Does Canon Pro 4000 handles thick paper?

[FRA_]

Hi guys, I'm considering to buy a Canon Pro 4000, I was wandering if someone here has any experience with thick papers in this printer, in my case a use a lot the "Hahnemühle Fine Art Baryta" which has a strong curl effect in particular at the end of the roll. With my old Epson 9890 I get paper strikes always if I miss to manually feed a few inches before printing and loading the 44" roll it's a pain! 

[Ryan Mack]

I haven't had issue with paper curl on rolls, only on sheets. Hahnemuhle has some batches of their gloss baryta with a strong curl to the sheets and head strikes were a real problem there.

[FRA_]

Thanks Ryan! I only print rolls so I should be safe. But... do you find sheets with curl? They should be perfectly plane

[Czornyj]

Hi guys, I'm considering to buy a Canon Pro 4000, I was wandering if someone here has any experience with thick papers in this printer, in my case a use a lot the "Hahnemühle Fine Art Baryta" which has a strong curl effect in particular at the end of the roll. With my old Epson 9890 I get paper strikes always if I miss to manually feed a few inches before printing and loading the 44" roll it's a pain! 

Canon iPF PRO-4000 has excellent suction and it handles hopelessly curled papers with ease (in worst case you have to increase suction in paper preferences).

[FRA_]

Today I went to a colleague studio which has a PRO 4000 and we tried to load the last 3 meters of a 44" roll of Hahnemuhle fine art baryta 325g, the worst case scenario possible for a printer, and.... it was a pain!   

No way to load it automatically, we managed to load the paper manually but we had to push the paper quite hard, with one hand above end one below the roll, one person for each side, to make it pass through. We first had to cut one peace of paper which folded in a corner at the firs attempt. At the end the paper got some black dirt on the surface in the initial part due to the forced push against some rollers I suppose.

We also loaded a new 24" inch roll of the same paper, it was much easier but we had to push it manually to the top anyway.

This is quite scary to me, I also print on cotton fiber, like the Hahnemuhle Museum Etching 350g and you can't treat that paper in such way or you end up with ruined printed areas! These are also very expensive papers on short rolls and you can't waste the last 2-3 meters.

[Richard.Wills]

I routinely print on curly papers on an older 8400. My experience is that I can often print full rolls in one session, but if I unload a roll with only a few metres left, it can be very uforgiving when reloaded.

To reduce head strikes, I'll untape the roll on the machine, and then take the leading edges, and hook it onto something at ground level, to take some of the curl out of roll. I set a 3-6" leader on the rip (sometimes more in  very low or very high humidity).

I've mostly switched to Canson materials, where the per roll cost is slightly lower, and the rolls are 15m, rather than 12, so losing the last 3m is less painful.

[FRA_]

Thank you Richard

Today I had a call with a Canon reseller, he told me that the new PRO-4100 has a better loading mechanism than the 4000 and can handle thicker papers. Two days ago a different reseller told me that there is no substantial difference.

[Ryan Mack]

I'd try to double check that. I know there was some work to help auto-select media type based on paper reflectance, but I don't remember there being announcement of much mechanical changes. Been a few years though.

[Panagiotis]

I always load thick stiff paper manually on the PRO-4000. I found it very easy. The head is possibly to touch the paper only at the leading edge, so I always advance the paper 5cm. Then I usually print the hole job without cutting (or unload) the paper in order to avoid to leave again 5cm in the leading edge.