i9900 and light/dark bands

[tiktaalik]

I'm getting faint dark bands and narrrow white lines on prints from my i9900. I ran a bunch of deep clean cycles (and really burned through the ink) which seemed to help on the worst case but the problem remains.

I first thought the white lines were only at the trailing edge of the paper yet I now see them at the front edge as well. I only noticed one dark band before and that was about 1/2" from the trailing edge but after closer inspection I see fainter ones throughout the image.

Has anyone had a similar problem? I've really loved this printer and would like to get it back to its normal beautiful self.

[CyberDyneSystems]

Did you also run the head alignment?

I've had that fix banding trouble with my older i9100 in the past.

[tiktaalik]

I just ran the head alignment and it was out of alignment. (big *smack* against my head ;) )

But that just made my problem worse. I don't see the dark bands anymore but the print is just covered in white lines. They aren't evenly spaced but come and go in patterns.

Yikes, time for a new print head?

[Tony-S]

Wow. Sorry to hear about your troubles. I hope you get it fixed, and I also hope you post your solutions (and attempted solutions) here to document it. There are a lot of us who have this printer, thus your efforts could be helpful to us when/if we encounter this problem.

After all, there's no reason for all of us to suffer, right? :)

[tiktaalik]

Heh, I'd like to be able to say that nothing gives me more pleasure than helping out my fellow POTNers, but in this case, nope, can't say it ;)

But I will keep everyone informed.

[edpoin]

tiktaalik:
I had banding on my I9900 and did the same as you, "deep clean cycles" which worked the first time that happened. Then the second time "Banding" happened cleaning just would not work, ended up getting a new print head and all was fine again. Sounds like your print head is getting clogged.

[tiktaalik]

That's what I'm afraid of.

I got some more ink, did another deep clean, and then manually re-aligned the nozzles. Things are better and in normal shots I'm not seeing banding. It's still there lightly in my airshow shots where there's a lot of blue sky. I'm probably in denial but I'm going to give it a bit more time and hope there's just a bit of gunk that will come out.

But I think the inevitable is coming - where did you get your replacement print head?

[edpoin]

tiktaalik, I had the extended warranty on the printer so it was fixed at no charge, I did do a google search before I took the printer in for repairs on print heads for the i9900. I found a few site's that had them for around 60 bucks,

I am pretty sure i will keep fixing my i9900 when it malfunctions, fast good color printer.