Digital BW, The Print

OK, so you have at least improved it.  Thats a start.
There is one more thing that could be affecting the printing.  That 
is that the paper is not being 'indexed' forward enough at each step.
There are two causes.  One common, I get it a lot with my printers 
after heavy use, the other pretty rare, I have read about it but 
never seen it.

1. Your paper has a coating, normally a kind of chalky substrate that 
accepts the ink.  This coating is extremely slippy and over a period 
of time can build up on the rollers that feed the paper and cause a 
tiny amount of slip each time the rollers try to 'grab' the paper in 
order to move it forwards.  When I use my satin matt papers such as 
imajet, there is a huge amount of coating deposited on the rollers.  
After 50 or so prints, the grab roller wont even feed the paper 
anymore.

So, what do you do?  Two steps.
i. Take normal plain bond paper, 50 sheets of and feed them through 
the printer.  Just stick a fullstop on a blank page in word and let 
it go.  This clears a lot off.  
ii. Next step is to spray some more of our beloved windex onto some 
more bond paper, especially on the RHS where it is grabbed. NOT too 
much because it will tear up, but enough that it is damp.  Feed wet 
sheet after dry sheet alternately about 10 sheets.
iii.  Finally if you feel around inside the paper feed tray you can 
find two thin plastic flaps that cover the 'grab' rollers.  Gently 
fold these back outwards and that a cotton bud soaked with Windex.  
Rub the grab roller with the cotton bud and see how much gunk comes 
off.  Normally it helps to get the printer into a red light 'no 
paper' situation so that you can press the feed but to cycle it a few 
times, this gives you access to more of the roller and can clean it 
better.
iv. Use a number of sheets in your printer paper tray, it places the 
top printable sheet closer to the rollers and helps it to feed.  If 
you check the posts prior to this someone found that this step alone 
cured their problem.

Now the second possibility....

2.  Your band that drives the paper feed has stretched.  This could 
theoretically mean that you will always get banding - even in your 
alignment patterns.  As I said before, I have never known this 
happed, only read about it during my lengthy research to solve the 
same issues you have.

Also, try changing papers.
Take a cheap EAM and see how that improves this on the 0 setting.

I have no experience with the HPs, but you can just look around this 
board and see that most people swear by their Epsons and have found 
ways to solve most of the issues.  At the end of the day, we are 
tinkering with things that weren't really meant to be....There is no 
telling what problems you may have with an HP.  Some of the issues 
above could be just the same.
Good luck

Steve


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "flabes23" 
<peter.bongard@t...> wrote:
> Hi Steve,
> 
> 
> thanks for your detailed post, but unfortunately I did everything 
you 
> suggested. I will give you a more detailed report on what I`ve done 
> yet.
> Some weeks ago I moved to a new flat. During the drive to the new 
> house I tried to leave the ink-bottles and the printer on the same 
> heigh. Some days later. I printed fifty thick cards. I therefore 
> changed the lever from 0 to + position (it's in the + position 
since 
> then, because I mainly print on Tetenal or Permajet 240g Archival 
> Matte). During that time I often got bad nozzlechecks and after one 
> photo-print was suddenly missing the grey color, I decided to flush 
> the cards using the syringe-method the MIS-guys suggested on their 
> site (I did everything exactly as they described except the step 
> where a brand new cardrige set is needed in order to check if the 
> print head works fine...sorry ;-), but apart from the bad nozzle 
> checks I got from time to time the prints were perfect-no banding 
> whatsoever! So the printheads were ok until that point). After that 
> the trouble began: I got very fine horizontal lines on my prints 
> (microbanding, I guess), although I always had a perfect nozzle-
> check. It seemed as if less ink came onto the paper than before the 
> card-flush. The whole image didn't look as "rich" as it looked 
> before. After that I tried some methods I learned from various 
> forums: Printing out the purge-file. No improvement. Run various 
> cleaning-cycles. Still no improvement. Then I tried realigning the 
> printheads several times along with the Windex-trick and the 
raising 
> of the bottles. After that the picture looked better, significantly 
> better, but the banding is still there. Since I'm a photographer, 
> this situation is very vexing for me. Now I'm going to sacrifice 
one 
> more sheet of my beloved Tetenal Archival Matte and do a proper 
> Windex-treatment before that. Then I realign the heads once more, 
but 
> if this doesn't work, then say goodbye to Mr. Epson :-< . So Steve, 
> after hearing my whole story - do you have any idea what could 
cause 
> this problem or if there is any other thing I should test? My 
> suspicion is that I made something wrong during the card-flush. 
Maybe 
> I should repeat it, now with the cardrige-step included? Apart from 
> that, do you think that the hp 7960 can print out b/w as beautiful 
as 
> my Epson with the MIS-inks? 
> 
> Thanks for your advice. I'm actually quite desperated. 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Peter