If your maintenance tank is partially filled, it is a good idea to have a spare on hand.
If they are not all at least 30% full, refill with ink and reset chips to read full (do NOT reset chips on carts that are less than full, because you can risk running the cart empty and getting air in your ink system).Īdditionally, during this procedure, your maintenance tank may fill up, requiring you to replace it. The ink status monitor will display the ink levels.
If you are not sure how full your Piezography cartridges are, install them and turn the printer on normally. If your Piezography cartridges are new, they will be full, but if they have been used in the past, removed, and you are now in the process of reinstalling them, you need to know how full they are before you go forward with the procedure.
Once beginning an initial fill cycle, there is no way to abort it, and so your printer will be waiting for you to replace those cartridges it instructs you to install. If they are less than 30% full, the printer will not allow you to continue until you replace those cartridges determined to be too empty to proceed. Important Notes: In order to run an initial fill cycle, your new cartridges must each be at least 30% full. So weigh the costs of flushing with PiezoFlush (which will easily get rid of old pigments) or flushing with or printing out with Piezography ink to eliminate the initial color cast.
On very old printers which will have deposits of color pigments in the dampers, a yellow and magenta cast in the highlights and 1/4 tones will be present for awhile without the use of flush carts. Shade 5 which is darker is installed in the light magenta position. The yellow position is where the lightest shade 7 (Light Grey Warm) is installed.
Because of the limited supply of expensive 1-time chips we are currently recommending that you do a straight switch from Color Ink to Piezography ink on these printer models. We will update this page with more relevant workflow information when we have a good Piezoflush workflow figured out for this model printer. If you do not use flush carts, you may need to print some additional media before all traces of color ink have been removed. Otherwise, the actual Piezography inks can be used to "flush" out the pre-existing color inks from your printer. Normally the use of flush cartridges is suggested and recommended when switching to Piezography inks from a non-Epson or non-Piezography ink set, or if you have been experiencing clogging problems with your current ink set. Use of flush cartridges with the SC-Pxxxx Printers.
A full manual for Piezography can be downloaded with the free Piezography Community Edition. This software has quickly become a defacto utility for anyone wanting to properly color manage their printing workflow. Additionally, Piezography on the Mac requires the use of Print-Tool. We provide our own guides to our suggested use of QuadToneRIP, so that you can get the best results from that product. Installation instructions and support of that software is provided by the manufacturers of those software. Most Piezography systems depend upon the QuadtoneRIP software with which to control the ink shades. You must refer to the shade placement chart provided here on this document. Whether you use refillable cartridges, CIS, or pre-filled cartridges (available outside the USA), the placement of the shades of Piezography ink are critical and not arbitrary. If you lost your refillable cartridge instructions, please go to our main support page to view the cartridge instructions. If you are installing user refillable cartridges, please refer to the installation instructions provided with the refillable cartridges. If you are installing a Continuous Ink System (CIS), please refer to the installation instructions provided with the CIS. Use these procedures to convert your color printer to a Piezography printer.