Vertical black spot/smudging Canon imageprograf 4000

[mappingdog]

Hi everyone,

I've just come across this issue, can anyone offer any advice?

any help would be appreciated, thanks!

[Kemosabe]

ouch.  does it do that for all of your prints?  it looks like the print lost what it was doing and just dumped a line of black ink.  you may have a corrupted file.  the print head lays down ink from right to left then steps to the next line and repeats the process until the image is finished.  it looks like the printer printed what was in the file.

wait a minute.  which way was the paper oriented in the printer?  in other words what side of the print is the leading edge coming out of the printer? 

it looks like a head strike. head strikes are parallel to the leading edge coming out of the printer.  that could be a head strike depending on paper orientation.  i own a Pro 4000 and i've seen this before.  again, head strikes appear right to left parallel to the leading edge coming out of the printer.  there is a multitude of things that can cause a head strike.

what paper were you printing with?  was the paper profile in the printer and print driver?  if not you may have to increase the head height.  for thicker paper you may have to increase the vacuum to make the paper lay flat on the platen.  with sheet paper it has to be flat.  if the sheet is curved it might not lay flat on the platen.     

what is size of the roll core?  the Canon Pro 4000 has a KNOWN issue with 2" roll cores when you come to the end of the roll.  roll paper curvature.  the paper at the end of the 2" cores have too much of a curvature and will not lay flat on the platen resulting in head strikes especially for the thicker papers. 

most of the above can be found in the Pro 4000/2000 on line manual.

[I.T. Supplies]

Head strikes will depend on how the image printed out.  If it was coming out where the mark hit on the left side, it may have happened when going back across the print back to the right side of the housing.  The ink will be laid down both ways.  After going from right to left, it will go back (left to right) to lay down the rest of the path and complete the section before moving onto the next section of the print; or you can consider it has a pass.  This very well "could be a head strike", but if it hasn't happened on anything else but the one print, it may be the image file.

As mentioned, it really depends on how it happened and if you used the proper media type, it should help upfront.  If it's a pretty thick media, best option would be to work with the head height and vacuum setting so it will lay flat enough to apply the ink during passes.

But how many images have this issues or is this the only one so far?  If the only one, have you attempted other prints to verify if this is what's printing?  Maybe try another image on the same product (if you haven't already) to confirm if it is the file itself or actually an issue in the printer or the media directly.