suggestions for banding at the end of a print job?

I have had this problem with a couple different printers. It seems to
come and go, and I have not been able to really identive the cause and
solution.

The current two printers are a Canon i560 and a a Canon S900.

Both printers will start off printing fine, but screw up during the
last inch of printing. It will leave some banding. I thought it might
be the curl of the paper, so I tried only printing the top half of the
paper as an experiment. It then messes up the last part of that print
job. So, it isn't the end of the paper.

I have tried cleaning the printhead. Sometimes, it improves. Sometimes
it doesn't. So, I wonder if there is something else I am doing as I
remove and replace the printhead and ink tanks.

Trying brand new ink tanks does not solve the problem, so it doesn't
seem to be the ink tanks or the 3rd party ink since I replaced them
with official canon ink tanks and cleaned out the print heads.

Paper is often blamed, but it does this will all kinds of paper,
including several canon papers.

And of course, it does print fine for most of the page, so it would
seem that the ink and paper would not be the real problem. What does
the printer do differently during the last inch of printing that would
cause it to produce the banding? Any ideas or solutions I haven't
tried?

> The current two printers are a Canon i560 and a a Canon S900.
>
> Both printers will start off printing fine, but screw up during the
> last inch of printing.

As it is two different printers I would suspect the PC rather
than the printers.
I note that the S900 has an 80K buffer RAM, a bit on the
small size, so I'm wondering if it is a handshake problem
between the spooled print file and the printers buffer.
Any driver update available???
Try making a few test files in Photoshop and see if you
can make the problem reproduceable.
It's one of those situations where you need to determine
whether it is the printer (unlikely as it happens with two
printers and OEM consumables) or the source of the
print job (the PC) by moving the printer to a different PC.

"friesian@zoocrewphoto.com" <friesian@zoocrewphoto.com> wrote:
>I have had this problem with a couple different printers. It seems to
>come and go, and I have not been able to really identive the cause and
>solution.
>
>The current two printers are a Canon i560 and a a Canon S900.
>
>Both printers will start off printing fine, but screw up during the
>last inch of printing. It will leave some banding. I thought it might
>be the curl of the paper, so I tried only printing the top half of the
>paper as an experiment. It then messes up the last part of that print
>job. So, it isn't the end of the paper.
>
>I have tried cleaning the printhead. Sometimes, it improves. Sometimes
>it doesn't. So, I wonder if there is something else I am doing as I
>remove and replace the printhead and ink tanks.
>
>Trying brand new ink tanks does not solve the problem, so it doesn't
>seem to be the ink tanks or the 3rd party ink since I replaced them
>with official canon ink tanks and cleaned out the print heads.
>
>Paper is often blamed, but it does this will all kinds of paper,
>including several canon papers.
>
>And of course, it does print fine for most of the page, so it would
>seem that the ink and paper would not be the real problem. What does
>the printer do differently during the last inch of printing that would
>cause it to produce the banding? Any ideas or solutions I haven't
>tried?

A long shot but worth a try. Is the paper size set correctly? Often with
inkjets it does not matter whether it is set to A4 or Letter but you should
make sure it is set to the paper size you use in your geography, I have seen a
similar problem a couple of times. This almost can't be ink or paper related.
Does it happen from different applications and from the driver test page?

Tony
MS MVP Printing Image

On Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:22:32 -0700 (PDT), in comp.periphs.printers
"friesian@zoocrewphoto.com" <friesian@zoocrewphoto.com> wrote:

>I have had this problem with a couple different printers. It seems to
>come and go, and I have not been able to really identive the cause and
>solution.
>
>The current two printers are a Canon i560 and a a Canon S900.
>
>Both printers will start off printing fine, but screw up during the
>last inch of printing. It will leave some banding. I thought it might
>be the curl of the paper, so I tried only printing the top half of the
>paper as an experiment. It then messes up the last part of that print
>job. So, it isn't the end of the paper.
>
>I have tried cleaning the printhead. Sometimes, it improves. Sometimes
>it doesn't. So, I wonder if there is something else I am doing as I
>remove and replace the printhead and ink tanks.
>
>Trying brand new ink tanks does not solve the problem, so it doesn't
>seem to be the ink tanks or the 3rd party ink since I replaced them
>with official canon ink tanks and cleaned out the print heads.
>
>Paper is often blamed, but it does this will all kinds of paper,
>including several canon papers.
>
>And of course, it does print fine for most of the page, so it would
>seem that the ink and paper would not be the real problem. What does
>the printer do differently during the last inch of printing that would
>cause it to produce the banding? Any ideas or solutions I haven't
>tried?

