Solved: Dark prints and posterization

mpan66 · August 26, 2015, 5:04pm

OK, thanks Jon. Well, I guess that rules out printing anything else for the show with this printer. Back to ABW on the trusty 3880 for the time being.

After I’ve done some maintenance I’ll decided whether to order more ink or not. Maybe I should consider buying a different Epson printer that hopefully gives me less of a headache. Is the 3880 a better bet or perhaps you recommend a different model? Or maybe wait until you seem satisfied with the P800 (I read your newsletter with interest today).

Thanks for your help Jon.

Brian_S · August 26, 2015, 8:10pm

My recommendation, seemingly endorsed by Jon: http://www.inkjetmall.com/tech/showthread.php?1983-P2-and-the-R1900-R2000&p=8806&viewfull=1#post8806

You may be interested to know that Jeff has a new (this year) 3880 for piezo and here is the post where he finally declares defeat. If you have the time you can read the thread and discover why. His new R2000 arrived yesterday, as did mine, but mine is going into storage for a few years. I took my own advice to Jon, partly because here in the colonies there is a cash-back until the end of Aug and I’m fearful that this is a run-out of the last of its kind. IJM doesn’t have an unending supply of carts so we have bought up enough to keep us going for some time. Note that these are battery-driven manual reset chips, like the R3000, only not as large capacity, since they’re on-head carts. I’ll only start to use mine when the R1900 it is to replace finally gives up the ghost.

Although having said all that, the problem you describe is a well-known printer problem and not necessarily an ink or cart problem. See:

I’m sure I’ve read about it in relation to the R3000 as well, which is not entirely surprising given its similarity. While I’ve read about this problem a fair bit, I haven’t researched it enough to know whether it’s a faulty printer, or pigment sedimentation around the black ink selector switch, causing it to jam. (This next comment may get me into trouble, …) I expect that sedimentation may be more of an issue with 3rd party inks than OEM, and so that may be an issue in some cases, but people clearly have it with OEM as well, so it’s not just a 3rd party problem, if at all.

Best of luck with the stall at the show. I’ll see if I can get some potential customers to drop by.

mpan66 · August 28, 2015, 6:20am

It’s not a 3880 Brian - it’s an R3000 that I’m having all the trouble with. My 3880 is loaded with Permajet inks and runs just fine.

So an R2000 is the recommended printer to go for? Really? 17ml carts. It’s bad enough managing the carts in the R3000. Plus an R2000 is limited to A3+. I’d quite like the option of printing up to A2.

Thanks for the best wishes, etc. I did 12 hours straight yesterday of mounting and framing. I’ve gotta say, the Piezo prints are my favourite - printed on Breathing Color Pura Smooth they look amazing!! Shame I can’t print any more!!

Brian_S · August 28, 2015, 8:39am

No, I hadn’t forgotten that you had an R3000. But compared to the R1900 / R2000 / R2400 / R2880, the R3000 and 3880 are more alike than different. The issues that Jeff had with the 3880 would also apply to the R3000. They both have ink lines and dampers and any issues that you had with sedimentation in one would also apply to the other. Black inks draining rapidly and mysteriously have been linked to either a faulty or clogged black ink selector switch, and they both have it. Probably the same part number. Hence my comment and the link I provided. In terms of maintenance and problem solving they’re much the same.

Yes refilling the R1900/R2000 carts so often is a pain, and when it comes around so often I do wish for a 3880. I guess if you’re printing in volume then you can fill multiple sets. I have a IJM CIS for the R1900, although I’ve never connected it as I wish to retain the option to swap between NU and SE, and the comments in the next para would also apply. I also wish for a 3880 in order to avoid the micro-banding in the first and last inch that plagues the smaller printers, including the R3000. But at other times I am mighty grateful that I have a carts-on-head printer. You pay your money and you takes your choices, unless of course you absolutely have to have A2, in which case you don’t have a choice.

By all means get a 3880. But my advice would be to do so with your eyes fully open. Jeff is probably going to offload his near-new piezo one, and I seriously thought about one myself but decided against. Neither of us wishes to be continuously high-volume printers, or a “prisoner of the printer”, or to flush large amounts of ink into the waste tank in order to hibernate it regularly. We both have colour 3880s, so we do know the printer.

