Epson Artisan 835 - What are causing these microscopic line streaks?

[rajhlinux]

O.K. - fine - that's a great step ahead to get away with these strange spikes, the RPM option is history, you won't find that option anymore in newer drivers - like in the L805 photo printer.

You may contact farbenwerk, if they would ship to your country, or you may find a local dealer with similar special black inks.



That's pretty easy - the Epson 4 color printers - specifically those entry level workforce models like my old WF-2010W - use a black pigment ink tuned for matte papers - for a crisp and contrasty print on normal paper. This ink is not used to print black when you select glossy/photo papers , the driver mixes black from the CMY inks. This creates a weaker black level since you have the CMY inks with a lighter luminance mixed in. But if you would fill your black ink in all CMY ink channels you get what you want - printing black via the combined CMY ink channels.

Thanks for the reply. This is great news, never knew such printers works in this manner. Learning something new every day.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

You may have a look to the Printfab driver which is a kind of alternate RIP and which lets you set parameters like ink density what most regular drivers don't.

https://www.printfab.com/en/

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Here is some UV blocking dye ink

https://shop.inkjetmall.com/UV45-bl...y=38#attr=56562,36343,50139,15183,17842,17050

 

[rajhlinux]

Here is some UV blocking dye ink

https://shop.inkjetmall.com/UV45-bl...y=38#attr=56562,36343,50139,15183,17842,17050

Thank you I will try it, however 1 Gallon is a bit too much

So I've finally bought the prized professional-grade Epson SureColor P600 printer for $250 from a kind lady whose husband was a professional photographer but passed away a few years ago. I found the new ad listing on Facebook Marketplace a few days ago (it was a 4-hour, round-trip car journey). It seems to work fine, but I will calibrate it to clean the nozzles and perform alignment tests, then do PCB print tests.

The P600 came with a box full of professional photography accessories. This caught my attention, and I can only wonder what it is used for. Perhaps checking a printer's color accuracies?

 

[rajhlinux]

So I've cleaned and setup an Epson 1400 to see how well it prints the high precision PCB traces.
It did a terrible job on it. Not sharp and clear.

Now I suspect the Epson black ink channel (the physical nozzles and piezoelectric mechanism) degrades more often than other ink channels since it is the most used ink channel. Black ink is an essential color in printing.

Below are some samples:

In the picture below, it is clear that the Epson 1400's black ink channel cannot produce high-quality precision prints. It produces blurry prints, even at the micron level. The linear traces on the right are not sharp, and the two regions are too close. During the etching process, this will not yield nice results.

I'll try other ink channels, usually those that are not used often, such as Cyan and Yellow.

And I'll do another test print on the Epson 1400.

Anyhow, if anyone is curious about high-precision PCBs, our next best bet is using 14K resolution 3D resin printers. Those produce excellent UV photolithography resolution with an accuracy of 30 microns +/-.

 

[rajhlinux]

If anyone is curious why I am putting so much effort into Epson/Canon printers to make precision PCBs, it is due to the fact that I have always had a negative view of them for about ten years.

However, after seeing some prints on this thread, I became more interested and now have a more positive view of printers making precision PCBs via UV photolithography. The Epson Artisan 835, using the Cyan ink channel, produced an excellent result. So, my conclusion is that a brand-new printer is able to produce high-quality precision prints.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Your last print shows the effect of the ink spread similar to what I got as well, the edge definition is not very good and you cannot really control the track width this way. I'm pretty sure you are better off with pigment inks. But printing such graphics is not the prime job of CMYK printers in the first place anyway. But yes - there are various variables you can tune for a better result.