Epson R3000 & Hahnemuhle paper: head strikes

Hi,

A few weeks ago I received an Epson R3000 and I have since printed on a number of papers from Epson's, Breathing Color's and Hahnemuhle's sample packs.

With a few Hahnemuhle papers specifically Photo Rag Pearl, Fine Art Baryta and Baryta FB I observe evidence for the IJ head hitting the paper. This can happen along the short or long paper edges. I made sure that the "gap" in the printer driver is set to wide and the correct paper thickness is entered. None of the other Hahnemuhle papers or the ones from Epson or Breathing Color show this problem.

Is anyone aware of similar problems with those papers on the R3000 or other printers? And more specifically, how to resolve it? Also, can this have caused damage to the IJ head? A nozzle check print looks okay and there is no evidence for problems in prints on other papers.

Epson support was useless - even at the Supervisor level. They basically simply state that they don't guarantee that their printers work with 3rd party papers and that it's not their problem...

Thanks, Joerg

Wow I can't believe Epson didn't help you better. I have always had great help from them except for one particular guy one time. Other than that very helpful. I wonder how tiered the support is maybe based on witch printer one buys? Evidently it makes a big difference.

Head strikes are bad and can lead to head misalignment and debris on the nozzle heads.

You might try turning up the suction and maybe setting a manual number in the platen gap field box. Actually do a measure of the paper with a caliper and convert to mm. Or at least use "wider" which should give more room than "wide".

I take it all the papers you have tried are flat? Or are you feeding rolls? Are the heads striking the edges of the paper or the field area of the paper? Or both?

Admittedly I am unfamiliar with the r3000 driver but I would imagine it is similar in operation.

Paul

Most vendor support is poor across all companies, so the lack of help for this is not surprising. Paul gave you some good tips already. Head strikes indeed are not something you want. In addition to messing up the page being printed, they can damage or foul the head over time. So you want to avoid this.

Head strikes are not uncommon, especially with certain media. They can have several causes, so the fixes vary.

If the paper is not flat (curled or bowed in the middle, or corners / edges turned up), then you should try to reverse-curl or flatten it before feeding it through the printer. I don't believe the R3000 has a vacuum suction system (certainly the 38xx series doesn't), so you can't rely on the printer's ability to keep heavy fine art papers flat if they start out warped.

If the paper is dead flat when being fed, it may be thicker than the printer expects. You set basic paper properties (including default paper thickness) by selecting the proper media type in the printer driver. (This is not the ICC profile... the media type controls the printer's mechanical function and ink lay-down.) If you have selected the proper media type, it may be that the particular paper batch, your printer, or the ambient conditions (e.g. humidity) are just different enough that the thickness still isn't quite right. So you can dial in either platen gap adjustment or paper thickness adjustment, or both.

Platen gap affects the spacing of the print head above the paper printing area, and normally this is the most important factor. As Paul says, you may need to try "wider" instead of just "wide". Wider spacing can stop strikes, but may affect print crispness since the ink dots are spraying over a larger gap and may not align as perfectly; so it's a trade-off. Paper thickness affects the paper transport mechanism and normally shouldn't change whether head strikes happen or not, but sometimes a thicker setting is necessary on fine art papers to ensure smooth feed. Possibly extra pressure from paper feed can buckle the paper slightly, just decreasing spacing enough for strikes to happen. So bumping the paper thickness by .1 or .2 mm may help.

If those things don't stop the strikes, then another potential cause is that the paper is warping ("cockling") under the liquid ink load, and this is triggering the head strikes. You may suspect this issue if you see the head strikes in the body of the print where the heaviest ink is placed, not along the leading or trailing edges or on the sides where paper curl is more likely the issue. It can be a particular issue with paper surfaces that are more porous. To deal with ink load issues, you should be able to increase the per-pass drying time in the advanced settings of the driver. Switching from bi-directional printing to uni-directional also may help, by giving extra time between head passes that are actually laying down ink.

Finally, I'm not familiar with the R3000 but its driver should also give you the ability to reduce the total ink limit; less ink load may stop the paper from cockling quite so much, and get it clear from being struck. This is called "Color Density" on my 3880 and 4880 drivers; dial in a negative value to reduce the ink limit and see if that helps if all other measures fail to fix it. Of course since you're throttling back the ink lay-down, if you go too far it can affect print tone & colour, so this also is a trade-off.

pleverington wrote:Wow I can't believe Epson didn't help you better. I have always had great help from them except for one particular guy one time. Other than that very helpful. I wonder how tiered the support is maybe based on witch printer one buys? Evidently it makes a big difference.

