Perfect nozzle check, but banding in prints? Epson 3880

[narikin]

Frustrating morning with an Epson 3880:

Am printing some 22x17" prints on Epson Exhibition Fiber.
I start with a clean nozzle check, and begin printing the run of 12 prints. Towards the end of the 3rd print I notice banding.
Do a nozzle check but it shows clear. all perfect.
do a clean anyway, repeat nozzle check: all good.
resume printing: same story - banding appears towards the end.
repeat the above till I'm blue in the face.

So:  is it possible to have a perfect nozzle check and still get banding?

can platen gap have anything to do with this? I've run out of explanations.
at $4 per sheet, this is depressing, time consuming and expensive.
I totally appreciate why people move to Canon.

[Peter McLennan]

- banding appears towards the end.

The banding appears towards the end of each page? Or towards the end of the 12 print run?

Have you tried a head alignment?

[neile]

It's definitely possible to get banding when printing on cut sheets, even with a perfect nozzle check. I'm not familiar with the settings on the Epson printers, but on Canon printers there's a "far end feed adjustment" setting for each paper type that can be used to fix this.

Neil

[narikin]

the banding appears towards the end of each page.  It starts out fine but banding appears about 3/4 way through.
I did have perfect prints, start to finish, earlier today.  That end of the image is a bit bluer, so maybe the banding is showing only in the cyans?

just did a power clean, despite the perfect nozzle check. and that seems to have helped.
So IF that fixed it, I've lost a lot of time and expensive paper, thanks to nozzle checks showing its fine, when its not.

[narikin]

Nah, back again 3 prints later.

did an auto nozzle check, and it cleaned/checked itself to get a clear pattern.
did a print and wham back to blocked nozzles.

I give up, out of 20 sheets, I have 8 good prints, 12 ruined by blocked nozzles.
5 nozzle clean cycles, 1 power clean, 1 auto check.
am going to try a roll on my 11880 now for the rest.

this 3880 is 8 months old.  I shall buy a Canon next time.

[narikin]

ps: I am beginning to think it might be an ink pressure/ ink feed issue, where the print heads are short of ink towards the end of the print.

this would explain how the nozzle checks come out perfect, then after some use show banding: there is sufficient pause between clearing a bad sheet and putting in a new one for nozzle check, to replenish the ink at the head and give a clean result.

can't think of any way to help that, but it does seem clear at the beginning and after a 'rest'.

[na goodman]

It it's only 8 months old and still under warranty why not call Epson.

[ashwee5185]

Do you have highspeed checked on? Printing with highspeed, lays down ink both ways and can cause banding. Also I would recommend doing a head alignment.

But the fact that it is disappearing and coming back after cleanings is strange, maybe your printhead is failing. That would be surprising since you say your printer is only 8 months old. But the good news if a faulty printhead is the problem, it should still be under warranty-- so they should fix it for free.

[narikin]

Do you have highspeed checked on? Printing with highspeed, lays down ink both ways and can cause banding. Also I would recommend doing a head alignment.

But the fact that it is disappearing and coming back after cleanings is strange, maybe your printhead is failing. That would be surprising since you say your printer is only 8 months old. But the good news if a faulty printhead is the problem, it should still be under warranty-- so they should fix it for free.

I will try it without highspeed, but am in too bad a mood now to even look at the damn thing!

[John R Smith]

Ah. Never use Highspeed.

J

[Randy Carone]

I've never used anything but highspeed (Bidirectional) on my 3800 since I got it in Oct '09 and have never experienced banding. If the printer is functioning properly, highspeed should print fine. Sounds like the 3880 may have a leaking ink damper. Rather than continuing to get mad and frustrated, just call Epson and have them fix it.

[natas]

I agree with others here, turn off highspeed. I noticed when printing EEFP on my 7900 that the end of the print had some smearing if I had high speed on. It seemed like the ink was smearing or puddling up. You could actually see ink laying down over ink that was not completely dry

[ashwee5185]

Highspeed can cause banding unless the printhead is aligned perfectly. This perfect alignment is not always easily accomplished on every printer and if the alignment is even the slightest off, the banding will appear with bidirectional printing aka highspeed. So to insure this will not be an issue do NOT ever use highspeed. Some people may get lucky enough to get a good results, but that is not always the case. I never use highspeed, and I do not have problems. I would rather my prints take a bit longer than wasting ink, paper and the time to reprint it.

[Farmer]

I agree with Randy.  Highspeed could be an issue if you can back to the *600 series printers, but since the *800, it's a non-issue.  The printer is in warranty, contact Epson.