Digital BW, The Print

Hello, (this is cross posted to epson-inkjet)

I was just playing around with shifting the thickness lever on my 1160 
between + and O and then trying to align the printheads.  When set to + 
, the heads were way off to the 15 side of things.  So, I aligned them 
numerous times until I got them centered all on 8's.  Then I printed an 
image and saw micro banding.  Next, I set the lever to O, and checked 
the alignment.  This time they were way off to the 1 side.  It took me 
several cycles to get them all lined up on 8's.  Does this behavior seem 
natural?  Should the aligntment be THAT far off just by changing the 
thickness?

Any help on this question would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Heath Sandall