Black dots on Cone Type 5 (Unprinted)

InkjetMall Customer Support Piezography Inks & Printing
1

Hi Inkjetmall,

I recently converted a brand new epson 3880 to piezography and have been mostly been working with my favourite paper the harman baryta gloss warmtone.

Now I have been printing a few sheets of cone type 5 glossy, and I am slowly starting to enjoy the look of this paper.

But working my way through a few sheets I am starting to realize that most of them have some black dots on them - I mean the dots appear before I have printed, fresh out of the package. Would say more than 50% of the sheets have the dots. Also I noticed on the backside there is dots as well sometimes. Is this to be expected at this type of paper? Have seen a few dots like that with the harman occationally but not at this frequency though? I browsed through my pack and its the same phenonomen with the papers in the middle of the pack - i.e sheets that definatly have not been exposed to the enviromnent or been handled in any way.


I am quite amazed by what resolution the cone 5 paper can spit out though! The prints are just so crisp! I really like the harman paper for small 8x10 prints - something about the surface that draws you in, but for bigger prints the cone 5 just seems a lot more pleasant, elegant and crisp. Plus it is not a pain in the a** to work as compared to the harman papers which is a real drama to work with!

2

Call in to InkjetMall on Monday and we can arrange an exchange. That is really unusual that you should have so many black bits.

3

Thanks Jon,

No need to arrange an exchange - it is perfectly fine for experimentation and test prints, will just make sure to use one without the dots for final prints - just wondered if it was a common thing with this paper.

On another note I noticed that I get gloss differential in the blacks with the cone 5 paper (around rgb 5,5,5). I applied a second layer of GO - using the supplied 30.000 curve and it has disappeared (and the print looks a loot more rich with two coats!). But I thought the type 5 was designed to not have gloss differential with piezography and a GO of 30.000. I have a selenium setup but my shade 2 is WN, for a bit more warm/green shadow region - I don’t know if this could have anything to do with it? Using my normal harman paper 30.000 is fine.

4

It can be normal to find a few tiny dark spots in any cotton rag paper, due to some cotton husks getting in the pulp. I have seen this with many papers, including Epson media. What’s not normal is if you find LOTS of spots, or large spots. I have actually found a perfectly intact fly imbedded in the surface of a rag paper that I was making a huge print on (44x60), which was obviously not cool, and made me question the cleanliness of the manufacturing or coating plant. With rag papers, you can sometimes gently remove the specks before printing, but unfortunately you can’t do this with gloss papers without it being noticeable. Please let me know if you find many or large spots, and we will look into this further.

Regarding the gloss, you should get even gloss on Type 5 with the standard 30K GO at 1440dpi. Have you tried one coat of 30K at 2880dpi? What Harmon paper are you using? What is the recent average temp and humidity in your printing environment? I see you just bought this Piezography setup for your 3880 last month. Did you shake all inks before filling carts, including GO?

Please let me know.
Best regards and happy printing~ Dana