Digital BW, The Print

Hello folks,

I'm using an Epson 1400 with MIS UT14, and I've been having some quality
problems. I'm starting to wonder if something is wrong with the printer,
because the head alignment and nozzle check sheets have some artifacts,
and so I thought I'd ask other 1400 owners if they also get them. I've
seen these artifacts in sheets from two 1400s, so I assumed they were
normal; but both were refubished units, so... Yeah.

I've taken some pictures of the nozzle check and print head alignment
prints and put them up here:

http://waspfactory.org/~mike/1400/

If you take a look at printheadalignment.jpg you'll see a couple of
things: The first is all of the squares have a horizontal white line a
few lines up from the bottom, a problem I've had with every alignment
sheet I've ever printed. The second is new: squares in the second and
especially third line are smeared, which should be clearly visible in
alignmentdetail.jpg. That showed up after using dry bias tape (probably
a mistake).

The other problem is visible in the nozzlecheck.jpg; if you look at the
bottom-right segment of the leftmost check pattern (what would be black
with color ink), you'll see that it has a slight gap - it doesn't touch
the segment to its left, but is insted a bit too far down. Again, this
has always happened.

Do other Epson 1400 owners get these in their nozzle checks and
alignment sheets?

In my prints, I'm seeing faint lines parallel to the motion of the head,
more noticable in darker midtones, but present in all the channels if I
print a purging pattern. It looks very much like what I'd expect from a
clogged nozzle, but the nozzle checks show no actual holes, and multiple
cleanings and many, many alignments sheets haven't helped. Nor has bias
tape soaked with Windex (in addition to the dry stuff).

The moral of the story is probably going to be "buying a refurb was a
false economy, nitwit" because boy howdy have I wasted a lot of time on
this thing. It's frustrating because I can tell that if I can get it
working reliably I can get some really great prints out of it (or at
least the limiting factors will be my skill and talent rather than the
device).

Thanks for reading my novella of a post :)

-- 
  | Mike Acar |                                | mike at waspfactory dot org |