Epson 9800 printing wrong length

[moldyoldy]

Hi,

Have been using a 9800 for the last month with no real problems but in my last batch of prints I made the mistake of not checking them as they came out and they all seem to be the wrong length. This is now also occuring with subsequent prints on different rolls.

The width of any print (horizontal to the print head) is perfect but I seem to be loosing 1/16th of an inch every 12-18inches. This amount is also not exact so sometimes it is spot on and other times I could be as much as 4/16th out after a 36inch print.

I am printing direct from Photoshop CS2 and sizings are spot on. Does anyone have any ideas what could be going on and any solutions? Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks
Matt

[Bruce Watson]

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/EpsonWideFormat/

This has been discussed at length in the above newsgroup. It's been a while so you'll have to search the archives.

Many people suggest that it's shrinkage which appears to not be the case. It would seem to be a very slight overlapping which the Epson driver does to prevent banding. In small prints it's undetectable. In big prints it's a PITA.

It could also be a problem with the distance between the paper surface and the print head. That is, the media thickness setting.

There seems to be some opinion that this doesn't happen with RIPs. But in my experience it does happen with some RIPs and not others, which suggests that it's a printer setup problem more than a software problem.

Basically, there is no one answer -- no one really knows, or if they do I haven't found their answers yet. So you'll have to experiment around and see if you can make it go away. Or you'll have to learn to live with it. Or some of each.

[moldyoldy]

Hi Bruce,

Many thanks for the reply - much appreciated.

For those of you reading this thread at some other point the above group link has good info on the basic print length problem and also after investigation this weekend I have found that the laquer I use (which works really well with the canvas visually) also causes shrinkage. I am unsure why this has suddenly started to become a problem but it has been warmer recently so perhaps it is drying too quickly causing a contraction in the looser length weave of the canvas. I'd appreciate hearing from anyone with a similar problem.

All the best