Digital BW, The Print

>... Epson 1400 ... paper registration error (basically means 
> that it will print perfectly up until it reaches the last couple 
> of inches of the page and then the printer will not hold the 
> paper in place while it finishes printing so 
> the bottom of your page may not be aligned properly...
>... common fault (known as a paper registration error) and 
> can be fixed easily ...

Common but not easily fixed might be more accurate.

The problem seems to be that at the very bottom of the page printers 
rely on the exit rollers for paper tranport.  These exit rollers are 
often -- if not always -- not up to the job. The printers with 
the "vertical" (relative to the paper) head alignment have more of a 
problem because the distance between the main rollers and exit 
rollers is greater.  The trough where the head runs used to be very 
narrow.  Now it's grown to about 1 3/4 inch due to the space some of 
the new or vertically positioned heads need.  In the older printers 
we could totally disable the exit rollers to avoid pizza wheel marks 
and not have any effect on the print, at least if you didn't tell the 
driver to center the 8x10 image on letter size paper.  You can't do 
this on the printers with these large gaps between rollers.  I've 
noticed the problem on not only the cheaper printers, including the 
1400, but also the 1800.

The bottom line is that on a number of newer printers a 9 x 7 inch 
print on letter size paper may be the maximum that will really be 
good.

Have you noticed that if you simply print an 8 x 10 image on letter 
size paper, and do not tell the driver to center it, the bottom 
margin will be larger than the top?  There is a reason for this.

I don't know if the problem can be fixed.  Epson either has to put 
more serious exit rolers on printer (messing up the glossy prints) or 
go back to the narrow, horizontally placed heads (slowing up the 
printing speed -- and Epson's sales).

It's possible some of these printers are built worse than others and 
show more of the defect, but I think it's a design problem with many 
Epson printers.

The solution is to have very substantial bottom margins if you want 
to avoid microbanding there.  In fact, the 1.5 pl printers seem to 
also have a slight problem at the top of the page.  It seems to be 
less of a problem (narrower), but the paper transport is so critical 
that having both sets of rollers engaged is where the best printing 
occurs.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com