I just encounter my first bad experience with my Epson R2400. I’m trying to make an album from a weekend holiday to Wienna Mia-Maria and I had about a year ago. Making albums are quite boring stuff, so I pushed it as long as I could, but eventually it had to happen. Anyway, as usual, I decided not to go with the simple and easy solution so I bought an album from Hahnemühle consisting of 20 sheets of Natural Art Duo. I had put together the album, consisting of 34 pages, and were ready to print.
First stop was at the Hahnemühle web site to get the printer profile. Imagine my surprise when they didn’t have one for R2400. They’re usually so good at this. After some grumphing, I decided to join the color management lottery. I downloaded profiles for the Epson 3800, the 4800, and where I could find it, the proofing paper that also came in the package. I did some quick and dirty comparison of the profiles, and decidde to give the 4800 profile a try. Although I wouldn’t print for exibitions using this solution, it was actually quite ok for my holiday album.
Ok, back to the old printer. I used a couple of proofing papers to figure out which way I should feed it through to get the print right. Then I made a print with some skin tones on the Natural Art to give the color profile one last check. Everything looks good.
I load the sheet feeder with a single sheet, and being cautious, I ask for the first page only. Everythings good. Then I load another one and ask for page 3, and everthing falls apart. The printer grabs the paper, feeds it right through, spitting it oput on the other side without putting down as much as a drop of ink. I swear at it, calling it names and reload the paper. Same thing happens. After countless attemptsit suddenly stops accepting paper at all. This seems like a good time to go to bed.
Next morning I go to the store. I have decided to be nice with my printer, and purchase a new Firewire cable to replace the old USB. When I get home, I dust it, talk nice to it, reinstall the driver and give it a try. Same thing happened. It either refused to grab the sheets, or just pulled them right through.
This story is getting long, but eventually I found a solution. Right now, I’m feeding paper while I write this, and everything works ok. The Epson and I have sorted out our quarrel.
There were actually two problems. The one causing the paper to be fed right through was as simple as my pushing the cart that set the paper size in the sheet feeder too thight. When the printer grabs for the paper, it pushes the paper a little bit more, and with only one sheet in the feeder the paper curls causing the printer to misfeed the paper. By pulling the cart back about 5mm everything worked fine.
The second problem was caused by paper dust on the feeding wheel. I’m talking about the gray rubber wheel to the right in the sheet feeder. When this gets too full of dust, it slips on the paper. My solution to this was to start a print job without paper. I had a very lightly damped clothwhich I held against the wheel, and when the paper tried to feed paper, the wheel rotated against the cloth, cleaning it. If you’re going to try this, make sure the printer doesn’t grab the cloth. It’s better to do it several times with very light pressure. It is also a good idea to observe how the mechanism works before you try it.
