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The problems accure than the paper is profiled as Glossy or Pearl Paper. ( Which you would do with HM FAP to use the GLOP ) Mike first used the Fine Art paper setting and made a print. As I recall the print was absolutly fine. I mean no Strips or anything, just the bad colors and banding because of the wrong paper setting. NOW IF the poblem would be that the printer can't handle HM FAP in general, then shouldn't be the same strips in his first print ? I think that the paper you choose in the calibration mode changes the paper handling in general......
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Yes, on the 1st print I made I had profiled HM FAP as a "Fine Art > 250gsm" paper, not Photo Semigloss (I may have the names a little off, I'm not with the printer right now). I didn't get the zebra stripes on that print, and in fact the 1st 1/2 of the print looked great. The image I was printing is a little busy, but about 1/2 way though I saw some faint banding on a tree trunk, and by the end of the print all of the greys had gone flat, as though I had lost black. It was then that I reprofiled the HM FAP using the Photo semigloss paper type setting and ran into stripes. I think that when you choose FA paper > 250 setting it leaves a larger gap between the heads and the paper. This may for some reason be why the GE can't be used, I don't know, but it would make sense why there is less of an issue if that's the case. By the way the additional profile patterns and prints I made were fine for all colours, so clearly the black head is OK, so I have no idea why I got that strange effect.
I spoke one last time to HP Tech support yesterday. I wanted to see if they could give me some idea if we could expect a fix for this soon. Given that they have been able to reproduce this on their 3100's in the office they don't have to rely on the odd bad system in the field, so I was hoping for some relatively promising news, and if it was then I would make the call on keeping or returning the printer.
I spoke to a different guy than the last 2, however he was also aware of the problem, and had run tests himself and been able to demonstrate it. He made the following comments during our conversation;
"Probably a month or 2. This is a long term fix, there is no "quick fix" for this like a firware update.
Able to reproduce it on gloss media, not heavy weight but a paper with a noticeable curl due to the coating.
Also seen it on Photo Satins."
I asked him if he could tell me if there was printer to printer variation (eg we have people here who have printers that are working well, while mine and Andre's have produced nothing good). He said that once they found a paper that is susceptible to the problem they can reproduce it on all printers (I didn't ask how many they have).
I mentioned that I had seen the problem more easily on images with heavy ink loading and he agreed that this would change the paper curl characteristics and make it more likely to happen.
I had meant to take a few photos of the 1st image I printer and post them last night just to keep all the info in one place. I should get a chance to do that tonight.