Head strikes are bad and can lead to head misalignment and debris on the nozzle heads.

You might try turning up the suction and maybe setting a manual number in the platen gap field box. Actually do a measure of the paper with a caliper and convert to mm. Or at least use "wider" which should give more room than "wide".

I take it all the papers you have tried are flat? Or are you feeding rolls? Are the heads striking the edges of the paper or the field area of the paper? Or both?

Admittedly I am unfamiliar with the r3000 driver but I would imagine it is similar in operation.

Paul

Hi Paul,

Thank you for your suggestions. Unfortunately, the R3000 doesn't have a vacuum chuck and the available settings for the gap in the printer driver are "standard" and "wide". And yes, I adjust the paper thickness in the printer driver as well.

All papers tried so far are 8.5x11 sheets. Mostly the strikes are near the edges of the paper.

Joerg

Royce Howland wrote:If the paper is not flat (curled or bowed in the middle, or corners / edges turned up), then you should try to reverse-curl or flatten it before feeding it through the printer. I don't believe the R3000 has a vacuum suction system (certainly the 38xx series doesn't), so you can't rely on the printer's ability to keep heavy fine art papers flat if they start out warped.

Thanks Royce for the extensive feedback. Wish I could attend one of your printing workshops...

As for the flatness of the paper, I have to admit that I didn't pay too much attention to it as I presumed this to be normal/expected to some degree and that the R3000 was designed to handle fine art paper. I will check later today.

If the paper is dead flat when being fed, it may be thicker than the printer expects. You set basic paper properties (including default paper thickness) by selecting the proper media type in the printer driver. (This is not the ICC profile... the media type controls the printer's mechanical function and ink lay-down.) If you have selected the proper media type, it may be that the particular paper batch, your printer, or the ambient conditions (e.g. humidity) are just different enough that the thickness still isn't quite right. So you can dial in either platen gap adjustment or paper thickness adjustment, or both.

I adjust the paper thickness and gap width in the advanced settings tab of the printer driver. Hahnemuhle recommends selecting as media type Ultra Premium Photo Paper Luster (if I remember that correctly) for the ones listed below which has as default 0.3 mm thickness and a standard gap width. So, I change the latter two settings. But one question I have is if the printer doesn't actually accept this modified settings and stays with the defaults. Epson support of course claims that this is impossible but also impossible to verify.

Platen gap affects the spacing of the print head above the paper printing area, and normally this is the most important factor. As Paul says, you may need to try "wider" instead of just "wide". Wider spacing can stop strikes, but may affect print crispness since the ink dots are spraying over a larger gap and may not align as perfectly; so it's a trade-off. Paper thickness affects the paper transport mechanism and normally shouldn't change whether head strikes happen or not, but sometimes a thicker setting is necessary on fine art papers to ensure smooth feed. Possibly extra pressure from paper feed can buckle the paper slightly, just decreasing spacing enough for strikes to happen. So bumping the paper thickness by .1 or .2 mm may help.

As indicated above, the R3000 printer driver has no "wider" setting for the gap. I'll try your suggestion to increase the paper thickness beyond the actual and see if it makes a difference.

If those things don't stop the strikes, then another potential cause is that the paper is warping ("cockling") under the liquid ink load, and this is triggering the head strikes. You may suspect this issue if you see the head strikes in the body of the print where the heaviest ink is placed, not along the leading or trailing edges or on the sides where paper curl is more likely the issue. It can be a particular issue with paper surfaces that are more porous. To deal with ink load issues, you should be able to increase the per-pass drying time in the advanced settings of the driver. Switching from bi-directional printing to uni-directional also may help, by giving extra time between head passes that are actually laying down ink.

I remember seeing such warping on some printed papers (can't remember which now) but it didn't lead to head strikes. After the ink dried the paper was flat again. Also, the head strikes are more along the edges of the paper consistent with the paper have some residual curling.

The basic question is if I should return it and try my luck with another version or entirely new model.

Joerg

I suspect that Royce is on the right course pointing towards paper curl along the edges as the possible cause of the head strikes I am having on certain Hahnemuhle paper.

I've compared all the Hahnemuhle papers in the sample pack and the ones giving trouble are clearly the ones with the most curl at the edges with Photo Rag Pearl being the worst. I've included an image (cell phone camera) below to illustrate the non-flatness of it... Would you expect that a printer without vacuum suction can print on such paper successfully?

Then comparing the other papers of comparable thickness I have it's clear that the Epson papers are the flattest. The Breathing Color Pura Smooth is actually also quite curled - perhaps not quite as much as the Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Pearl - but I don't observe any IJ head strikes. However, that paper certainly gives me trouble with feeding. It's the only one which I had repeatedly trouble inserting into the printer and I had to unload papers a few times due to a skew error message. But again, no headstrikes... so far.

