Grainy horizontal line - Epson 3880

[Cornelius]

Hi guys

I just mentioned a strange behaviour from my Epson 3880. At the end of every print, I can see a slighty grainy horizontal area wich is about 1cm wide and about 5mm prior the end of the printed area.
This appears independent from paper size and feeder.

I'm currently printing 21x21cm book pages (print area), with 21x24.5cm sheets. But I can see the same effect at the same relative position to the last ink line on borderless A4 as also on 33x33cm book pages with 330x365mm sheet size.
When printing the 21x21cm area on a full A4 page, I can NOT see the grainy line.

So it seems the effect has something to do with the end of a sheet, resp. with the relative position of the ink area to the end of the sheet.

Also I tried to but something below the sheet on the sheet holder, so that the paper does not "fall" down, when it comes out of the printer. Unfortunately without any effect.
Nozzle are good, printhead alignment is good.

The last book I printed about 4 weeks ago, did not have this grainy area.

Does anyone have an idea where this might come from?
Fortunately this is such a faint effect, only visible when the image area is very smooth, darker (not black) and you have to know for what you're looking. So I don't thing clients will see this. But anyway, I do not feel 100% comfy sending these prints out..

PS: I'm printing on OSX 10.12 with the latest Epson driver and Lightroom. The printer is more then 6 years old and printed more then 15'000 pages and more then 3.5 liters of inkl..

[Cornelius]

I tried to take pictures of the effect. Not that easy. Hope you can see it. Marked the areas in red.

Top side of the attached photos is the end of the printed area.

[degrub]

circle the area please

[Cornelius]

Here is a picture with more notes on it.

[Cornelius]

Anyone any idea what could cause this issue? 🤔

[unesco]

what kind of paper and settings do you use? which feeder? no margins option used?

might be number of things:
- paper inconsistency (but I doubt),
- because of some reasons (eg. paper deformation due to wet ink load) paper is lifted and the distance form paper to the print head is different than usual (not relevant to optimal platten gap)
 - this is the end of page and Epson does not assure appropriate quality at the very end of page (paper goes out of some holders inside and is somehow lifted)
- similar efects also happens when bi-directional mode is not calibrated and used, but would be visible on the entire page
etc

[Cornelius]

@@ unesco
Thx for your reply!

I'm actually use the same settings like for years. Haven't changed anything here.
Bidirectional printing, platten gap on wide, enhanced matte paper. The paper I'm using is Tecco PFR220 which is the same then Hahnemühle Photobook Paper. 220g matte FineArt double sided coated paper.

The effect happens on both feeders. Also when using borderless and non borderless printing.
It's happening at the end of a print, when using the specially cutted and grooved (not sure if this is correct in english) for my books. Using these sheets I have approx. 2cm left after the printed area (see images above). But also, when using normal A4 paper and printing till the end (borderless).
When printing until the middle of an A4 page, I can NOT see the effect at the end of the printed area.

So it seems, that is has to do somehow with the position of the end from the printed area (ink area).

I'm going to check now what happens, when using uni directional and/or platten gap on auto. I post and update.

[Cornelius]

Alright, did some more testing.

Using a different paper (PFR295 from Tecco, similar to Hahnemühle PhotoRag 308) cuttet down to 21x21cm and printed borderless looks fine. So happens so far only on the PFR220 from Tecco.
Tried unidirectional printing, platten gap von wide and auto, added some dry time (+10) and removed and re-added the printer in OSX. No change, the grainy area still appears.

Really strange. I printed some other books about 4 weeks ago, where I definitely not had this grainy area. Using the same printer settings and also paper from the exact same manufacturing badge. Suddenly this grain pops up. 🤔

[Cornelius]

More tests - still no positiv progress:
- Platten gap (auto, mid, max) --> No change
- print resolution 1440 with and without checkbox "finest details) --> no change
- ink density +10 --> no change

🤔🤷‍♂️

[Cornelius]

After looking at many prints with the grainy band, it looks like the printer is reducing the print resolution for the banding area.. looks like the printer is printing with 720 instead of 1440..
I have updated the printer driver lately, but not sure if this overlaps. Could it be a driver issue?

[unesco]

I would opt for grooved paper reason, this can uplift paper in some areas.
Driver can also have some impact, sometimes some epson driveds use another algorithm for printing the last part of an image close to the border, but never met anything like this at 3880. I can try to replicate it on my 3880 but would need exactly the same image and screenshot of your driver settings.

[Cornelius]

@@ unesco
I'm printing on the grooved paper now for about 7 years on two different 3880 with a total of about 100-120 books. Never had this issue before.
Sure, there is one change, as we started to groove the paper by a lokal bookbinder instead of buying it grooved from Tecco about 1 year ago. As I already printed about 3 or 4 books last sommer with the lokally grooved paper without any issue I personally doubt that this is the issue.

I already tried a test print on the same paper (PFR220) without the grooving. The grainy area is still visible.

I gonna try to downgrade the printer drive today and see if this has an effect. The latest print I rememeber which worked was with driver 10.33. Now I have version 10.90, as the Epson software lately wanted an update. If the driver downgrade does help, I'll post screenshots from my settings.

[Cornelius]

Good news! Seems that the driver was the issue. I just deinstalled the Epson driver 10.90 and installed the newest version (12.62). Now the prints look like the thousands of book pages before. 👍🏻

Update
Okay, unfortunately it's not completely gone just less visible. Still there is a grainy band but less visible. Good enough for delivering the prints to clients. They will not see it.
I'm gonna try some more settings, but I guess I just have to live with it. The printer will be replaced next year anyway.

[MfAlab]

rough guessing:
Ink dots are not dropped on the right positions. And some mechanical errors increase at the end of paper. e.g. paper height changes since 3880 doesn't have vacuum, paper slipped because wearing rollers

Try head alignment and paper thickness setting. If that doesn't work, uni-direction printing helps on printing quality but time is the cost.