Digital BW, The Print

I have experimented a little with removing the pizza wheels in the Epson C86 printer.

Pizza wheel marks is a problem when printing on some papers like Epson Smooth pearl or 
Epson premium Semigloss, and most visible when you print dark images with a lot of black 
ink beeing used. (black backgrounds etc.)

The problem with C86 is that the pizza wheels is a part of the paper transport system and 
the wheels is transporting the last 10-15 millimeters of paper. 

So even if it is possible to remove the pizza wheels completely, the result would be that 
you can not print in that outer area of the sheet!

BUT - not all pizza wheels are needed to transport the paper.

What I have found out is that it is possible to remove all pizza wheels except the first and 
the last one, and the papertransport will still be ok.

Just remove the 3 black plastic pieces with the pizza wheels mounted. From the first piece 
(the one to the left) you remove all pizza wheels except the first in the row. 

The second (middle) plastic piece you can remove all pizza wheels, or simply do not put it 
back in the printer.

The third (right) plastic piece you remove all pizza wheels except the last one.

Put the plastic pieces back in the printer, and you will have ONE pizza wheel to the left and 
ONE pizza wheel to the right. All the pizza wheels between are removed.

Result: You can print without pizza wheel marks over a much larger paper area.

What is left is one "pizza line" to the left and one to the right, both about 10-12 
millimeters from the paper edge. But this is better than pizza lines all over the print.
And black backgrounds can now be printed without pizza marks if you don't print to 
where the 2 outer pizza wheels are.