Here is a cell phone image of the worst case scenario I've encountered so far. In this case there was indeed some blodging also in the print area (left edge) and not only along the paper edges. Joerg

Joerg--your photo of the sheet of  Hahnemuhle says it all. I have seen such curl many times with flat sheets. Try roll paper instead. I believe it will not have the curl at the edges that then causes head strikes there. But understand your trying to make a 500-800 dollar printer do what a 6,0000 dollar printer does. It won't happen, so you may in the end be paper limited as far as what you can do with this printer. Especially if it has no suction capabilities.

Paul

Hi Paul, I certainly understand that this printer can not perform as well as a higher end printer. However, I am a bit dumbfounded that paper waviness could be a limiting factor. I mean how can this be acceptable in the first place? Obviously, someone must be buying Hahnemuhle's paper despite such quality issues...

Well, I guess I'll add flatness as a criteria in my paper evaluation matrix...

Joerg

Yeah, you're definitely getting head strikes from paper curl on the edges. This is not uncommon in heavy fibre papers, but Hahnemuhle tends to exhibit this kind of curl the most in my experience. It's not a quality issue as such, in my opinion, simply a characteristic of the media that one must work with or around. Thinner media with similar curl likely can be held in place by the R3000's feed mechanism, but the heavier media are much stiffer and correspondingly more difficult to keep flat in the printing area where by definition there is no hardware clamping down the paper surface as the head moves over it to lay down ink.

The higher end printers have much more robust feed mechanisms and drivers with more tunable parameters, in part to take care of much wider variations in physical characteristics of alternate media. I'm printing some heavily curled Hahnemuhle papers in my 3880 even as I type this -- worse curl than you've got above, but no strikes in the 3880. Epson is not aiming the lower priced desktop models at the same level of media handling flexibility.

Flatten the paper or reverse curl it if you can, to make it layer flatter. Otherwise you're left with the other measures Paul & I described above, with a few limitations in the driver controls apparently (like platen gap).

Hi Royce, thanks for the feedback. At dpreview, someone pointed me towards a De-Roller (http://aztek.com/Deroller.html) but this device seems awefully overpriced. I guess since I have an entire box of the Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Pearl (45+ sheets) it's worth a few tries but I may be ready to cut my losses in that regard as well.

Joerg

I make my own "D-rollers" with left over cardboard tubes and a piece of left over canvas. Costs zero, and works fine. Plus you can make any size and diameter you want to fit any need you have.

Paul

Yeah, the expensive de-roller is slick but IMO it's overkill. Perhaps if they put a red dot on it they could justify the price. Just make your own like Paul says. A larger diameter tube can help reduce the chance of creasing or kinking the paper while rolling it.

I get the most use out of the 2" tubes that certain rolled media comes spun onto. Having different lengths saves having to haul out a 44" beast when all I need to uncurl is an 8X10 say. The three inch tubes work also for large sheets usually. How long you hold the print wound up has a lot to do with how much d-curl you'll wind up with as well as running the print through both ways. I have no idea why anyone would pay such ridiculous prices for something so elementary in principle and fabrication. Just take your left over tube and tape the canvas on it square and your done. Always leave a full wrap of the canvas on your tube before you place a print in it so no cardboard touches your print face. The de-roller couldn't do it any better.

For that edge curl though I'm believing that you might want to use a tube with an 1 1/2 " diameter or so and maybe only roll up only that portion of the paper that has the curl.

Also I have all types of the Hahnemule papers in rolls and they do not exhibit the kind of curl  I'm seeing on your flat sheets. If you really want to use the Hahnemule brand maybe you could buy the roll and roller cut to sheets as needed. If you do so make sure you blow off the sheets to insure no flakes are in the field area. Some papers are worse than others in this respect after cutting. Shouldn't be a big problem however. Call Steve over at Breathing color and try out some of their excellent papers. They make a lot of papers for a lot of other sellers and you would be surprised to find out the facts about that. And they were getting pretty chummy the last time I talked to anyone about it with Hahnemule.

Paul

I bought some archival storage paper to place around whatever kind of tube I'll end up using as I haven't bought any rolls yet. I may give it a try or two but more likely I may just move on and cut my losses on the Hahnemuhle paper.

Also, I tested yesterday the Ilford Gold Fibre/Mono Silk and Canson Baryta Photographique papers and while quite different from the Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Pearl they jumped to the top of the list of candidates for non-matte papers.

Thanks for all the feedback.

Joerg