Christmas break and equipment shutdowns

[Nate]

I got the same advice from Epson–we now shut our P9000 down every night. 

The 9880 it replaced was left on 24/7 and had constant printhead problems. By the end of its life we were wasting an exorbitant amount of ink on that thing doing multiple cleaning cycles before each print and STILL had prints resume banding halfway through a single page.

So glad to be rid of that nightmare.  
Hopefully shutting down at night will help the P9000 avoid the same fate.

[Farabomb]

Interesting, I have a 9800 and I had the opposite experience. I never shut it down, I can't tell you the last time I did a power cleaning. I run a nozzle check before I start the day's first proof and rarely have issues. I am in no way saying what I'm doing is right, I'd always trust the manufacturer until my experience has proven otherwise. I know when we first got it it had been sitting for months and the head was toast.

[Nate]

It's definitely possible that our issues were caused by something else entirely--that machine had already been here a good while before I arrived.

I did notice that the top cover was often always left open because people were too lazy to close it after changing media. Given your experience it sounds like dust accumulation may actually be the more likely culprit.

[Farabomb]

If you're still having issues there is a trick where you park the head on a rag soaked in windex for a night and supposedly it clears up funky head issues. Might want to google it and see if might help you.

[Nate]

Interesting.. now I wish I had posted about that before we replaced it. Once we got the P9000 we wound up selling the 9880 on the cheap to a vendor/friend that just needed a machine to print die tracings.

[DigiCorn]

If you're still having issues there is a trick where you park the head on a rag soaked in windex for a night and supposedly it clears up funky head issues. Might want to google it and see if might help you.

I know on old Canon machines, they would tell you to heat up a wet paper towel in the microwave and wrap it around the head to clear clogs.