banding on high detail stochastic epson 3000 output

[edwardo_machino]

On coarser detail it's fine, but when the dots start spreading out this weird shit happens. It isn't really "normal" banding as you'd see if the head wasn't aligned. I've soaked the heads with windex overnight, run many cleaning cycles and tried with the depth lever at "0" and "+" (aligning again each time I switched). Nozzle check pattern looks great, nothing seems clogged.

[squeegeethree]

Try putting in a new ink cart. If the cart. is near empty this often happens as there is what I imagine more pigment concentration and it doesn't spit as well

[edwardo_machino]

I think you are right. Cart is near the end. Will check this out. Thanks!

[edwardo_machino]

I had a new black cart sitting around so I purged the lines and installed it, ran a few cleaning cycles, aligned the head a few times so all the "4" lines were straight. The banding is not as severe but it is still there. I decided to try using some old 3M film I had laying around from Staples or wherever, and it turns out if I use that stuff the banding almost completely dissapears. My normal film is Kimoto Silkjet.

This is Kimoto:




This is cheap 3M projector inket film:



I'm really stumped on this, why would the film make a difference for banding? The only thing I can think of is height of the transparency but they both seem about equal and the banding occurs with Kimoto with the lever in "0" or "+".

EDIT: I took a picture through loupe, the banding looks like...it is adding a line of black, or not advancing the paper quite enough and overprinting? I don't know - the banding isn't a gap but a line of dots where there shouldn't be any!

[squeegeethree]

Do you have the option of printing unidirectionally?
Try that if you do.

[squeegeethree]

Also with all of the purging and cleaning you've done you pads may be completely saturated. Try gently blotting then off with a lint free paper towel. Then when you can no longer blot ink off of the pads run one more cleaning cycle. Also sometimes banding can be caused be a piece of lint, hair, film shrapnel deflecting the ink try rubbing the heads over a piece of plain (non coated) paper and see if you can knock some stuff off.

[edwardo_machino]

Yes, I believe that is what I accomplish when I turn off "high speed printing" (unidirectional).

I will try sucking out the pads and do as you suggest. Do you have any idea why it would print so much better on that other stock though?

[Fools Gold]

I used to get the same banding problems on my Epson 3000 . . I never solved it, and it mostly had the problem doing halftones or dithers over 60LPI. Tried it with different film, I found the clear Kimoto film was the worst at just about everything. I knew the rollers/feeder on the printer was starting to go wacky, (it was warping parts of the image when it printed, usually the leading and ending edge of the film)

Overall the 3000 doesn't have great resolution so it might start to faulter at higher resolution outputs

[edwardo_machino]

Is there a film you like better? That 3M stuff I mentioned seemed to solve 90% of the banding but I need to get some 11x17 or 16x24. And I thought I read Crosshair mention he uses Kimoto silkjet for his stuff and I think he uses a 3000.

[squeegeethree]

Chromeline AccuArt is the highest grade I've been able to find. I only use it if I have an extreme tiling job though.