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Epson 1400 Banding

Epson 1400 Banding

2015-08-07 by homershannon@...

My trusty 1400 with the MIS UT-14 ink set is giving me fits. I'm getting minor banding in all my prints.


I've run dozens of head cleanings, cleaned the entire system per Cone's instructions at InkjetMall | How to Use PiezoFlush , but nothing is working. Nozzle checks are all perfect. I've run the alignment tool. Using the MIS purge pages, I've found that it is the cyan and light cyan positions that are not clearing (others were banding but have cleared). I printed five purge pages of just the LC on 8.5x11 plain paper and the banding is not improving.


I made a solution of water and alcohol and put it into to spare C and LC cartridges. I was hoping to run some more purge pages with this solution. However, the printer somehow knows this is not kosher and won't use them. My next step would be to try and make a solution that I can use that the printer will allow. I have both PR-CLEARBASE-PR and PR-C6BASE-PT. If I add some black ink to this, will the printer recognize it as ink? Which would be the better choice to mix with Ebony Black or MIS D2-4-K black? I have both.


Homer Shannon

InkjetMall | How to Use PiezoFlush
PiezoFlush is a very strong cleaner – yet is safe enough for long term storage. It can be used in a wide variety of ways that benefit users.
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Re: [Digital BW] Epson 1400 Banding

2015-08-07 by Paul Roark

The printer does not "know" what is in the cartridge. It's possible that with no surfactant in water it might have too much surface tension to run through the printer. If that is the case, then about 50% clear base (for the surfactants) plus your solution might help.

If there a combination of binder + pigments that has built up on the internal screen or other parts of the head, then some solvent may be needed to dissolve it. If Piezo flush didn't work, you might try a small amount of Windex (with ammonia) in the clear base. Don't leave it in the head for more than a few hours, as the ammonia is not good for some gaskets in the mechanism.

You might also want to try and clean the printer rollers. I have occasionally found that running a heavy matte paper sprayed with Windex through the printer helps clean the rollers.

Good luck.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com


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On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 8:26 AM, homershannon@... [DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint] <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

My trusty 1400 with the MIS UT-14 ink set is giving me fits. I'm getting minor banding in all my prints.


I've run dozens of head cleanings, cleaned the entire system per Cone's instructions at InkjetMall | How to Use PiezoFlush , but nothing is working. Nozzle checks are all perfect. I've run the alignment tool. Using the MIS purge pages, I've found that it is the cyan and light cyan positions that are not clearing (others were banding but have cleared). I printed five purge pages of just the LC on 8.5x11 plain paper and the banding is not improving.


I made a solution of water and alcohol and put it into to spare C and LC cartridges. I was hoping to run some more purge pages with this solution. However, the printer somehow knows this is not kosher and won't use them. My next step would be to try and make a solution that I can use that the printer will allow. I have both PR-CLEARBASE-PR and PR-C6BASE-PT. If I add some black ink to this, will the printer recognize it as ink? Which would be the better choice to mix with Ebony Black or MIS D2-4-K black? I have both.


Homer Shannon

InkjetMall | How to Use PiezoFlush
PiezoFlush is a very strong cleaner – yet is safe enough for long term storage. It can be used in a wide variety of ways that benefit users.
Preview by Yahoo


Re: [Digital BW] Epson 1400 Banding

2015-08-07 by homershannon@...

I went to get out my CLEARBASE and found a bottle of MIS-FLUID-4 behind it. I had forgotten that I bought it and never used it. I'll try running some of that through LC and C and see how it works out. Thanks for the help.

Homer Shannon

Re: [Digital BW] Epson 1400 Banding

2015-08-07 by homershannon@...

More information. The MIS-FLUID-4 does not seem to help. In fact after printing ten purge pages, LC only and FLUID-4 in the LC position, when I went back to the LC ink, the test prints were worse. What is puzzling me is that I am getting perfect nozzle checks but still getting banding both in the prints and on the purge pages. Is there something other than a clogged nozzle that will cause banding?

I have now put the FLUID-4 onto the parking pad and will let the printer sit while I go off and do other things.

Homer Shannon

Re: Epson 1400 Banding

2015-08-08 by brian_downunda@...

If you have a perfect nozzle check and are still getting some banding - across the print that is, and not just in the first and last inch, which is an unavoidable artefact of QTR on non-Pro Epson printers - then it may be misfiring nozzles.

See InkjetMall - Evaluate a Manual Nozzle Check to Determine the Health of Your Printer
InkjetMall - Evaluate a Manual Nozzle Check to Determine...
A LOT can be determined about the health of your printer by evaluating a printed MANUAL nozzle check pattern- it's not just to check if all nozzles are pr...
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Re: [Digital BW] Epson 1400 Banding

2015-08-08 by homershannon@...