Unfortunately my attempt to get some friendly eyes in front of your stall was not successful. Next time perhaps.

mpan66 · August 28, 2015, 9:27am

Thanks Brian. It seems I could convert an R2000 to a dedicated matt printer. I’m only really interested in printing matt prints with Piezography. How do you swap between NU and Se, as this is something I would definitely be interested in doing?

Brian_S · August 28, 2015, 9:56am

We discussed this back in #93 and you replied in #97. I love SE on matte. I find it too warm on gloss. I was tempted to do a custom mix for gloss, but decided it wasn’t worth the trouble for the amount of gloss I do. It’s probably simpler to switch back to NU, and as we discussed, that involves switching shades 2-5, which is pretty simple and inexpensive on the R1900/R2000, especially compared to the R3000/3880.

I also find CRP a touch warm, and SE is starting to push the limits on that paper for me. I like a subtle SE effect. So for some images, a switch to NU on CRP is an option, although I prefer to stick to SE as much as possible.

You could run an R2000 as a dedicated matte printer, but it’s not hard to retain the option for gloss. You put GO rather than flush in the eight slot. Then a shade 1 cart swap is all you need to switch to gloss, or you could try and run a “universal” black, which is what I used to do, or you could run P2 on the R2000 so that both blacks are always on hand, which as you may have read in that other thread, is what I’ve decided to do. But you’ll need my remapped curves to run P2.

mpan66 · August 29, 2015, 7:49am

Thanks Brian. I’ll do a little research. BTW, the Jeff you mention, is that Jeff Gaydash? I heard he does Piezography printing.

Jon - I carried out the cleaning recommended in the printer maintenance video, i.e. capping station, wiper and heads. I then topped up the MK cartridge with the remaining ink using vacuum method. I’d estimate it was about 2/5 full. I reset the cart, put it back in the printer and ran 2, maybe 3 head cleans and nozzle checks. No sign of the the MK ink on the paper and all the ink has gone again. There’s nothing more I can do now. I don’t think it’s worth trying to sort out the R3000. I’ll have to try and come up with some funds for a new printer and Piezo kits. But it’s going to be a while

Brian_S · August 29, 2015, 9:35am

No, I was referring to Jeffg53 on this forum. He has made a couple of posts in this long thread. He has a long thread on his 3880. Does sound like you have the dreaded MK/PK draining problem that plagues some of these printers. Pity.

mpan66 · August 29, 2015, 12:03pm

That R3000 has been nothing but a pain in the proverbial pretty much as soon as its warranty ended.

Mack · August 29, 2015, 12:36pm

hmm…

I’m not up on all the abbreviations, but if you mean SE=Selenium looking warm on glossy I have to agree. It sort of bothers me for some reason. My recollection of selenium in the wet darkroom was cooler and it does appear too warm and almost yellowish on glossy. I also thought about tinting it cooler with cyan maybe, but where and how much?

Sometimes the gloss differential is pretty bad too with the selenium and no amount of GO seems to help it in the darker areas. Just sucks the GO up and the differential still remains behind like little valleys of dullness/matte.

Mack

jon · August 29, 2015, 1:12pm

After all all is said and done with it - we could map out the K move it to another channel and you run it as a matte only K7 or a gloss only K6

jon

[QUOTE=mpan66;8833]
Jon - I carried out the cleaning recommended in the printer maintenance video, i.e. capping station, wiper and heads. I then topped up the MK cartridge with the remaining ink using vacuum method. I’d estimate it was about 2/5 full. I reset the cart, put it back in the printer and ran 2, maybe 3 head cleans and nozzle checks. No sign of the the MK ink on the paper and all the ink has gone again. There’s nothing more I can do now. I don’t think it’s worth trying to sort out the R3000. I’ll have to try and come up with some funds for a new printer and Piezo kits. But it’s going to be a while :-([/QUOTE]

Brian_S · August 29, 2015, 7:18pm

@Mack - By SE I meant Special Edition. I think selenium is usually abbreviated to SEL. I agree that it’s a little confusing and I should have been more specific.

@Phil: Jon’s suggestion is a good one IMHO. Worth a shot.

mpan66 · August 30, 2015, 4:15pm

Jon - Great! That didn’t even cross my mind as a possibility. It’s definitely worth a shot as I’m really only interested in printing matte prints at the moment.

