Banging my head against a brick wall

[Brixhamboy]

Your Ricoh is 'banding' which might mean blocked jets or, if it were an Epson, the printer driver was set to 'normal' quality instead of 'fine' quality. I could be worth undertaking a nozzle test to establish that all ink jets are functioning and that the colours are in the correct sequence. I found with my Epson being driven by Photoshop and not its own driver that the colours were completely wrong. The nozzle test established that it should all be functioning correctly and led me to look in detail at all the printer settings.

Have you actually had confirmation from City Ink that the ink you have is for a Ricoh printer? I certainly found their information confused.

Personally, I have a soft spot for Epson printers. Just bear in mind your Epson refill carts will not use the same ink as the Ricoh and will not use the Ricoh ICC profile either so choosing the Epson route has quite a cost implication (but it would still be my personal choice!).

[Justin]

I once had a Ricoh replaced under warranty for banding as there was a known issue.

[mags1892]

MY Ricoh 3110gs started banding i switched off the fast paper loading option and that cured it , weird but there you go.

[gazfocus]

Thanks guys.

Yeah, I'm prepared for buying new ink for the Epson, and CityInk have said they'll give me a new profile for my Epson at no cost. if that fails, I'll order a profile from Paul on here.

Believe me, I've tried everything with this Ricoh printer and I'm sick to the back teeth with it. I've wasted nearly 100ml of each colour doing head cleanings/nozzle checks/head flushings/you name it I've done it.

I have ALWAYS used Epson inkjets at home so goodness knows why I decided to get the Ricoh.

[gazfocus]

MY Ricoh 3110gs started banding i switched off the fast paper loading option and that cured it , weird but there you go.

Will see if that's an option. Thanks

[viksta87]

Hi Gaz!

I have also got an issue with banding on my Ricoh (same model as yours). I also had an issue with it not printing the correct colours and after months of complaining to the supplier, they got me to go through photoshop and change the printer output settings and photoshop colour profile, that cleared up the colour discrepancy. i've printed on it since, with photos of my wedding to sublimate for my mum and it works fine. Made sure print output when i set it up was ADOBE RGB 1998 i think.

I've noticed that if i print something off of the internet, the images band, and i think its down to the quality of the images - some do some don't. Im new to DSF but have been sublimating and stuff at work for a while. Just got myself the ricoh to do my own stuff at home.

So I'm trying to find a work around of the banding, maybe by editing the images. Give me an inbox if you want me to send you through the instructions to set the adobe settings?

[guarddog14]

Hi, I have the printer that you have and its two years old and ive never had a problem with it that said i have always used sawgrass official ink and paid full price for them, however i did start getting banding issues i did nozzel checks and the test print etc, everything seemed fine, it was actually the settings in photoshop i changed the paper setting and the speed / priorty setting and ive never had another problem since, if it ever had a issue i would buy another straight away its fantastic, best buying a new set up and use aofficial , i dont thin you will have any problems

[viksta87]

Its not the inks for me, stuff i've printed this week have been fine, i even managed to get some photos onto a pendant that came out beautifully. Its just the borrowed images that streak for me

[mhdgfdf]

That's the same price I paid for my test pack of sublinova inks.
www.casesam.co.uk
casesam.co.uk

[Brixhamboy]

Its not the inks for me, stuff i've printed this week have been fine, i even managed to get some photos onto a pendant that came out beautifully. Its just the borrowed images that streak for me

When you start getting intermittent problems like this there is no real alternative to the objective approach - right back to square one and check every single stage of your process.

You should perform a head check to establish inks are flowing well, individual jets are clear and colours in the correct sequence. Then print a test image of a known standard such as the PDI test. I use a mug template which has two PDI images together with a number of colour and tone step wedges. That is enough to target almost any issue.

Check also the printer driver settings for quality. Photos would usually require a finer quality. On the Epsons, using 'normal' quality instead of 'fine' will give banding on photos.

Your reference to Adobe RGB 1998 almost certainly refers to the working space you have for Photoshop and not the print output settings. Adobe 1998 allows a wider colour range than sRGB. I would suspect you are using the Ricoh print driver but there are many options at output such as allowing Photoshop to do the number crunching instead of your printer software. This is the area where you are more likely to find answers if you have colour problems or banding.