Printing card stock with Epson R3000

[schrodingerscat]

Greetings all, and a happy new year -

I'm trying to print card stock on an Epson R3000 with no luck. Actually, I'm trying to print on Alumajet media, which is .0005" aluminum sheet in 8.5 X 11. The material loads into the printer OK, and is listed as being compatible with the 3000 as it has a through path for heavier media(and a card stock setting). I keep getting errors and warnings that either the media is set wrong or doesn't match, or some such. Seems to be random. I've been on the horn with Epson four times, only to go round and round with the folks with the heavy accent on the other end of epson' support line. After waiting on hold for quite awhile. Each time I get different advice.

There was one combination that seemed to work, but unfortunately I was getting head strikes. Going back in and adjusting the paper thickness and platen width seemed to mess things up, as I was never able to get it to print anything else on the same card. Printer works fine otherwise and there seems to be no physical reason for this behavior. Apparently you have to set everything up in the Page Setup and Printer Setup menus to a special combination known only to a select few.

There seems to be little instruction for printing card stock on this printer, so hoping someone can shed some light.

Thanks

[Farmer]

If the vendor of the substrate claims it's compatible, I would start there and ask them for the settings.

Is it metallic shiny?  If so, it's possible that the paper detection process isn't getting a recognisable value (it's expecting something closer to white, and not metallic).

[I.T. Supplies]

Metallic papers are compatible with the R3000, but aluminum sheets may not read properly if it's too thin.  Plus, the aluminum sheet won't have a proper coating to accept the ink and may smear almost instantly.

There was an Epson Photo 3000 that is a pretty old (discontinued) model which I believe was a 13" or 17" printer.

I know the R3000 will print on metallic paper since I've done it personally with 8.5x11 sheets and no issues.

[Farmer]

The old "3000" was the Stylus Pro 3000 - it included dot matrix style sprocket feed paths, among other things.  Long since discontinued, but was a real workhorse in its day.

[schrodingerscat]

Thanks for the input.

This material is .005", so in the same range of card stock that should work with the printer. The surface of the sheet I'm working with is white. It feeds fine, the problem appears to be in the driver or software, which seems to be looking for a particular set of parameters in setting up the print job. Neither the manual nor epson CS seems to know what that should be. The printer about a year old.

Nor can anyone tell me what sensors are built into the R3000 for detecting the media, and what they measure and how this effects operation. Having a hard time understanding why this has to be so difficult.

Will try the Alumajet people next and epson again.

[Farmer]

The driver doesn't detect anything.  The printer has an optical sensor which measures reflection of light to determine whether or not paper is present (hence silver/metallic would be different to white and why sometimes clear film fails).  It has a broad range of acceptable values and I've never heard of the smaller printers being affected by ambient light, but some of the large format machines (which have larger spaces) have been tricked by very bright spotlights or sunlight streaming through a window at certain times of the day.

I think we need to know EXACTLY what errors you're getting and precisely when you get them.

[schrodingerscat]

Here's the routine so far -

Pop out front loader. insert media to line as instructed, hit OK button on printer, open rear door and push front loader back in. Had changed black ink to Matte as per Epson TS. Printer now sez "Poster Board is Loaded" and "Platen Gap is set to Wide".

Pull up file in PS CS4, go to Page Setup and set Paper Size to "US Letter(Front-Fine Art). Go to Print, Printer Settings, and set Media Type to "Fine Art Paper>UltraSmooth Fine Art Paper", which sets Ink to "Matte Black". Hit Print.

The Epson software pops up a warning - "Paper Source setting not selected correctly". Can find nothing in the various panels labeled "paper source". My guess is they are referring to how the paper is loaded, so not sure what the problem would be.

The printer LCD reads - "The media loaded does not match the settings selected. Check the print settings or reload media".

Spent another half hour or so yesterday with a fellow at Epson's Advanced Product Support. Stumped him as well, and he has this printer. He wondered maybe a compatibility problem with OS 10.6.8. I did reinstall the drivers with fresh downloads.

Thanks

PS - Would you happen to know the spot on the media(paper) the sensor reads? Again, the media is loading OK and has a white surface.

[Farmer]

It's not a media detection issue.  You'd get a paper out or paper skewed or similar error.  What you're getting is a logical mismatch in the driver settings compared to the actual setup of the printer - some combination of settings between the two isn't right.

I don't have a 3000 in front of me here at home, but can possibly access one in the office next week when I'm back in.

In the meantime, have you followed the guide here:

https://files.support.epson.com/htmldocs/r3000_/r3000_ug/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm

And then click on the "Print On Fine Art Papers" featured topic?

Is the media actually US Letter in size?  In PS, what media path are you choosing from the driver?  Are you on OS X or Windows?  In a situation like this, every possible setting you have needs to be reviewed to try to spot the problem.

[Rick Popham]

Here's the routine so far -

Pop out front loader. insert media to line as instructed, hit OK button on printer, open rear door and push front loader back in. Had changed black ink to Matte as per Epson TS. Printer now sez "Poster Board is Loaded" and "Platen Gap is set to Wide".

Pull up file in PS CS4, go to Page Setup and set Paper Size to "US Letter(Front-Fine Art). Go to Print, Printer Settings, and set Media Type to "Fine Art Paper>UltraSmooth Fine Art Paper", which sets Ink to "Matte Black". Hit Print.

The Epson software pops up a warning - "Paper Source setting not selected correctly". Can find nothing in the various panels labeled "paper source". My guess is they are referring to how the paper is loaded, so not sure what the problem would be.

The printer LCD reads - "The media loaded does not match the settings selected. Check the print settings or reload media".

Spent another half hour or so yesterday with a fellow at Epson's Advanced Product Support. Stumped him as well, and he has this printer. He wondered maybe a compatibility problem with OS 10.6.8. I did reinstall the drivers with fresh downloads.

Thanks

PS - Would you happen to know the spot on the media(paper) the sensor reads? Again, the media is loading OK and has a white surface.

I think the problem is that, when using the media setting for Ultrasmooth Fine Art, the printer wants you to use the rear loading path.  On the 3800 you can cancel out of the media/loading path mismatch (at least when it's between "sheet" and "rear" -- never tried the front path) and the printer will accept the path you chose.  I'm not sure how you can get around this on the 3000.

[Rick Popham]

I was looking back over your printing routine and I think all you have to do is reset the paper path after you select Ultrasmooth Fine Art as a media setting.  This setting will assign the rear load path to the printer -- but you've got the media in the front load, hence the error message. 

So, while you're in the printer settings, reset the paper path to "Front load".  You'll get a message saying that this is not the proper path, but you should just be able to cancel the message and the printer will accept it.

[schrodingerscat]

Hi all -

Thanks for the replies, and apologies for the delay. Have been going round this(and the bend) with Epson, and finally got a guy who came up with the probable answer. After upgrading my box and OS, which has been keeping me busy. Was going to anyway so as to use LR5, but the person at Epson who advised it was obviously quite wrong in that regard.

The error was generated due to not picking the paper type with "card stock" in the name. Unfortunately, out of the 40-50 paper types listed, only ONE has the card stock subtype, and it's 13 X 19. So that's that. Why they would cripple the bloody thing like that is beyond me. I even installed the British driver hoping it might have more choices for paper type.

As I only need to print letter and B&W, going to maybe find a dedicate small printer that works with card stock.

PS - Fine art and card loads from the front on the 3000.