Digital BW, The Print

Hi Paul,

What rip/driver are you using to print with these inks?

I have used this same configuration for years and have never experienced banding like that, after I slowed my printer down in the menu.

My fist thought IF you have clean nozzles is to take your ink carts out and shake them to make sure the suspension of pigments is ok if you haven't had troubles before. All pigment settle if you don't do this. Then do a few head cleanings to flush the lines out.

Alignment is very important also.

My second thought is to relinearize your set up. Printers do drift over time.

Personally I use Studio Print rip for this set up and I relinearize about every 6 months or so. Different papers require their own linearization also.

As a test you may try running this file through your system as an RGB file through the standard Epson driver to see if you still see this banding. If not you know it has something to do with your rip set up and subsequent linearization. QTR curve or whatever other driver curve you are using could be your issue .

Finally there is a way to go into the 10K printer menu and slow your printer down to what I believe is called 8 pass printing that improves quality (4 pass is the standard but not as precise). I do this on mine as a standard procedure. I had some banding initially on the slower print setting. But I'm using SP with Smooth Diffusion dither. That setting did it for me.

Of course never use Bi Directional printing with the 10K, only 1440 UNI.

john



--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Paul Kohl <pkohl@...> wrote:
>
> I know that this problem has been discussed much before but I am 
> struggling and need some input.
> This is about an Epson 10600 using Cone K6 inks. There is one image 
> made from a Leica M9 raw file that has banding issues in the sky. It 
> is a smooth dark gray (image is now black and  white), darker at the 
> top of the frame, lightening as it moves into the image.
> I have tried: head cleaning, alignment checks. rotating the image 
> 180, rotating the image and printing on roll stock so I can have the 
> image horizontal. In all cases, nothing has affected it. The banding 
> continues in the direction of the head movement.
> It is not detectable in the other areas of the image but shows 
> clearly in the sky.
> I have printed this image on a 7880 through ImagePrint and it is perfect.
> I really would appreciate some suggestions as to how to try and 
> correct this problem.
> All ideas and suggestions will be studied.
> Thanks,
> Paul
> 
> -- 
> Paul Kohl
> Visiting Professor
> Art, Design and Media
> Nanyang Technological University
> Singapore
>