What OS and what app are you printing from. If Windoze be sure you have
sufficient contiguous spool space on your C drive.

I haven't studied the way Canon drivers and spooler work, so this is
based upon what I have observed with Epson printers.

On Eposn printers, the beginning .5 to 1" of printing, and the last
similar amount (it depends upon the width of the head and how it sweeps
the paper) do not print the same way as the middle section. Different
nozzles and sequencing of the nozzles are used, and the microweaving is
different. This is because at each end the page in order to get a
"finished" edge with a sharp start or end, the heads have to distribute
the dots differently.

In the middle section the dots are softly distributed such that there is
a gradient above and below the main area which helps to blend the
results. This helps to reduce banding and the impact of clogged or
deflected nozzles.

So, it is possible one or more nozzles are not working fully, and the
printing may be improved with head cleaning.

Other possible causes are a corrupted spooler file (it is best to have a
good size of contiguous hard drive space where you have the spooler
form), defects or corruption of the firmware of the printer (could be
temporary or permanent (try turning off and unplugging the printer for
several hours), bad memory in the computer, or even interface conflicts,
such as problems with conflicts with the parallel or USB dataflow. Did
the problem appear after installing any new hardware or software package?

I would try each of the printers with a different computer if you have
that option, to see if it is computer related. If it goes way then
consider reinstalling drivers, make sure spooling disk is defragged, try
removing other USB items temporarily and see if that improved matters.

This may take some investigation to get to the bottom of, as it could be
the result of a number of issues.

Art

If you are interested in issues surrounding e-waste,
I invite you to enter the discussion at my blog:

http://e-trashtalk.spaces.live.com/

friesian@zoocrewphoto.com wrote:
> I have had this problem with a couple different printers. It seems to
> come and go, and I have not been able to really identive the cause and
> solution.
>
> The current two printers are a Canon i560 and a a Canon S900.
>
> Both printers will start off printing fine, but screw up during the
> last inch of printing. It will leave some banding. I thought it might
> be the curl of the paper, so I tried only printing the top half of the
> paper as an experiment. It then messes up the last part of that print
> job. So, it isn't the end of the paper.
>
> I have tried cleaning the printhead. Sometimes, it improves. Sometimes
> it doesn't. So, I wonder if there is something else I am doing as I
> remove and replace the printhead and ink tanks.
>
> Trying brand new ink tanks does not solve the problem, so it doesn't
> seem to be the ink tanks or the 3rd party ink since I replaced them
> with official canon ink tanks and cleaned out the print heads.
>
> Paper is often blamed, but it does this will all kinds of paper,
> including several canon papers.
>
> And of course, it does print fine for most of the page, so it would
> seem that the ink and paper would not be the real problem. What does
> the printer do differently during the last inch of printing that would
> cause it to produce the banding? Any ideas or solutions I haven't
> tried?
>

On Jul 17, 10:22 am, "fries...@zoocrewphoto.com"
<fries...@zoocrewphoto.com> wrote:
> I have had this problem with a couple different printers. It seems to
> come and go, and I have not been able to really identive the cause and
> solution.
>
> The current two printers are a Canon i560 and a a Canon S900.
>
> Both printers will start off printing fine, but screw up during the
> last inch of printing. It will leave some banding. I thought it might
> be the curl of the paper, so I tried only printing the top half of the
> paper as an experiment. It then messes up the last part of that print
> job. So, it isn't the end of the paper.
>
> I have tried cleaning the printhead. Sometimes, it improves. Sometimes
> it doesn't. So, I wonder if there is something else I am doing as I
> remove and replace the printhead and ink tanks.
>
> Trying brand new ink tanks does not solve the problem, so it doesn't
> seem to be the ink tanks or the 3rd party ink since I replaced them
> with official canon ink tanks and cleaned out the print heads.
>
> Paper is often blamed, but it does this will all kinds of paper,
> including several canon papers.
>
> And of course, it does print fine for most of the page, so it would
> seem that the ink and paper would not be the real problem. What does
> the printer do differently during the last inch of printing that would
> cause it to produce the banding? Any ideas or solutions I haven't
> tried?


If you are printing photos on a thick paper this can happen, the
trailing edge of the paper does not stay flat causing banding. On a
pro printer you can set the distance between the head and the paper to
compensate, but on run of the mill desktops this might not be an
available adjustment. You can try by putting in a thicker paper and it
may solve the problem. Of course if this is happening to document
prining disregard.

Tom