Epson 1430 with Eboni6 - solarization and misaligned print heads?
2014-08-08 by climballday@...
Hi gang,
Details of the system:
Mac OS 10.8.5 software
Photoshop CS6
Quadtone Rip
Eboni 6 Inks
Epson Artisan 1430 printer.
So about a week ago, I was printing some stuff, getting ready for a small show at a gallery. At a certain point, I started having a problem where shadow areas of the prints were looking somewhat solarized, or instead of seeing a steady gradient with detail in the shadow, it went to what looked like a single shade, with no texture or detail. All the other areas of the prints look fine... its just these particular shadow areas that are funky.
I did some searching, and saw a post on here where there was a discussion about how misaligned print heads can cause a problem that sounds very similar. So I tried doing a head alignment and succeeded in making the problem worse, which seemed to confirm that was the issue. Since then, I have done a huge number of head alignments, I've tried replacing the color cartridges, so as to see the lines on the alignment print better, I've done nozzle checks and pretty much everything I can think of... doing alignments seems to make it better or worse, but I can't seem to get rid of it completely.
The floors in the old house where my studio lives do bounce a bit, so my best guess is that as we were walking around and the printer was printing, perhaps the heads struck the paper or got knocked out of wack. that seems weird, but it's all I can think of, as nothing else changed... a steady stream of prints all processed in the same way were fine until they weren't.
I just called Epson, to see if there was a way to do a factory reset of the printer, to maybe put the heads back to their original centered position, and see if that helps, or maybe do very small corrections in well documented directions from there, but Epson support says there is no such thing as a hard reset on that printer. It's out of warranty, so getting it serviced will quickly exceed the cost of buying a new one, given that they cost around $250 new.
I've also played around with the software, adjusting images, printing from quadtone print tool instead of Photoshop, etc but the only thing I've done which has significantly altered the effect is the print head alignments, and now I am pretty much at the end of my problem solving skills. The only thing I can think of to do from here would be a ridiculously labor intensive process where I do a print head alignment with the color cartridges (which lets me see the lines better), replace with the eboni cartridges, do a print, then do a fine comparison side by side with the previous print to see if it's better or worse, replace the color cartridges, do a single adjustment on one of the three settings in the head alignment, replace the eboni cartridges, print another, compare, etc. It's possible that by making the smallest adjustments I can see, on one of the three adjustments available at a time, I might be able to slowly get to good prints again, or I may waste a ton of time and ink and never get there. Before I try that, I thought I'd solicit opinions here.
To be clear, all the nozzles are working fine, and text (which is normally where head alignment issues usually show up best) looks quite normal, so as far as Epson is concerned the printer is probably working exactly as it should. But with the Eboni inks, I'm getting unuseable prints. That in itself seems strange... Color prints seem okay... not great, but I never tried printing color images on this machine before I replaced the cartridges. They look like hell compared to my 3880, but again, I have no real sense of how good the claria inks should look to compare it.
I'm open to suggestions... I'm typically quite a good trouble shooter, as I work with DMX lighting equipment for a living, but I've come to the point that the one thing I can think of is quite possibly not worth the equivalent in time that the $250 for a new printer would cost me.
Cheers,
Stephen
Details of the system:
Mac OS 10.8.5 software
Photoshop CS6
Quadtone Rip
Eboni 6 Inks
Epson Artisan 1430 printer.
So about a week ago, I was printing some stuff, getting ready for a small show at a gallery. At a certain point, I started having a problem where shadow areas of the prints were looking somewhat solarized, or instead of seeing a steady gradient with detail in the shadow, it went to what looked like a single shade, with no texture or detail. All the other areas of the prints look fine... its just these particular shadow areas that are funky.
I did some searching, and saw a post on here where there was a discussion about how misaligned print heads can cause a problem that sounds very similar. So I tried doing a head alignment and succeeded in making the problem worse, which seemed to confirm that was the issue. Since then, I have done a huge number of head alignments, I've tried replacing the color cartridges, so as to see the lines on the alignment print better, I've done nozzle checks and pretty much everything I can think of... doing alignments seems to make it better or worse, but I can't seem to get rid of it completely.
The floors in the old house where my studio lives do bounce a bit, so my best guess is that as we were walking around and the printer was printing, perhaps the heads struck the paper or got knocked out of wack. that seems weird, but it's all I can think of, as nothing else changed... a steady stream of prints all processed in the same way were fine until they weren't.
I just called Epson, to see if there was a way to do a factory reset of the printer, to maybe put the heads back to their original centered position, and see if that helps, or maybe do very small corrections in well documented directions from there, but Epson support says there is no such thing as a hard reset on that printer. It's out of warranty, so getting it serviced will quickly exceed the cost of buying a new one, given that they cost around $250 new.
I've also played around with the software, adjusting images, printing from quadtone print tool instead of Photoshop, etc but the only thing I've done which has significantly altered the effect is the print head alignments, and now I am pretty much at the end of my problem solving skills. The only thing I can think of to do from here would be a ridiculously labor intensive process where I do a print head alignment with the color cartridges (which lets me see the lines better), replace with the eboni cartridges, do a print, then do a fine comparison side by side with the previous print to see if it's better or worse, replace the color cartridges, do a single adjustment on one of the three settings in the head alignment, replace the eboni cartridges, print another, compare, etc. It's possible that by making the smallest adjustments I can see, on one of the three adjustments available at a time, I might be able to slowly get to good prints again, or I may waste a ton of time and ink and never get there. Before I try that, I thought I'd solicit opinions here.
To be clear, all the nozzles are working fine, and text (which is normally where head alignment issues usually show up best) looks quite normal, so as far as Epson is concerned the printer is probably working exactly as it should. But with the Eboni inks, I'm getting unuseable prints. That in itself seems strange... Color prints seem okay... not great, but I never tried printing color images on this machine before I replaced the cartridges. They look like hell compared to my 3880, but again, I have no real sense of how good the claria inks should look to compare it.
I'm open to suggestions... I'm typically quite a good trouble shooter, as I work with DMX lighting equipment for a living, but I've come to the point that the one thing I can think of is quite possibly not worth the equivalent in time that the $250 for a new printer would cost me.
Cheers,
Stephen