Solved printer banding (at least for the i9900)

I recently had a battle with banding on a solid black background for a moon shot. Needless to say, it was frustrating, but then I read a lot on here and the web about what people thought and what people actually found out was causing their banding.

Well... as you might figure, numerous things were causing it and the banding isn't always the same type (some 1/2 inch wide, some mm's wide).

I did think about my habits for using my printer and I think I was victim of what probably more than 90% of printer owners do. The will print when the printer is new to enjoy the new aspects of the printer and push its envelope to really see what it can do. Needless to say, with a new printhead and new printer, the possibilities are endless and results are going to be (assuming no manufacturer problems) as hoped for.

After time, the printer may sit for weeks/months and you know what happens...clogging in the print head. If this clogging is bad enough, you cannot run deep cleaning and get rid of it because it is like caked on grease that would need a real scrub, therefore, those poor folks end up buying another printhead.

My printer must have sat for two months, therefore, to get rid of the banding, I ran the deep cleaning cycle 5 times straight. This did the trick. I know because I then took a solid 8x10 black file in PS and printed it to Ilford's high gloss paper and it was like a mirror.

I found a great article (sorry I don't have the link), but this procedure was confirmed by Ilford's technology department for I did email them about my problem thinking may be their profiles for their paper needed changing.

What this article said was when you know you have things cleaned up and get to the point of no banding because you have a clean printhead, the right profile for the right paper, etc..., ensure you run a very colorful (or black since black uses all inks to make things really black) sample file picture (a color chart works for this as well) every day or every other day at the least. You can use draft and low quality, but I recommend sending through a black test file because you can tell if it is banding easiest with black. The key is to keep the ink flowing through the print head and when you print, it is self-cleaning the head (I am sure you know that print head cleaning uses ink to clean the head and it isn't a magical cleaning process).

Therefore, from this past weekend forward and at least every other day, I will run a piece of copy paper through the printer on draft quality with a totally black file to "clean" the heads and minimize possible future banding. I also recommend setting the i9900 to quiet mode for this slows the print head speed down while printing.

Makes sense to me and I am band free now.

Hope this helps someone for I do not wish the frustration on anyone.

canoflan wrote in post #2819781
I recently had a battle with banding

If this clogging is bad enough, you cannot run deep cleaning and get rid of it because it is like caked on grease that would need a real scrub, therefore, those poor folks end up buying another printhead.

My printer must have sat for two months, therefore, to get rid of the banding, I ran the deep cleaning cycle 5 times straight. This did the trick. I know because I then took a solid 8x10 black file in PS and printed it to Ilford's high gloss paper and it was like a mirror.

I found a great article (sorry I don't have the link), but this procedure was confirmed by Ilford's technology department for I did email them about my problem thinking may be their profiles for their paper needed changing.

What this article said was when you know you have things cleaned up and get to the point of no banding because you have a clean printhead, the right profile for the right paper, etc..., ensure you run a very colorful (or black since black uses all inks to make things really black) sample file picture (a color chart works for this as well) every day or every other day at the least. You can use draft and low quality, but I recommend sending through a black test file because you can tell if it is banding easiest with black. The key is to keep the ink flowing through the print head and when you print, it is self-cleaning the head (I am sure you know that print head cleaning uses ink to clean the head and it isn't a magical cleaning process).

Therefore, from this past weekend forward and at least every other day, I will run a piece of copy paper through the printer on draft quality with a totally black file to "clean" the heads and minimize possible future banding. I also recommend setting the i9900 to quiet mode for this slows the print head speed down while printing.

Makes sense to me and I am band free now.

Hope this helps someone for I do not wish the frustration on anyone.

I found this thread after researching the same thing for my i9900. I started looking for printheads on eBay after 3 cleaning cycles wouldn't clear the banding up. Here's how I got the print to start kicking out beautiful 8x10s once again:

I removed the ink and the printhead. I wet a paper towel and pressed it against the nozzles wicking ink through them. I held it there for a couple minutes, then took canned air and at the cartridge port 'popped' each port with air. I cleaned any ink spatters (there were some from the air usage, but I'd wrapped the head in a paper towel to minimize the mess), wiped it with a lint-free cloth, then dried it with canned air.

I reloaded the cartidges and printed off an 8x10 which came out just as if the printer was new. All told, I spent 5 minutes cleaning everything up and if I had to guess, I didn't waste nearly as much ink as multiple deep cleaning cycles.

good info.. thanks!