Adjustable print heads on i-series Canon printers and what others?

[Brailling]

Greetings. I want to thank you all again for helping me with my printing/braille greeting card venture. Special thank you to fotofreek for printing and sending samples - that goes above and beyond the normal realm. Conclusions, so far, are thus: Choice of paper is Ilford Smooth Heavyweight Matte (2-sided) Paper, Epson two-sided matte photo paper, or something comparable. I would like to find something a bit heavier, but the coated paper makes brilliant images. With proper settings recommended from paper manufacturers, all three of the Epson, HP, and Canon printers do a good job. I am tending towards Canon. BUT, the revisited dilemma is; if printing on the two-sided coated matte "good" paper, the braille "breaks" through the color too much after embossing over the printed area. So I tried embossing first, then sent the embossed sheet through the printer. The image turned out beautiful - it covered the dots and actually improved how they looked. Problem solved, except that there was some braille text on white parts of the page, and when the printhead traveled over those dots it "stubbed it's toes" and left black specks on the very tips of some of the dots. While dealing with this new problem, I discovered that the Canon i550 that I was testing at a co-workers desk had a printhead that could be manually adjusted to a higher position, by use of a lever on top of the print cartridges, to accommodate thicker stock. This was perfect! And it worked beautifully. But, the drawback is, the new ip-series Canon's (4000, 5000, etc.) do not have this adjustable printhead, nor do the tech's at Canon think the new ip series printers will work on the embossed stock. They did not know of any other Canon product that has the adjustable printhead. So I am considering purchasing an older i850, i950, or i960 - or maybe even simply use the i550 that is already in place. Ok - so my question is, does anybody know if there are any other (newer) printers out there, Epson, HP, or?, that have a manual printhead adjustment similar to Canon's i-series? Simply setting the printer setting to "envelope" or "iron-on transfers" will not work because I want to use the best print setting for the paper I'm using. It's just one thing or another. Thanks to all with patience to read these long messages. Brailling in Oregon

 

[fotofreek]

Hi Brailling - My i960 has an adjustment in the driver for avoiding paper abrasion. I guess that it creates a little more clearance. I don't know if it will clear the embossed braille dots, however. Worth a try. The samples I sent you included the Staples double sided matte paper which appeared to have a little more heft. The specs written on the package were very close to those of the Epson double matte paper, but I liked the feel of the Staples paper a little more. How do they compare with the Ilford for weight, "snap", etc.?

 

[Brailling]

Hi, fotofreek. I was going to email you a more lengthy report today re: your samples, but just as a quick reply to this posting, the driver adjustment adds another new aspect to this issue. Where, exactly, is the adjustment? I'll compare it to the i550 we have at work, and check the ip-series at the stores (or call Canon techs again). Of course, your i960 also has the manual adjustment I described, but perhaps the newer models that don't have the manual adjustment, do have the driver adjustment you are mentioning (it must be able to only adjust for more clearance and not affect the print quality and resolution selections.) Your Staples paper, and the printed images, was almost identical to the Ilford paper - perhaps it was a little less opaque which is good since this double sided matt photo paper is not as robust as, say, 80lb. stock. We picked up some Epson (I think) paper yesterday from Shutterbug and it prints the same - perhaps a little more show through than the Ilford and Staples. I want to get some samples of 80lb Wausau double side coated extra smooth matte paper today from Paper Zone. It is for laser printers and is not recommended for ink jet printers, but I'm going to try it anyway. It comes in all weights. I fly to Sacramento tomorrow and will take samples to print on my sister's Epson C82 and I'll also check out the driver settings....

 

[Jane]

On my old S-800 (attached to a computer using Win98SE as OS) starting the printing process brings up a box where clicking Properties brings up a box where clicking on the Main tab and then advanced brings up another one where you can change "Print Quality" with a slider regardless of which paper type is selected. If you choose the highest tick at the "Fine" end when that is not the default you get a box warning about increase in volume of print data and thus increase in print time. But if you choose "yes" (to go on and use that setting) it will do so with no problem.

Hope this works on the later printers and is helpful.
Jane

 

[fotofreek]

The adjustment is under"maintenance, custom settings, prevent paper abrasion." I'm not certain what it does as there is no documentation for it in the user manual. Am I missing something? I don't see a lever for printhead hight adjutment on the i960. I did have that on an old Epson. The abrasion prevention setting worked when I was getting a bit of ink on the trailing edge of some borderless prints, but there was an annoying feature - a dialogue box popped up before each print telling me that this adjustment was on. I don't know if it would do that when printing more than one copy of a file on a print run. Maybe just before it starts the first print of a multiple print job. The ink on the trailing edge (plus some banding on the last 3/16 inch of the print) was caused by a slight curl the paper had picked up by leaving it in the feed area for a few days. I now leave photo paper flat in the box and only take it out when printing. Problem solved. With non-canon thicker stock you may have to experiment with the abrasion adjustment.

 

[Brailling]

Here is a link to Steves digicam review of a Canon i850 -
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2002_reviews/canon_i850_pg2.html
Scroll down the page to look at the row of print carts - just above there is a pale lavender lever that swings from left (default) to right (increases printing space). I was told by Canon techs that this feature was on all the "i" series Canon, but perhaps it is not. I looked on our i550 for the "prevent paper abrasion" as you instructed and that feature is not on it. So maybe the i950/960 are adjusted on screen and the i550/850 have a lever. Curiouser and curiouser. Perhaps all the Canon users out there could look quick to see if they have a lever and/or an on-screen adjustment like you mentioned....

 

[Nifty]

If I remember correctly, the i560 has this manual lever, but the i860's adjustment is done by the driver and the paper settings.

 

[Kenyada]

Here is a link to Steves digicam review of a Canon i850 -
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2002_reviews/canon_i850_pg2.html
Scroll down the page to look at the row of print carts - just above there is a pale lavender lever that swings from left (default) to right (increases printing space). I was told by Canon techs that this feature was on all the "i" series Canon, but perhaps it is not. I looked on our i550 for the "prevent paper abrasion" as you instructed and that feature is not on it. So maybe the i950/960 are adjusted on screen and the i550/850 have a lever. Curiouser and curiouser. Perhaps all the Canon users out there could look quick to see if they have a lever and/or an on-screen adjustment like you mentioned....

The i950 has the lever.