After letting the head sit in the FLUID-4 overnight, this morning I ran some more tests - no change. I ran a few more head cleanings and I ran three alignments so that I got all the "less stripes" right in the five box. This did not make any difference.

I've posted a scan of a 6-color purge page, which has a nozzle check printed on it as well. Perhaps this will provide some clues as to what my problem is. The scan is at Test Print002.jpg.This is at 600dpi, so it has good resolution.

Oh, the image is on waste paper, so the printed bleed through that you see if from the printed side.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Homer Shannon
Test Print002.jpg
JPG Image
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Re: Epson 1400 Banding

2015-08-09 by brian_downunda@...

Using that IJM link as a reference, I suspect that there are some misfiring nozzles. All the horizontal bars seem ok, but some of the vertical ones don't look quite right to me. But I think that there's something else going on as well, as some of the banding seems to have a regular pattern. I don't know what would cause that.

Re: Epson 1400 Banding

2015-08-10 by homershannon@...

Well, it's a mystery. I got to thinking about Richard's comment on high speed and began to wonder if using the plain paper setting was causing unreliable results - even though the banding was occurring with the setting on Ultra Premium Matte paper. I ran a purge page using real matte paper and the appropriate setting, high speed off. It was perfect. I then printed an 8x10 of my image and it was very good but not perfect. I up-rezzed the image to 720dpi (for the print size) and printed it with the Photo RPM setting on and high speed off. The result was a perfect image.

I normally re-size my images for the correct printing size at 360dpi before printing. The up-rezzing to 720 is a new twist. Just to confuse me further, today I was printing a color image on my Epson 1430. When I had the image just right, using a 5.5x8.5 matte sheet to proof with, I printed a 17x10 image. The final print was all washed out. I messed around and wound up with three wasted full size prints - all washed out. I then re-sized the image to 17x10@720 and printed it with Photo RPM set. Bingo! Perfect image. I've never seen this happen before and I confess that I do not understand the results I am getting.

Re: [Digital BW] Re: Epson 1400 Banding

2015-08-10 by Paul Roark

FWIW, I always use the top printing quality settings. It very often makes a difference.

In the Epson driver the paper type sets the ink load, among other things. Plain paper uses a low ink load. The premium matte and glossy paper types use more ink. One of the first things I do when setting up an Epson driver workflow is to see which paper type setting gives me the best dmax for a non-Epson paper of interest.

And for a given paper type, the quality setting also appears to affect the amount of ink and dmax. I suspect RPM uses the most and has the smallest drop size among the quality settings, although I don't know the details of the various settings.

With the k3 printers, if the 3880 is typical, the ABW mode printing may have the highest dmax and give the highest quality for the Epson driver -- even with a dedicated B&W inkset (assuming it's Epson driver compatible).

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com
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On Mon, Aug 10, 2015 at 12:22 PM, homershannon@... [DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint] <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Well, it's a mystery. I got to thinking about Richard's comment on high speed and began to wonder if using the plain paper setting was causing unreliable results - even though the banding was occurring with the setting on Ultra Premium Matte paper. I ran a purge page using real matte paper and the appropriate setting, high speed off. It was perfect. I then printed an 8x10 of my image and it was very good but not perfect. I up-rezzed the image to 720dpi (for the print size) and printed it with the Photo RPM setting on and high speed off. The result was a perfect image.


I normally re-size my images for the correct printing size at 360dpi before printing. The up-rezzing to 720 is a new twist. Just to confuse me further, today I was printing a color image on my Epson 1430. When I had the image just right, using a 5.5x8.5 matte sheet to proof with, I printed a 17x10 image. The final print was all washed out. I messed around and wound up with three wasted full size prints - all washed out. I then re-sized the image to 17x10@720 and printed it with Photo RPM set. Bingo! Perfect image. I've never seen this happen before and I confess that I do not understand the results I am getting.


Re: Epson 1400 Banding

2015-08-11 by brian_downunda@...

There are a couple of pieces of information that I'd like to have in order to understand what's going on.

Are you on MacOS or Windows?
Are you printing using the Epson Driver or QuadToneRip?
If using the Epson driver, do you have a finest detail setting and is it checked?
What colour space are your images in?

Depending on the answers to these questions, it's possible that if you send a 360dpi file to print then it is being upsized by either the OS (Mac) or the driver (Windows) to 720dpi.

Move to quarantaine

This moves the raw source file on disk only. The archive index is not changed automatically, so you still need to run a manual refresh afterward.