[Solved} Epsom Workforce610 green text

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oldcharlie
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[Solved} Epsom Workforce610 green text

Post by oldcharlie »

Really hated to post this one as it happened once before some time back and I found some suggestion here that helped. Brilliant me didn’t save them and now I can’t find the relevant post.

Everything was working great in Linux Mint 17.1,2,3,and 18.3 Cinnamon 64-bit. Then it just recently started print in green ink. Like I said this happened once before and I believe I changed the LibreOffice settings:

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LibreOffice/Tools/Options/Print to uncheck [ ] PDF as standard print job format  
and that fixed the problem then. This time the box was not checked as I had previously cleared it.
I next went to:

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Menu/Administration/Printers/Properties/Printer Options  

and made sure the Color Model: was set to CMYK.

Then I noticed that on July 11, 2018 Update Manager updated 13 cups packages
  • 1. cups-ppdc
    2. cups
    3. cups-bsd
    4. libcupsmime1
    5. libcups2
    6. cups-common
    7. libcupscgi1
    8. cups-client
    9. libcupsimage2
    10. libcupsppdc1
    11. cups-daemon
    12. cups-core-drivers
    13. cups-server-common
Hope that list is correct and complete you can’t copy and paste so I had to type them individually. I have update manager set to always show security updates for levels 1, 2, 3.

I next went to:

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 http://127.0.0.1:631/ 
to cups administration. Under Administration I selected find printers and my installed network printer (Ethernet) was displayed as what I assume is correct:

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Description:
EPSON WorkForce 610
Location:
Office
Driver:
Epson WorkForce 610 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.11 (color)
Connection:
lpd://192.168.1.7:515/PASSTHRU
Defaults:
job-sheets=none, none media=na_letter_8.5x11in sides=one-sided
 
I could find nothing there that would indicate the problem – not that I would know what to look for anyway. So now I resort to the good users of this forum for suggestions.
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Linux Mint 19.2 Cinnamon 4.2.4 64 bit; 4.15.0-72 Kernel; Core i5-6260U, 16GB, Intel Iris Graphics 540
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kyphi
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Re: Epsom Workforce610 green text

Post by kyphi »

Re Epson WorkForce 610, I recommend that you do a "nozzle clean" and check your ink levels.

This printer has 4 ink cartridges, cyan, magenta, yellow and black. To produce green print you need cyan and yellow, so these two should be OK. You also need magenta to print in black if you have colour printing selected. Possibly the magenta cartridge is depleted.

Does the machine print in green when you select Monochrome instead of Colour?
Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon
oldcharlie
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Re:[Solved] Epsom Workforce610 green text

Post by oldcharlie »

kyphi,
Your not so subtle hint that I was making things infinitely more complicated than needed proved fruitful.
I thank you for being so kind as not to embarrass this old man more than necessary. In my defense I submit that this incident occurred from one print job to the other although several days apart. There were no low ink error messages. So when this green type instead of the expected black type I, like a rookie, immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was a software issue. When I saw that what looked like all the cups files had been updated around the same time that sealed my fate. I certainly hadn't done anything.

But that was the problem. I had a 10 year old ink jet was was used infrequently and I had ignored all maintenance functions for all 10 of those years. It’s a wonder the printer lasted as long as it has.

Your second great service was in pointing out that the Epson printer uses both black and magenta ink to print black. I had long wondered what combination they used for black type as I knew I was using color cartridges more often than warranted.

I could simply thank you and tag this post with [Solved] but, in hopes that my experience will help someone else here is what I did after reading your very enlightening post.

1. First I checked the ink levels. All look OK and I haven’t received any low ink warnings.
a) All show OK. Black was about 1/3 full and the lowest of all 4.
2. Change printer settings to greyscale and print page.
a) Blank page from printer, no text showing.
b) Bingo
3. Next I cleaned the print heads and received the following message:
a) Can not recognize following cartridges: Black - Magenta.
b) Bingo – again.
4. Then I removed both cartridges and replaced them as this has fixed similar errors in the past.
5. Clean heads again and received the same error message.
6. Replace both the black and magenta cartridges.
7. Printed a page with printer set to print greyscale.
a) Black type printed as green.
b) Red type printed as yellow
c) as you advised the Magenta is not printing. Since I just replaced the cartridge with a new one I suspected the Magenta Nozzle must be plugged.
8. Clean heads.
a) Error message replace blue ink cartridge.
9. Replace blue ink cartridge with new cartridge.
10. Clean heads again.
a) Head cleaning completes without errors.
11. Do nozzle check.
a) Black pattern very faint.
13. Clean heads again.
a) Head cleaning completes without errors.
14. Nozzle check.
a) Black is still very faint but showing.
15. Print test document page with color model set to CYMK.
a) Document printed as expected, black text was black, bold blue was bold blue, red text was red.
16. I strongly suspect that my 10 year old Epson Workforce 610 Multifunction Printer is wearing out, especially the black print head which has been the most used over the years. My negligence most likely contributed to that mechanical failure.

You have been kind and I thank you.
Linux Mint 19.2 Cinnamon 4.2.4 64 bit; 4.15.0-72 Kernel; Core i5-6260U, 16GB, Intel Iris Graphics 540
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kyphi
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Re: [Solved} Epsom Workforce610 green text

Post by kyphi »

Thank you for your acknowledgement, oldcharlie. I am always happy to assist a gentleman.
Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon
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