Epson 3880 front manual feed restrictions?

[rasworth]

I used the front manual feed on my 3880 for the first time a few days ago, with heavy canvas stock that I had trouble feeding thru the rear manual feed.  After attaching front and rear leaders to tame down the canvas curl all worked ok.  I'm curious about the labeled thickness range, 48 to 60 mils, as an experiment I ran thru some 10 mil standard rc stock with a small test print, again no problem.

So what is Epson really trying to tell us wrt the front manual feed?  And how is the paper thickness handled, since I assume the printer driver setting (.1 mm increments) doesn't apply?  It seems to self-adjust to thin stock, at least I couldn't see any print anomalies, although everything I ran thru it was uni-directional head sweep.

Other than the 20 mm top and bottom margins I don't see any problems using the front manual feed for any stock, is there something I'm missing?

Richard Southworth

Added by edit - I just noticed that when manual front feed is selected in the printer driver high speed is grayed out.  Presumably the printer has less control over platen gap and therefore blocks bi-directional printing.

[BobShaw]

Other than the 20 mm top and bottom margins I don't see any problems using the front manual feed for any stock, is there something I'm missing?

To me that is like asking is there any problem walking over broken glass in bare feet.
Possibly not but you wouldn't do it unless you had to.
The front manual feed is a dog.
You have to change the slot, make space at the back, get the paper inside with some difficulty and you can only use paper up to 420mm wide and it won't print on all of that.
If there are any other options then you would use them.
The front manual feed is designed for stock 1.2 - 1.5mm thick. The rear manual is designed for 0.29 - 0.5mm thick. So there is a no mans land 0.5 - 1.2mm where you possibly could use the front also or if the material is rigid like thicker aluminium.
There may be other problems like rollers not gripping.