Platen Gap / Head Hight - Why not always highest?

[darlingm]

I've gotta be missing something here.  When I first started printing, I ran into a few head strikes and learned with the media thickness I'm using, that I needed to set my planten gap / head height hither to prevent that.

Why is there even a setting?  Why not always have it on the highest setting?  I can't find anyone saying they need to lower it for some reason.  It doesn't look to me like the print quality is any less on a higher setting, but I'm not using any magnification to do the comparison.  There has to be some reason...

[Tim Gray]

Think of the gap as the distance between the print head and the BOTTOM of the paper...  the thicker the paper the more gap you need - but the idea is for the print head to always be the same distance above the TOP of the paper. The farther the head from the paper the less accurate will be the ink laydown.

[darlingm]

Think of the gap as the distance between the print head and the BOTTOM of the paper...  the thicker the paper the more gap you need - but the idea is for the print head to always be the same distance above the TOP of the paper. The farther the head from the paper the less accurate will be the ink laydown.

Thanks!

OK, I was thinking that might be what it was.  I haven't noticed a quality problem if I set the gap to the highest, even on thin media, but figured it must not come out as nice at least if examined well.