color, there are 90 horizontal lines in the text pattern.
At first, this might not appear to be the case. The test pattern
appears to be diagonal lines only.

However, when I look under a magnifying glass, I see 10 horizontal
lines that make up each diagonal line. Each diagonal line consists
of 10 stair steps.

Since there are 9 diagonal lines, the total number of little tiny
horizontal lines, or stair steps, is 90 (9 times 10 steps per diagonal).

I think I'll let the ink, with the water added, soak and soak into
the sponge until I get a perfect test pattern. I hope this does
the trick. I hope that the extra wetness of the water restores
the sponge to full function and capacity.

Maybe this will take a week or more. We'll see.

Update: March 6, 2012

Finally! My magenta cartridge is working perfectly!

Yesterday, I printed all 3 images above and they printed
perfectly. No gaps. No banding. No problems.

Oddly enough, the color did not seem to change all that much
even though I diluted magenta with 2 milliliters of distilled
water. I suspect that is because ink is mostly water anyway.
The percentage that is dye is very very low, so diluting the dye
does not seem to have that much of an effect.

The only thing that was not working quite right after I printed
the above 3 images is the test pattern. That pesky old test pattern.
It still had 3 horizontal lines missing out of 90 lines total.

I then went to the control panel under Windows XP. If I recall
right, I found printers and faxes and then clicked on my model
o printer. Next, I clicked Select printer preferences and then
the maintenance tab.

Under maintainence, I did a nozzle check. The pattern printed
with a few horizontal lines missing.

Next, I did a cleaning cycle, which again, is under maintenance.
After one cleaning cycle, I did the nozzle check a second time. All
90 horiazontal lines (for magenta ink) printed perfectly!

Hopefully I'm done with this episode. Hopefully, magenta will work
perfectly from now on.

The life lesson? There's always a way, and don't give up too soon.

Update: May 14, 2012

Adding a little bit of distilled water to my magenta
print cartridge has worked flawlessly! Magenta now
prints just fine each and every time.

Update: Cctober 3, 2012

This solution has been flawless! I've not had any trouble with my magenta cartridge in about 6 months. Furthermore, I've not had to add any more distilled water. It seems, so far, that adding distilled water is something I needed to do 1 time only.

Update: March 5, 2013

My flawless solution has turned out to not be so flawless. What I really should have done was order a new ink cartridge and ink or even a new printer.

Yes, I've been able to get the magenta to limp along but it does tend to clog periodically. The lesson? Once one of the ink cartridges is flawed, it is always flawed.

I cleared it this morning by putting 2 millliters of distilled water in the bottom of the ink cartridge first and then adding ink. Yes, that works. Nothing flows better than pure unadulterated distilled water. It is the universal solvent.

I've learned a lot, but I've also purchased a new printer which I've yet to set up. I love Epson printers so I've purchased another Epson.

Update: September 23, 2013

Magenta has been printing perfectly for quite some time now on my old Epson Photo R200 printer. I've yet to set up the new printer, or even open the box. Adding 2 milliliters of ink to the cartridge seems to have worked!

Note that as a general rule, whenever I add a measured amount of water to the ink cartridge, I also add the same amount of water to the ink bottle it came from if the bottle is old. Why not treat the problem at its source?

Old ink is old ink. Adding the same amount of water to the cartridge and the remaining open ink bottles keeps all my magenta ink well hydrated.

My assumption is that my old ink bottles have been leaking water 27 molecules a minute, or whatever. The 27 molecules a minute is a wild wild guess on my part and is not intended to be taken seriously.

However, no ink bottle that costs less than a dollar is going to have a perfect seal. Even a 1 micron gap between the bottle cap and the lip of the bottle would allow some water to escape. That's where my image of 27 escaping molecules a minute comes from. It comes from assuming no el cheapo bottle cap is going to seal the liquid inside the bottle perfectly.

The ultimate solution? Don't buy too much ink at one time. That's why I'm in trouble. I purchased too much ink and it aged several years. So, the ultimate solution is new ink.

Ed Abbott