My Epson 7600 is great...except for printing a vertical line of sorts, a shift in the deep shadows at 14.25" from the right side. There is only ONE line, it is vertical, it only appears in shadow (e.g. Hue=44° S=21% B = 15%). It appears in the same place on any image.
It is NOT visible outside shadow areas. With a fine loupe, I am able to see the problem goes across the entire print. There is a sudden transition from smooth colors, to a much rougher pattern. Without a loupe, I cannot see the problem in lighter and textured areas, only in smooth dark areas.
I've added example pictures to this post.
In the example, the printing was unidirectional, "Super" weave is OFF, 1440 dpi. I'm using Atkinson's profiles (EM1 in particular).
The "line" has what looks like normal printing on the left side (toward the print head base), and slightly lighter, crummier printing on the other side. Sometimes, there is a visible an almost pure-white, very thin line, but often it is all printed (no white paper showing)
This occurs with every profile I can try, and it is diminished by printing bi-directional, and by turning on "Super" weave. It happens with Epson Enhanced and Epson Ultrasmooth papers.
I thought it was related to digital resizing of files, but I resized a TIFF to 400 dpi and printed without profile through Adobe Color Printer Utility.
My current suspicion is that there is a plastic guide at 14.25" and it is just a little higher than other guides. This is a place where plastic guides meet (and are screwed into the machine), and there is a very tiny difference in height between adjacent guides. I think I can possibly feel it. However, it isn't really any different at other places the plastic meets...but I have no other clues.
The paper path is clean of debris, nothing visible that might raise the paper.
- I will try changing the platen spacing, to wide (from standard), to see if that helps.
- I will check for something on the metal bar that holds the print head, see if there is an obstruction.
Please, I'm printing my exhibition of Syrian refugee children, part of a program to raise support and money for them. And the prints have these lines!
Help!
