Examining The Nozzle Check Pattern; Aligning The Print Head - Epson Stylus Color 880 User Manual

EPSON Stylus Color 880/880i
2. Press the A cleaning button and hold it down for three
seconds. Cleaning takes about 30 seconds, during which the
printer makes some noise and the Ppower light flashes.
Never turn off the printer while the Ppower light is
flashing, unless the printer hasn't moved or made noise for
more than 5 minutes.
3. After the Ppower light stops flashing, print a page to test
the print quality and reset the cleaning cycle.
If your printer is connected directly to the computer, go
to step 4 to run a nozzle check.
If you're printing over a network, open an application and
print a short document containing black and color data.
Then go to step 8.
4. If you have an application running, access the printer
settings dialog box.
Or, with Windows, click
select . Right-click your
Printers
printer icon in the Printers window. Then select
880
in Windows 95 or Windows 98,
Properties
in Windows NT, or
Defaults
Windows 2000.
5. Windows: Click the
Utility
Macintosh: Click the
6. Make sure paper is loaded in the printer, click the
button, and click
Check
prints (see the next section for details).
7. If the nozzle check pattern has no gaps in its dots, click
.
Finish
If the pattern is missing dots, click
head again.
8. If you don't see any improvement after cleaning three or
four times, check the solutions in the Printer Basics book.
You can also turn the printer off and wait overnight—this
allows any dried ink to soften—and then try cleaning the
print head again.

Examining the Nozzle Check Pattern

Examine the nozzle check pattern you print. It should look
something like this:
10 - EPSON Stylus Color 880/880i
, point to , then
Start Settings
EPSON Stylus COLOR
Document
Printing Preferences
tab.
Utility button.
Nozzle
. The nozzle check pattern
Next
to clean the print
Clean
Each staggered horizontal and straight vertical line should be
complete, with no gaps in the dot pattern. If your printout
looks okay, you're done. If any dots are missing, as shown
below, clean the print head again; see page 9 for instructions.
missing dots

Aligning the Print Head

If your printouts contain misaligned vertical lines, you may
need to align the print head. Your printer must be connected
to a local port, not on a network, to use the Print Head
Alignment utility.
in
Follow these steps:
1. Make sure the printer is turned on, but not printing, and
letter-size paper is loaded.
Load paper that's at least 8.27 inches (210 mm) wide to
prevent ink from spraying inside the printer and smudging
your printouts.
For the best results, load EPSON ink jet paper in the
printer whenever you check the print head alignment.
2. If you have an application running, access the printer
settings dialog box.
Or, with Windows, click
select
Printers
icon in the Printers windows. Then select
Windows 95 or Windows 98,
Windows NT, or
3. Windows: Click the
Macintosh: Click the
4. You see the Utility menu. Click the
button.
5. Follow the instructions on the screen to print a test page.
6. Select the most precise alignment pattern from the choices
on the test page. Enter the number of the best aligned
pattern following the instructions on the screen.
8/00
missing dots
missing dots
, point to
Start Settings
. Right-click the
EPSON Stylus COLOR 880
Document Defaults
in Windows 2000.
Printing Preferences
tab.
Utility
Utility button.
Print Head Alignment
, then
in
Properties
in