Go-Large please...

Last week I decided I wanted a professional Large Format printer. Having looked at Ebay, the cheap contender would be the Epson Pro 4000. Any other options would be too nw and therefore unaffordable. An advantage (yes, I call it an advantage, because I can clean it and others cannot, so I can drop the price and get a bargain!), is that some amateurs don't use the printer often enough, with the resukt that the print hads get clogged. Heads won't get clogged as quickly when you constantly use this particular printer, but if it sits still for a while, the heads get blogged up pretty good. The printer is basically the bigger brother of the Epson 2100. However, it is comparing a dingy with a mammoth tanker!
Anyway, i found one on the internet, with all its flaws described. Seeing that others were going for over 400, an dthis just started at 1 GBP, but had the blogged heads in the description, I decided to put in an offer and the guy accepted.
Problem; The guy lives in London. Well, only 2 hours drive from Bristol, right? Wrng! The guy lives just north of Canary Warf, so an extra hour through the city!
Still doable. However, the guy works hard and therefore late. So in teh end I ended up there around 23:00! I had to borrow a friend's satnav (don't bother going to london without unless you know the way at heart!). I called my friend to tell her I would be back very late (or early) so I would drop the satnav off in the morning. In the end I was back home at 3 am in the morning. My friend panicked as she needed the satnav for her relocation to Ipswich. I promised to have it back in time, so after a few hours sleep I get up, and go to her house... She wasn't there... So I call her, and she says she is waking up. So I ask her where the hell her car is, and she says taht she is with her boyfriend. Apparently she stayed the night there. Interestingly, she didn't have a boyfriend!!! Well, now she does apparently... I was a little pissed off because she made me come over and it seemed all for nothing. The whole thing (lack of sleep) left me with a splitting headache. As it turned out, she came back at 8 and she left at around 8.30, so not totally wasted...

Back to the printer... I was looking for cleaning fluid to clean the heads; isopropyl alcohol... Used for cleaning electronics amongst others. This stuff is very strong but also very neutral. It seems to be chemically neutral, meaning it won't affect paint too much, and certainly not electronics. Ideal for cleaning printer heads. Apparently you are supposed to be able to get it at any chemist... Except that you can't! Chemists just don't seem to have the stuff at all! Screwed!! until I found a flask of lens cleaner. I was thinking lens cleaner-printer cleaner-lens cleaner- printer cleaner... Lenses have coatings... coatings are sensitive... so any lens cleaners have to be neutral as hell... So should do the trick... After that murmering of the mind I spotted the back; "caution: contains isopropyl alcohol!"... Well... need I say more...? So I went to Jessops and bought all their lens cleaning fluid (2 flasks... so not that much...)

Anyways, I'll be cleaning my printer soon and afterwards I will try some 17" high panoramas!!!