1280 Head Alignment Questions

["Thomas Keesling" <tom.keesling@worldnet.att.net>]

<x-charset iso-8859-1>I'm accustomed to printing on a 3000 and am still trying to get the feel for
my new 1280/CIS/Piezo Color inks and I'm a little puzzled by the color head
alignment process.

I realize I need to align the heads for the specific paper that I'm going to
be printing on--I've found this makes an incredible difference in the
alignment settings. However, I'm particularly puzzled by the patterns I'm
seeing in the color patches and am not entirely sure what I'm supposed to be
looking for. The following observations also apply to the OEM inks which I
used for a few days prior to switching to the Piezo Color inks.

For example, the #1 set of color patches usually have uneven (ragged) left
and right edges, but the top and bottom have even/straight edges. Is this to
be expected? Also, the smoothness of the dither pattern usually varies
within each patch. The upper right corner is usually more ragged than the
remainder of the patch. Is this unusual? I can minimize the left edge, but
am usually left with a right edge that is still rather ragged. Am I supposed
to ignore the edges and the more ragged dither in the upper right corner and
just select the smoothest overall dither pattern within the patch? Or should
I be including the left/right edge smoothness in my determination as well?
Or is the edge smoothness more important than the dither pattern?

The #2 set also has somewhat uneven left and right edges in each patch, but
not nearly as ragged as in #1. Is this to be expected? Also, the top and
bottom of each patch is straight and even but I have just a little cyan
overspray on each one. I don't remember if I had this overspray with the OEM
inks. The dither pattern in the #2 patches seems to differ from one day to
the next. Sometimes less ink is laid down at the left and right edges of the
patches. Other times, the left and right edges are more or less uniform, but
the dither pattern is clearly rougher in either the top portion or the lower
portion of the patch. Should I be expecting to have the left and right edges
relatively smooth and the dither pattern smooth throughout the patch? Is one
of these elements more important than the other? Or am I just being too
picky?

To get the best head alignment I can reasonably expect for a given paper,
what should I be seeing?

And, while I'm on the subject of head alignment, I'll ask about the black
alignment too. Is it normal when switching from, say, Epson PQIP to Epson
HWM or ConeTech Matte for the alignment to be off the scale--at a reading of
what would be 16 or 17 if the scale extended that far? This is what I'm
seeing and so I have to run the head alignment for the black twice just to
get close to where the black alignment should be when switching between
these papers. Have others found this to be typical?

Just curious...

Tom Keesling
Intelligent Design, Inc.






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