Moab 5x7 (7x10) cards

[switters]

Has anyone printed these cards successfully? I can't get them to feed into my R2400. I've tried both the single sheet feeder in the rear and the normal sheet feeder. I get an error message telling me the media failed to load properly.

What's weird is that the printer doesn't even seem to try.  It doesn't feed it directly through like others have described.  Nothing really happens at all.

I defined a custom 7x10 paper size in Page Setup (I'm on a Mac), and I'm using that.

Which brings me to another question. The Entrada profile says to use Watercolor Radiant as the paper type. But with a 7x10 custom size, it's not possible to select "manual-roll" as the feeder in page setup, and therefore Watercolor Radiant and the other thick paper types are greyed out.

If anyone has come up with a method that works for these cards I'd love to hear it!

Thanks.

[Wayne Fox]

I was able to print them without much trouble, but haven't used the 2400 for quite a while since replacing it with the 3800 (which also prints the cards very well.)  So I don't recall exactly what I did.

Sorry I can't be much help, other than to say I know it can work.

[ternst]

I used to use the Moab card stock in my 2400 but after only a couple dozen cards the printer would not feed. Epson sent me three or four new printers and each one failed after only a handful of Moab cards. I love these cards, but the 2400 could not handle them so I gave up. They seemed to feed in the HP 9180 OK, but I never ran a large batch of them as I started getting my cards offset printed instead...

[PeterTinson]

The three problems you have are feeding of the card, custom page setup and selecting Water Color Radiant White Paper.
In order above.
Feeding thickish matt stock from the auto sheet feeder isnt recomended as the coating of the media can impregnate the pickup roller and make it usless at picking up media. You need to use the manual - roll feed.
To get this with a custom paper setup you need to set margins of top 3mm both sides 3 mm and bottom 15 mm, then in the Print Settings you have a drop down under Page Setup with a choice of Standard or Manual - Roll.
To be able to select Water Color Radiant White Paper you need to have the Matt Black ink installed insted of the photo black.
Peter

[switters]

The three problems you have are feeding of the card, custom page setup and selecting Water Color Radiant White Paper.
In order above.
Feeding thickish matt stock from the auto sheet feeder isnt recomended as the coating of the media can impregnate the pickup roller and make it usless at picking up media. You need to use the manual - roll feed.
To get this with a custom paper setup you need to set margins of top 3mm both sides 3 mm and bottom 15 mm, then in the Print Settings you have a drop down under Page Setup with a choice of Standard or Manual - Roll.
To be able to select Water Color Radiant White Paper you need to have the Matt Black ink installed insted of the photo black.
Peter
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Peter,

Thanks for your very helpful reply.  I wondered if it wasn't necessary to designate margins for custom paper sizes - that was the case on my old Canon printer.

However, following your suggestions still have not solved the problem.  In order from above:

1) Regarding feeding the card into the "manual-roll" feed - the paper guide only sides over to 8.5" wide, therefore if I insert the card lengthwise (7" wide), I can only align it against one side of the paper guide because the other doesn't slide over far enough.  On the other hand, if I try to insert the card lengthwise (10" wide), it is only 7" long and I can't push it down far enough for the printer to automatically take it in.  

2) After setting the margins as written above, the paper size defaults to "other" in Page Setup.  I click "Print" and go to the print dialog.  Under "Print Settings" it says "Page Setup: Roll Paper", but there is no drop-down menu that allows me to select anything.

3) Further, even though Matte Black is installed in my printer and "Page Setup: Roll Paper" is indicated in the Print Settings, all of the options for thick matte paper (including Radiant Watercolor White) are greyed out.

Any ideas?  I'll probably have to call Epson about this.  The printer is two days old and I've only made two prints!

[ternst]

Just FYI, when my 2400 worked it fed and printed the cards perfectly - I didn't have to jump through any of the hoops as noted above (in fact I think I just used the enhanced matte settings). But what happened is that dust or something from this specific paper gummed up the rollers and it would refuse to feed most of the time. Every now and then it would feed and print a stack of cards, then quit - all settings remained the same. I loved the card stock, but it just didn't like to play with the Epson...

[Wayne Fox]

You can buy cleaning sheets to run through the printer that work sort of.  I bought some from Red River paper.

Yes sheet feeding these are a challenge.  We print a lot of Entrada 8.5x11 sheets on 4800's and 4000's and are always fighting this ... the coating sticks to the rollers, so then they slip.

If you aren't printing a lot of cards, you can usually just put a little bit of pressure on the card before the sheet feed tries to pick it up.  Sometimes it doesn't work, and it shoots the sheet all the way through ... undamaged.  If the printer grabs the card right to start with, it will probably feed ok.

[switters]

Okay, I did get one card to feed through at last.  However, the print area was all messed up.  This could be user error.

I made a 7x10 canvas in Photoshop and then put the 5x7 photograph on the bottom of that canvas.  I then fed the 7x10 sheet in the manual-roll sheet feeder lengthwise, i.e. "portrait" orientation.

However, for some reason the image didn't print correctly on the card.  Instead of starting to print right below the crease, on the bottom 5x7 portion, it started to print about halfway down that bottom portion - so only about half the image got printed before it cut off.

From what I understand, borderless printing isn't available with custom paper sizes.  The Epson rep I spoke with today confirmed this, but when I asked him if I had to enter any values in the custom paper setup in the Page Setup dialog, he said no.

I'm just curious, for those of you who had success printing cards, what was the margin around your image?  Did you enter anything into the Page Setup custom paper size dialog, or did the margins happen on their own?

Finally... I would love to be able to print cards at home.  Anyone have other suggestions for how to do this?