I’d better order some more inks but it’ll have to wait a couple of weeks. What’s involved in mapping out the K? I presume I’ll be able to leave an empty cartridge in the MK position?

jon · August 30, 2015, 8:19pm

We do it with a spreadsheet - by hand - not much different than Brian did it with his spreadsheet. You could actually probably do it yourself. If InkjetMall does it they need to charge for time.

You take the matte black cart out and put it in the LLK position after you replace the chips (OEM and the Control Chip with the LLK ones).
Then take the LLK cart and put it in the MK position after installing the MK chips on it.
Then run out the GO until you see black using an LLK only Calibration mode target file.

You end up with a K7 system in which all the inks are in the same position except for black which is moved to the LLK position.

After converting the K7 matte profiles to your new layout, you should put only 0’s (256 zeros) in the MK channel in the curves. The MK data moves to the LLK channel in the curves.

You spend nothing to do this.

[QUOTE=mpan66;8840]Jon - Great! That didn’t even cross my mind as a possibility. It’s definitely worth a shot as I’m really only interested in printing matte prints at the moment.

I’d better order some more inks but it’ll have to wait a couple of weeks. What’s involved in mapping out the K? I presume I’ll be able to leave an empty cartridge in the MK position?[/QUOTE]

Brian_S · August 31, 2015, 9:09am

My comments:

. It’s not that complex, you just need to be careful when editing the .quad file. Your case is simpler as you’re moving less channels around that I did.
. A spreadsheet with formulas as I did is a good idea if you want to migrate more than one curve, because then it’s easy to do the second and subsequent ones.
. If you’re going to operate this way, then self-sufficiency (via a spreadsheet with formulas) is mighty convenient.
. If you’re giving up on the MK & PK slots entirely, I’m not sure what the value of putting anything other than an empty cart in those two positions is.

mpan66 · September 1, 2015, 6:32pm

Sounds like something I could do. Not sure what this means though “After converting the K7 matte profiles to your new layout”, i.e. how to ‘convert’.

Brian_S · September 1, 2015, 11:09pm

Here is a step-by-step set of instructions.

Locate and take a copy of this file: C:\Program Files (x86)\QuadToneRIP\QuadTone\QuadR3000-K7\K7-2880-EpEnhancedMatte.quad

As this folder is a protected system folder, you won’t be able to edit and save the duplicate there. Put it in a temporary folder elsewhere. Give the copy a suitable name to indicate that it’s a matte-only version.

Attached below is my remapping spreadsheet that I’ve reworked to suit your case. It has some basic instructions in the top left, but in short:

. Open the duplicate quad file in notepad or similar, select all and copy. Close the quad.

. Open the spreadsheet and paste into the blue zone. Just select C11 and paste and that should work.

. The remapped quad is in the green zone. Select its contents, copy, reopen the duplicate quad in notepad or similar, select all, paste, save and close.

. You’ll need to copy/move the duplicate quad back to the C:\Program Files (x86)\QuadToneRIP\QuadTone\QuadR3000-K7 folder. This will require admin permissions.

. Alternatively there is a special folder where you can save files like these without admin permissions, which should be:
C:\Users[Username]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\QuadToneRIP\QuadTone\Quad3000-K7
But it may not exist yet if there’s been no need for it. Personally I prefer all the quad files together under program Files (x86), and so I use admin privileges to copy the edited file to that location.

. Actually, what I would do in your case is create a new folder C:\Program Files (x86)\QuadToneRIP\QuadTone\QuadR3000-Matte or something like that and put any quad files that you use the spreadsheet on to create matte-only versions into that folder. If you do this then you’ll need to select R3000-Matte as the printer in QTR.

The attached spreadsheet already has the EEM curve inserted, so all you have to do in this case is copy the blue and paste into a new text file, name appropriately, save and copy/move.

In the spreadsheet there are a few charts to explain what’s going on. The small one at the top explains how the rows in green column have been remapped into the blue. The larger charts plot the curves, and you’ll note that the only difference is that shade 1 is now coming from LLK.

Curve Migration 3000-K7 to Matte Only - EpEnhancedMatte.zip (60 KB)

Perhaps someone from IJM could double-check the spreadsheet.

mpan66 · September 3, 2015, 3:29pm

Thanks a lot Brian, that’s really helpful! I’ll give that a go once I’ve order the new inks.

mpan66 · September 10, 2015, 4:21pm

Inks ordered.

mpan66 · October 10, 2015, 12:56pm

[QUOTE=Brian_S;8868]Here is a step-by-step set of instructions.