Digital BW, The Print

Hello,

I have read and read again all the posts I could about the subject of
horizontal banding.

I print on a brand new Epson R1800 loaded with 3 Eboni MK and cleaning
fluid in the 5 remain color positions on Epson EEM and get horizontal
banding in the midtones. QTR, 2880, uni-directional, ordered.

With Epson OEM inks, color prints do not show any banding (with Epson
print driver). On Epson EEM.

I did 3 full cleaning cycles ( (3 cleans, one print, wait a day)x3 ),
print head alignment is A1 as are nozzle check patterns.

I did notice that I do not get banding when printing on Hahnemuhle
Museum Etching 350gsm.

I am wondering if this banding is simply just an ink/paper
combination. I am assuming that OEM color inks might have a dot gain
that is a little larger than MIS Eboni. Thus the OEM color prints
"hide" the banding with a bit of ink spread?

This would explain why I get banding on EEM and not on Hahnemuhle
Museum Etching, assuming that Hahnemuhle has different ink absorption
and drying characteristics.

Does this makes sense?

I tried changing the Ink Limit slider in QTR on EEM (0, +10, +20, -10,
-20) on an horizontal 21 step wedge. The banding changes zone with
different Ink Limit values. This seems to validate that the problem
might come from ink/paper/coating characteristics.

Has anyone experienced similar problems? Maybe I just need to find the
papers that do not show banding?

Apart from that the prints are AMAZING. Compared to Piezography NK7,
they appear more neutral (and perfectly warmer) to me, more sharp (dot
grain seems to add perceive sharpness), more luminous and much better
linearized when testing using circular gradients.

Thanks for any input, experiences or advice,

Denis