We have finally gotten ahold of a Canon PRO-4000 for evaluation, thanks to the persistent efforts of our local Canon rep. We've had the printer only for a couple of days, and I'm busy creating some media types and custom profiles for it so we can start running side-by-side real world test prints, comparing against our Epson P10K / P20K output. So far I like what I'm seeing out of the Media Configuration Tool, the general operations, and the general quality of the output.
However one highly irksome thing is the roll media loading. To be honest, my initial impression is this system is too picky, too complicated, too many moving parts, too much automation, too many things contacting the print surface, and too many ways for things to go wrong. When it works it does work, but it looks to me like it has the potential to become an operational problem over time. Really I just want to insert the leading edge of the paper and have the damn printer load it. 100% of the time.
Specifically, we've already hit one issue that so far I can't get around, so I thought I'd throw this question out for any PRO-2000 / PRO-4000 users out there. Something that happens pretty often is that the paper roll becomes disconnected from the 3" core, so the core just rotates freely within the rolled media. Often the paper becomes somewhat loose around the core, not tight & compact as it would be if the trailing edge had remained taped to the core.
On a feed system that absolutely requires a motorized spindle to maintain back tension, this is a problem. Default settings for auto feed on the PRO-4000 require the motorized spindle to be able to reverse the paper and tension it up, which obviously doesn't work if the core isn't connected to the media's trailing edge. There is a printer setting called "Paper retention setting" that can be changed from its default value of "Retain" to the value "Release". The purpose of this appears to be to allow manual feeding of the paper in cases where auto feed doesn't work, such as a loose core.
However, in every case I've tried so far with multiple different rolls of paper with disconnected cores, in both the top and bottom roll positions, the feed process ultimately stops with a control panel message that states: "Turn the roll holder with both hands and wind up the roll paper." Well, printer, I can't turn the roll holder to wind up the paper... the core is disconnected.
I can't get past this message. From the behaviour, it seems there's a sensor that's detecting some kind of paper slackness condition (or what the printer thinks is such a condition), and without being able to clear the sensor by rolling the paper backwards, the loading process will not proceed. Anybody run into this and have a solution for it? I've RTFM'ed and been through most of the control panel looking up what the functions do, with no joy so far...
