Problem - Ink spots appearing after sublimation.

[SerDnia]

Hello,
a few days ago, the paper in my printer (Epson L1300) jammed, the printer head smeared the paper, the paper itself was removed and there was no major issue.


The problem occurred after that, each subsequent printout started pouring spots like in the picture, and to make matters worse, they are not visible on the printout itself (possibly because they are mostly in gray scale) and only come out during sublimation.
Anyone encountered something like this?


Already cleaned rollers. Nozzle check test gives perfect results, despite this I ran strong clean, but no changes.
Maybe I'm wrong and the paper jam had no effect on it, or maybe despite the unobstructed nozzles, the print head itself is dirty and leaves such spots. I do not know if it is possible at all, because the head itself probably has some kind of surface cleaning system.
Anyone have any ideas what more could be checked?
IMG_20230505_164316.jpg

[Mrteajunkie]

It’s quite common.
it could be the pizza wheels have ink on them from the jam.

give them a little clean and send some blank plain paper though a few times to clean off any ink residue.

[SerDnia]

Thank you, I will try some more cleaning.

[webtrekker]

Hello,
a few days ago, the paper in my printer (Epson L1300) jammed, the printer head smeared the paper, the paper itself was removed and there was no major issue.


The problem occurred after that, each subsequent printout started pouring spots like in the picture, and to make matters worse, they are not visible on the printout itself (possibly because they are mostly in gray scale) and only come out during sublimation.
Anyone encountered something like this?


Already cleaned rollers. Nozzle check test gives perfect results, despite this I ran strong clean, but no changes.
Maybe I'm wrong and the paper jam had no effect on it, or maybe despite the unobstructed nozzles, the print head itself is dirty and leaves such spots. I do not know if it is possible at all, because the head itself probably has some kind of surface cleaning system.
Anyone have any ideas what more could be checked?
IMG_20230505_164316.jpg

Does this occur with every printout, or only with certain images? Some possible reasons are:

• Pizza wheel marks (as already posted by @Mrteajunkie ).
• Dust specks.
• Ink spatter from the printhead.
• Stray pixels in the image that are not easily visible on your monitor or the printout.

[SerDnia]

Already tried 4-5 different images and also 3x the same image. Spots appear on random places, even from the same image.
Images itself are fine, I've used them multiple times already in the last 2 years.
Dust - I don't think so, usually don't have problem with that and not on that scale (7-8 mugs in a row).
I had my suspicions about print head, but is it even possible? Spraying ink with perfect nozzle tests?

For now, I've done the cleaning, tomorrow will know the results.

[Mrteajunkie]

in the past I have used a sheet of thick card to clean the rollers rather than paper, but I have seen videos of thick corrugated cardboard being used too.

[AGS]

Is the ink splatter on your nozzle test sheets as well?

It sounds to me like there is a lump of debri/fluff stuck somewhere collecting ink and dropping it randomly

If it was the print head itself would you not expect to see dots of one particular colour rather than a light grey?

[SerDnia]

Is the ink splatter on your nozzle test sheets as well?

The test itself looks clean.
Today I've made 4 test mugs, 3 of them ended with black/gray dots (but not as many as on previous mugs), 1 was clean. So maybe there is some progress.

It sounds to me like there is a lump of debri/fluff stuck somewhere collecting ink and dropping it randomly

Maybe it's something like this, tomorrow I will try to clean the print head and the area around it. Maybe that will help.

[SerDnia]

Problem solved. There were a few dust particles on the print head.
IMG_20230510_142133.jpg

Thank you everyone for the help:).