z3100 banding in blacks

[ricgal]

Hi
Would appreciate suggestions, I am getting banding in pure blacks on HP Pro Sat, firmware 6. something-  I am running at top qual, printing from Lightroom sending it at 240dpi  the printer spends a lot of time pausing waiting for data-  could this throw it?  It was not as bad when I ran at hi qual but without max detail ticked-  still far from the perfection i have come to hope for,
Thank you in advance
Ric

[seekerbeta]

Hi
Would appreciate suggestions, I am getting banding in pure blacks on HP Pro Sat, firmware 6. something-  I am running at top qual, printing from Lightroom sending it at 240dpi  the printer spends a lot of time pausing waiting for data-  could this throw it?  It was not as bad when I ran at hi qual but without max detail ticked-  still far from the perfection i have come to hope for,
Thank you in advance
Ric

240dpi? or ppi? remember the translation...

i remember from my training that 72ppi and 240ppi made the same DPI when it came to the printer... this may be causing it to have to take time to drop the extra data out... and therefore causing the ink already laid down to dry before the next line is laid on top.. causing the banding... try a windows test page to see if it makes it better... and see if 72ppi (or Pixels) makes it better... i know when i used to send stuff to our Designjet.. i would send it @ 72pixels and the image came out crystal clear.. if you want to see.... i could email you a photo of a picture i printed....

[Jim Cole]

The only time my printer slows down and "waits for data" is when I send it a file it has to convert 8-bit 300 dpi data before it can print, like a 16 bit file. The first time I sent a 16 bit file to the printer was on a very large print...dumb mistake. The print time  difference on a 20" x 60" print is on the order of 25 minutes instead of 4 hours if you send it a file it does not have to process. If you send a 300 dpi file already converted to 8-bit, the printer just sings along. I haven't found a need to print at 600 dpi either. The "Best" setting with "More Passes" is my standard print mode on gloss and matte papers. 240 dpi is not a native resolution on HP. It will have to convert to 300, which I think, is the only native resoultion on the Z3100.

Hope this helps,

Jim

[Geoff Wittig]

Hi
Would appreciate suggestions, I am getting banding in pure blacks on HP Pro Sat, firmware 6. something-  I am running at top qual, printing from Lightroom sending it at 240dpi  the printer spends a lot of time pausing waiting for data-  could this throw it?  It was not as bad when I ran at hi qual but without max detail ticked-  still far from the perfection i have come to hope for,
Thank you in advance
Ric

I have gotten subtle banding from time to time, most visible at reflection angles on gloss/satin papers. This is most commonly seen after the printer stops to "think" for a while mid-way through a print, with the head carriage wiggling back & forth for a few moments before it resumes printing. I have seen it in two settings: when one of ink carts is almost empty, and when heads need cleaning.

The Z3100 does an admirable job of self-maintenance, and head cleaning is nothing like as big a problem for me as it was for the Epsons. But my suspicion is that the self-testing algorithms 'map out' misfiring jets progressively, until there are not quite enough jets still working to completely cover the print's requirements and you begin to get subtle banding. When I manually run a head cleaning cycle, the problem goes away. I presume this unclogs enough jets to correct the situation.

There's one other cleaning task to peform for the Z3100 that may be related; over time matte black ink builds up on the underside of the head carriage assembly. This shows up as black streaks near the edge of a large print. The solution is to pull all the heads, clean off any ink overspray on the heads with distilled water on a Q-tip, then clean off the accumulated ink underneath the head carriage (again with a Q-tip) and on the 'diaper pads' at extreme left and extreme right of the carriage's 'run'. I go through a 24"x50' roll of paper every two months or so, and at that printing frequency I have to do this two or three times a year. YMMV.

[ricgal]

Thank you for your excellent replies-  I will give it a crack and repeot back
regards
Ric

[NedOtter]

Hi Ric,

I had a lot of "print head idle" issues on the same paper, and tracked down to the "Memory Manager" setting on the first tab of the HP driver. I set it to "disabled", and have never had a problem since.

Good luck --

Best,

Ned Otter

[ricgal]

Hi Ric,

I had a lot of "print head idle" issues on the same paper, and tracked down to the "Memory Manager" setting on the first tab of the HP driver. I set it to "disabled", and have never had a problem since.

