Banding on parts of my photo prints

[PeterBJ]

The Canon scanner program for Windows "Scangear" has got two tabs with setings, one basic and one advanced, see this, click to enlarge:



I don't know the Canon scanner programs for Linux and MacOS, but I guess they are much more basic and might not have the advanced settings.

 

[The Hat]

Ah, well, the nozzle check was done on plain paper.

Your latest nozzle check looks perfect, so something else is causing the banding..
But if your seldom printing in colour then it is not an issue..
click to enlarge...

 

[PenguinLust]

The Canon scanner program for Windows "Scangear" has got two tabs with setings, one basic and one advanced, see this, click to enlarge:

View attachment 13477

I don't know the Canon scanner programs for Linux and MacOS, but I guess they are much more basic and might not have the advanced settings.

Oh. In that case I'm a little confused. I thought that the point of that was to do a nozzle check, not run the scanner. In any case, Canon isn't offering Scangear for my printer. They just offer this MP Navigator. I tried downloading Scangear from https://canoncanada.custhelp.com/ap.../[windows-64bit]-color-network-scangear-v2.71 but it seems to insist that the printer be networked.

 

[PeterBJ]

If the scan or a photo of the nozzle check is not high quality then it is of no use to diagnose the printer.

 

[PenguinLust]

So where does that leave us? Scanning from Linux, I have the ability to play w/the darkness and contrast. Does this help? Are there some objective sources of colour that I could scan alongside the nozzle check that would be a reference? Like how about another scan w/these paint samples that were used to help us choose the colour for our 7-year-old's bedroom walls? In the entire sample book, I'd say what approximated my test pattern's yellow as "Sunny Day"

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

our latest nozzle check looks perfect, so something else is causing the banding.

Yes, the nozzle check print looks pretty good for a printer of the mentioned age of 10 years, and the banding is not an ink issue either.

I'm not familiar with the driver options of your printer - do you have an option to disable bidirectional printing - somewhere hidden in extended option settings ?

It is not clear to me at this time which colors are affected by the banding/causing the banding - all colors or only cyan or magenta ?
Please try to print the attached color bars - vertically - side by side - on one half of your regular copy paper which should show it and cover a range of colors from white to dark - and with and w/o bidirectional printing if possible


Did you ever clean the index/positioning stripe, a small plastic band which passes the back of the printhead horizontally?

 

[PenguinLust]

I haven't been able to find anything that enabled/disables bidirectional printing, but I believe the "print quality" affects that. I did 2 of them in "high" and 2 in "fast". I didn't do any in "standard". You can see, the slower "high" quality print tends to reduce the banding, but I did my photos in "high" and it didn't eliminate the banding.
I definitely never did that cleaning you talked about. Only what's done from software (which I don't believe that is).

 

[The Hat]

I definitely never did that cleaning you talked about.

Age, wear and tear, and 3rd party inks could play a part in this type of banding, but so could the timing disk on the left side of the carriageway, it may be worth cleaning it on both sides.

 

[PenguinLust]

I see. Sounds like the sort of thing that voids your warranty. Not that there is one anymore, but there's a good reason why they can be voided prematurely. Is there a documented procedure for this?

 

[The Hat]

Is there a documented procedure for this?

I’ve got no idea how it done on your model printer, most likely you’ll have to remove the top cover, but if your reluctant to do that, then an easier procedure to try is an auto head alignment and that might help improve the output quality..