hifivoice
Print Lurker
- Joined
- Dec 3, 2024
- Messages
- 1
- Reaction score
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- Points
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- Printer Model
- Epson ET-8550
I'm an happy owner of an Epson ET-8550 for about 3 years. Unfortunately a few months ago the drawer had some problems (it didn't come out anymore), and I sent it for repair (luckily within the extended Epson warranty). On the first return, the drawer still wasn't working, so I sent it in again. As a result I got a replacement printer in return.
It looked all fine, until I did print some graphics (using the "Normal" mode. There were all kind of stripes in the print as shown below (size is A4).
When I printed using the "Fine" mode, the print looked fine:
I did all I could do (nozzle check, horizontal alignment, vertical alignment). All looked fine, with the exception of the horizontal alignment for colour, where the bars didn't align:
So I sent the replacement printer to the Epson service again. They cleaned, nozzle checked, but I got the printer back with the message "all OK, the stripes are normal, that is what fine prints are meant for".
I was a bit upset by that remark, as my previous ET-8550 did not have those major issues at all. I got the repairman of the printer on the phone, telling me that in normal mode the printer head is passing the paper only once, whereas with the fine mode it passes the paper twice to fill it up properly.
Now my point is that there are no white stripes, but dark stripes. so even with one pass the paper is filled up too much. So there is a mechanical offset, not a nozzle issue or so. Also with text, you can see there is clearly an offset when printing text, see an enlarged:
The repairman said that this behaviour is absolutely normal for Epson printers, but I tried to search for similar cases, but I cannot find any, and my previous printer did not expose this problem. I do understand a Normal print in inferior to a Fine print (I did see some very small lined patterns in prints of my previous printer), but never stripes of a few mm broad. He wanted to sent me a replacement printer, with the remark it would be exactly the same.
Now my questions on this forum is, (1) did you encounter similar issues with your model, and (2) do you think this is normal behaviour to the extent I see it here?
It looked all fine, until I did print some graphics (using the "Normal" mode. There were all kind of stripes in the print as shown below (size is A4).
When I printed using the "Fine" mode, the print looked fine:
I did all I could do (nozzle check, horizontal alignment, vertical alignment). All looked fine, with the exception of the horizontal alignment for colour, where the bars didn't align:
So I sent the replacement printer to the Epson service again. They cleaned, nozzle checked, but I got the printer back with the message "all OK, the stripes are normal, that is what fine prints are meant for".
I was a bit upset by that remark, as my previous ET-8550 did not have those major issues at all. I got the repairman of the printer on the phone, telling me that in normal mode the printer head is passing the paper only once, whereas with the fine mode it passes the paper twice to fill it up properly.
Now my point is that there are no white stripes, but dark stripes. so even with one pass the paper is filled up too much. So there is a mechanical offset, not a nozzle issue or so. Also with text, you can see there is clearly an offset when printing text, see an enlarged:
The repairman said that this behaviour is absolutely normal for Epson printers, but I tried to search for similar cases, but I cannot find any, and my previous printer did not expose this problem. I do understand a Normal print in inferior to a Fine print (I did see some very small lined patterns in prints of my previous printer), but never stripes of a few mm broad. He wanted to sent me a replacement printer, with the remark it would be exactly the same.
Now my questions on this forum is, (1) did you encounter similar issues with your model, and (2) do you think this is normal behaviour to the extent I see it here?
