i850 with fresh printhead still has banding

[chellman]

Greetings everyone, I've been reading on here anonymously for a couple weeks, but now it's time to post.

Somehow, the print head in my i850 broke. The nozzles looked scratched on the bottom of the print head, so I decided to try buying a new one. It was $50, but seems worth it to keep my non-chipped printer and save throwing something else in the rubbish.

I received it yesterday, installed it, put some fresh ink carts in, and I'm still seeing some banding. All colors print on the nozzle check, but the print head alignment pattern has evenly striped banding through it.

You can see what I mean here:




Presumably, being a fresh print head, clogging is not an issue here.

 

[hpnetserver]

Where did you buy the print head? If the electronics in your printer is good and your cartridges are new I can only guess that your print head is faulty.

 

[jackson]

Do the test prints from the new head show the same symptoms as the old one?
The old head has visible scratches (assuming that was causing the problem), what does the new head look like?
If something in the printer scratched the old head, is it possible that it has scratched the new one?

 

[chellman]

I bought the print head from inkcessories.com, the cheapest place I could find them. I have no prior experiences with them, but I think taking this up with them might be a good idea. I don't know how I could check whether the electronics in the printer are faulty. Is there some way for an end user to do that?

jackson, the idea that the new print head might have been scratched like the old one scared the crap out of me. Fortunately, the printer is definitely printing better than it did with the old one. These symptoms are different. Before it was virtually unable to print anything, even after multiple thorough flushings of the old print head. At least now I can print black, and a decent amount of color. I also took the new print head out and looked at it, and it appears to be undamaged. It certainly looks better than the old one. I think the old one might have been damaged in our last move.

I really don't know what to make of those test patterns. Some of the blocks of color look completely fine, some of them look awful.

 

[jackson]

And the head is aligned?Does it have a paper lever that could have moved in the move?
I had an older model Canon with a 'paper-envelope' type lever.

 

[chellman]

And the head is aligned?Does it have a paper lever that could have moved in the move? I had an older model Canon with a 'paper-envelope' type lever.

The head is as aligned as it can be, I think. It only really fits in the printer one way. Those images I posted earlier are what I get when printing the head alignment pages.

There's a paper thickness lever, but it's set for paper, not envelopes.

This is disappointing -- I was really hoping a new head would keep this thing off the scrap heap.

 

[jackson]

And the head is aligned?Does it have a paper lever that could have moved in the move? I had an older model Canon with a 'paper-envelope' type lever.

The head is as aligned as it can be, I think. It only really fits in the printer one way. Those images I posted earlier are what I get when printing the head alignment pages.

There's a paper thickness lever, but it's set for paper, not envelopes.

This is disappointing -- I was really hoping a new head would keep this thing off the scrap heap.

I mean the alignment that is done when a new head is installed.I think it would be in the printer maintenance.Of course if it's been carried out already, disregard.

 

[jeffkrol]

I may be new here but the alignment pattern shoud have some "banding". Isn't that the purpose to find the box that's not banded (sorry if it's different banding them I'm thinking, can't load the images for some reason). What does the nozzle check show.... Well got the first image to load.
Block a,d and e are what I'd expect w my i960. b,c ????