Lately I experienced the slipping of the media transport axle at the leading edge more often on my 11.5 year Z3200-PS. German Etching especially. It is not just the curl getting more pronounced towards the core of the roll but also the age of the paper roll I think. It is harder to unroll an older roll. Could be that the transport axle texture is affected by wear so less friction created on the paper. Other cause could be the springs on the tensioners weakening + the tensioners rollers having some friction on their own tiny axles. German Etching being an Alpha Cellulose paper probably has shorter fibers than a cotton based paper, I see wear towards the edge at the underside of the paper when it did not transport well. 36 and 44" rolls is what I use.
Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst Dinkla
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SOLI AIR
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Thanks for those insights, Ernst. As far as I know the Z9 delivered to me is not a refurb. It's new out of the box, but it was shipped by HP management from Barcelona rather than delivered from a U.S.A. dealer. It may be older stock thus perhaps an early production unit, and I'm beginning to suspect the roll feed problems I'm having are specific to my printer unit... as you suggest. probably something with the tensioning of the feed rollers. In any case, I have not been able to feed any fine art roll media (all purchased recently) without running into unwanted roll unloads that the printer hardware/software doesn't know is happening. That said, no problems yet with a roll of RC photo media, but its' a 100 foot roll and I still have more than 50 ft left so not yet into the tightly wound part of the roll.
With respect to the fine art media, I have tried a new roll of Moab Entrada Natural 300gsm, a recently purchased trial roll (16 ft) of HN gloss baryta, and just yesterday a brand new roll of HN fineArt Baryta Satin. Both HN media are Alpha cellulose like German Etching and thus they tend to be mechanically stiffer than cotton rag papers. Entrada is dual side coated which could perhaps make it a little more slippery, but it's always fed beautifully through my Z3200, and I've had no problems with it on a Canon iPF 8300 nor on a Canon Pro-4000. Anyway, yesterday I had a marathon session with the Z9, and I encountered the roll feed issue four times. even one time with the brand new roll of HN Baryta Satin in a new situation. It was in the Roll 1 position and "parked" which is a state where the Z9 pulls it back and out of the way so that one can switch to the other roll or even cut sheet. I had just finished a cut sheet print, and then started a new print job calling for the HN FineArt Baryta Satin in the Roll 1 position. The Z9 lost the new roll (less than 5 feet had been used to that point) as it was attempting to move it from "park" to "ready" mode.
All and all, I'm experiencing far too many roll handling issues with this printer, and it's likely not going to be resolved soon given that my country is more or less in lock down due to Covid-19. Non essential businesses all shut down, so not possible to get an HP technician out to my studio to take a look at it for the time being. I am able to work with HP tech support over the phone. HP has been really great about the phone support, and escalating the case to higher levels, but I suspect it's going to take an onsite service call before the matter gets resolved.
Meanwhile, when the Z9 does start a print job correctly, there's no slippage occurring during the printing of the image. The output quality is really beautiful. Looking at the superb quality of the prints only makes me want to use this printer more and more, but the productivity loss due to all the reloading and restarting of jobs makes life frustrating... that and being cooped up day in and day out with nowhere to go
all the best,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com