Printing on metals with Epson 4900 - "pizza wheel" scratches 4.5" from edge

[stefano]

Hello all,

I have been experimenting with printing on metal, using Booksmart Metals to start with (expensive experiments, but I wanted to start from a known baseline as opposed to coat my own). I love the results, but I am dogged by a consistent set of scratches 4.5" from the trailing edge of each print. I can clearly see how this happens: when I feed the sheet from the front feed, the pizza wheels are elevated and do not make contact with the print. All is well until the last inch or so, when the sheet is about to leave the feeding rollers and the pizza wheel assembly rotates down to finish feeding the paper. When the wheels rotate down and make contact with the sheet, they leave very consistent and very unsightly scratches, ruining the print.
Has anyone figured out a way to prevent the printer from dropping the pizza wheels? I understand that I might have to leave a sizable white margin as the transport of the last inch or so of paper won't be guaranteed without the pizza wheels, but as thing stand right now the only option I see is to leave a 5" trailing margin, and that is a very expensive proposition with a media this expensive!
Does anyone know if the 79/9900 printers behave the same? I see Epson has a CTP plate printing version of the 7900 that is specifically designed to print on aluminum printing plates, I would imagine that it would be plagued by the same issues if it uses the pizza wheels for feeding the plate?

Thanks,

Stefano

[davidh202]

Why don't you just tape a piece of matboard or any paper the same thickness of the plate ,to the trailing edge (tape across the bottom side), of the aluminum sheet.? If the transition needs to be taped on top you could do just a sliver on the top trailing edge of the plate. You could even just use some discarded, damaged, plates cut to size.
You can make it as long as necessary to fool the machine.

[stefano]

David,

Thanks for the reply! sometimes the most obvious solutions are staring at you and it takes somebody to point them out! I will definitely give it a try!

Stefano