Great question, I wish I knew the answer. I struggled with it a lot.
For my eye, I discovered that having the Epson colored inks in there
instead of quad made the alignment squares more clear. I just couldn't
do alignments with an accuracy smaller than say, being off by two or
three squares with quad inks.
As to the regular pattern you speak of, I don't remember seeing it
when the Epson inks are loaded at least- but I have to heavily
disclaim that as it's been quite awhile since I've done an alignment
and don't remember. I haven't really seen any patterns showing up in
the prints except with the VM inksets sometimes posterization in near
shadow occasionally. But I could be missing something. So I guess you
are seeing a non-random pattern showing up in the dither?
My solution is to use only one paper, Eclipse Satine 190 gsm, so I
just never do alignments after an initial one with OEM carts. I set
the lever on "+" all the time on the advice of someone else who used
the paper, and just left it there.
It may be hard to do, but is there a way to post a sample of a print
with a pattern to it- maybe a high res flatbed scan?
Jim H.
--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., Robert Morrison
<rmorrison@p...> wrote:
> For those of you using 1280's to do quad printing, what do you look
for in
> the second step of the print head alignment? I've been choosing
what I
> think is the "least grainy" pattern, however, there seems to be a
regular
> pattern in it which is tending to manifest itself in prints. Do you
choose
> the least grainy pattern that does not have a regular pattern in it?
I've
> never done this with color inks...so I'm not sure what the purpose
is...and
> how I should translate the instructions given that I'm using quads
(hexs).
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