Good luck --

Best,

Ned Otter

Thank you Ned-  I will give it a go
The problem is definetly ink drying before the next lot goes down-  reducing the quality to Normal sorted it-  although it seems like a fudge-  you do'nt spend 3.5k on a printer to put it on 'Normal' quality
regards
Ric

[Mussi_Spectraflow]

Thank you for your excellent replies-  I will give it a crack and repeot back
regards
Ric

Banding is usually an issue with ink not reaching the paper, this lack of ink shows up as a line. The build up of ink can certainly start to clog nozzles. If the printer is always on this should not be a problem but here are two things to try. One run a print head cleaning. Secondly do a paper feed alignment calibration, both options are in the printer control panel. The input resolution should not affect banding. Also I would suggest that you use the best setting, turn off "max detail". The difference between best and normal is simply the number of passes, more passes = better accuracy = less banding. I find that I can sometimes get away with normal, but best is always the safe bet. The fact that the head is pausing is do to processing power of your computer, this theoretically should not affect print quality, and in my experience has not. 240 dpi should be perfectly adequate for large prints, there is a small case for resizing to 300 dpi but in real world situations this is not usually an issue, especially for photographic output.

[ricgal]

Hi Ric,

I had a lot of "print head idle" issues on the same paper, and tracked down to the "Memory Manager" setting on the first tab of the HP driver. I set it to "disabled", and have never had a problem since.

Good luck --

Best,

Ned Otter

Thank you all for your input
I set it on best and it wound up pausing near the end of the print-  There was a slight band at the point where it paused.  The disabled Memory manager seemed to allow the whole thing to print in one whack without a break hence no subtle band where the ink had dried I guess befor the next lot went down.  Thanks Ned
Anyone know why this might be?  It appears the black art of printing gets blacker when printing black.  What a lot of wasted black and pro Satin to get to this point!
best
R

[ricgal]

Hi Ric,

I had a lot of "print head idle" issues on the same paper, and tracked down to the "Memory Manager" setting on the first tab of the HP driver. I set it to "disabled", and have never had a problem since.

Good luck --

Best,

Ned Otter

Thank you all for your input
I set it on best and it wound up pausing near the end of the print-  There was a slight band at the point where it paused.  The disabled Memory manager seemed to allow the whole thing to print in one whack without a break hence no subtle band where the ink had dried I guess befor the next lot went down.  Thanks Ned
Anyone know why this might be?  It appears the black art of printing gets blacker when printing black.  What a lot of wasted black and pro Satin to get to this point!
best
R

[rwheat]

I was chatting to a technician today who came out to repair my Z3100.
He said a couple of things which may be of interest.

1) When printing in "normal" mode, there is less scope for the printer to map out clogged nozzles than there is in "best" mode, because of the number of passes involved, ie. less passes for "normal" mode.  This makes sense to me and explains why, when I do get banding issues it has always been in "normal" mode.  Eg. On particular papers (satin) sometimes I can get acceptable output in "normal" mode and sometimes I can't (banding in the darker areas).  When I switch to "best" it has always been good.  

The question I have is at what stage will the printer actually tell me that it cannot give acceptable output and one or more heads need to be replaced?  I am guessing it's when it cannot give acceptable results in "best" mode?  

BTW, I now always print in "best" mode.

2) When printing, the heads need to be "warm".  The jumping back and forth motion at the right hand side when printing (usually waiting for the data) is the printer firing the heads through the drop detector - keeping them warm for firing for the next row.  The drop detector has a single slot at the left hand side of the service station, and the head carriage moves across from the home position to fire the print heads, each of which has a different position, hence the irregular jumping.  This implies that a print job that involves lots of this jumping will probably use more ink than is necessary, besides taking longer, causing more wear and tear on the printer and letting the previous row of ink dry.

I always turn off the memory manager - which solves this issue for me.

Please note that these may not be strictly technically correct explanations - but they helped me - so I offer them here.
Richard.

[stevenf]

I can't seem to fin the memory manager in the advanced driver settings for windows XP. Can you tell me where to turn off the memory manager.

Thanks Steven


www.friedmanphoto.com

[Jim Cole]

I can't seem to fin the memory manager in the advanced driver settings for windows XP. Can you tell me where to turn off the memory manager.

In the Z3100 Driver on Windows XP:

Advanced Tab
>Document Options
>>Printer Features

There should be a Memory Manager option with an enable/disable option.

[rdonson]

As Jim says it should look like this:

[stevenf]

I am using the PS driver and only have options for mirror image and print all text as black.

Any ideas?

Thanks Steven

[rdonson]

I am using the PS driver and only have options for mirror image and print all text as black.

Any ideas?

Thanks Steven

These will be for the raster driver I believe.