accurip not printing solid blacks

[daria]

Hi,
This may sound familiar because I posted about this once before. The advice I got was helpful but fell along the lines of things I already more or less knew about. Now I am super careful to make sure my files have only black and white, no grey tones.

I have the black max pack with accurip for my epson 1430 and at first it worked great, but today it has completely stopped printing solid blacks.

I am not creating half tones in my images, but fine detailed line work for printing on paper, so the films need to be really crisp, I use 600dpi files for super clean line work.  it used to be that 1 out of every 5 times I printed a film it was only 95% solid and I'd have to reprint.  The photo shop files I'm using are at 100% black and I haven't adjusted anything that I can find to create this half tone so I'm not sure what is causing this. It may be that not all cartridges are printing simultaneously even though in the accurip settings I have the multi-black box checked and every cartridge checked, the ink just seems really thin and there is an overall pattern of tiny pinholes and/ or wavy hairlines where no ink hit the film.

I had my drop weight set at 12 which I am told is really way too high, I lowered it to 5, this made no difference, at both levels the films are not  solid and opaque.

I've printed films in the past that were bitmaps, in greyscale mode, in cmyk mode and in RGB mode, it seemed like that never mattered, but now no mode works, it seemed like converting files to bitmap would solve the problem but it hasn't.  I'm just not sure what else to try.

I called ryonet, where I bought the system, and they know a lot about it, i got a little help but so far they haven't been able to figure out what is causing my problem.

Any help or settings advice would be much appreciated. I really don't know anything about accurip because the package I bought didn't come with any kind of user manual for the program.

Thanks a bunch!

Daria

[blue moon]

my first reaction would be to check the color correction and make sure it is set for NONE. If that is not available, set it for Photoshop manages color and try again.

Next thought would be to check the nozzles (my guess is you already did, but it's worth throwing out there) and after that I'd turn off all the heads except the black one and see what happens.

Something else to try is, print out of a different program and see what happens.
try with and without the RIP, too.

pierre

[daria]

Hi Pierre,
Thanks for the suggestions. I did 3 head cleanings this morning, and the test prints look good so its not that.
As for the "color correction" setting, I tried to find that on photoshop (is it in the print settings window?) but didn't see that specific option. I have photoshop ps6 (which has been a real disappointment) so it may be in a different place or named something else? Any ideas on that?

Ok, onto your second suggestion, how do you turn off individual nozzle heads?
I will try without the rip, i'm not sure what other program to try, like a word program or something? I don't have any other art programs.

You must use accurip, you've never had this kind of thing happen? Combing the forums on line it looks like i'm the only person who's posted any questions about this problem, it seems really weird!

[Colin]

Here is my first suggestion:

Go back to the photoshop files that printed with the undesireable halftone.  Use your eyedropper tool and check the photoshop image. What are the opacity/values are for that image.  You will see it under the info window.  Compare those values to the files you had no problems with.  Let us know what you found.

Are you using spot channels to print from or are you printing from layers?

[daria]

Hi Colin,
After printing the first few bad films this morning I changed all of my layers into individual bitmap files, so the images I printed were pure black. I am working with layers, not with channels. I usually create the layers, turn them each into 100% black with no aliasing and then copy and paste each layer into a new sized document. Normally this system has worked for me fine, even without converting to bitmap.
Thanks!
daria

[Sbrem]

So, why not convert to Bitmap? Or does that make the finest stuff disappear?

Steve

[blue moon]

Hi Pierre,
Thanks for the suggestions. I did 3 head cleanings this morning, and the test prints look good so its not that.
As for the "color correction" setting, I tried to find that on photoshop (is it in the print settings window?) but didn't see that specific option. I have photoshop ps6 (which has been a real disappointment) so it may be in a different place or named something else? Any ideas on that?

Ok, onto your second suggestion, how do you turn off individual nozzle heads?
I will try without the rip, i'm not sure what other program to try, like a word program or something? I don't have any other art programs.

You must use accurip, you've never had this kind of thing happen? Combing the forums on line it looks like i'm the only person who's posted any questions about this problem, it seems really weird!

in the print dialog, open color management and then color handling. It's a drop down box. Printer should NOT be handling the color.

keep us posted, we'll get to the bottom of it eventually . . .

pierre