Slight vertical banding on Canon ip4500 - how to fix?

[twinkle]

I am getting very slight vertical banding repeating every 1/2 inch or so only on "light magenta" pattern print (the fake light magenta, since it only has 1 magenta). It is very slight, and running printhead cleaning as well as auto and manual head alignment is not changing anything. It looks a little exaggerated on the monitor since I increased contrast in the photo:

Here is magnified view:

Any suggestions? New print head?

 

[ghwellsjr]

When you say vertical, do you mean the banding is going 90 degrees from the direction the print head travels? If so, this could be a dirty timing strip which is almost invisible and goes from one side of the printer through the back of the print head and out to the other side. I don't know why this would only affect the photo magenta so maybe this isn't the problem. You can clean the timing strip with Windex or other window cleaner on a soft rag.

 

[Grandad35]

The nozzle check doesn't print from every nozzle at once, rather it prints from staggered groupings of nozzles - see the detailed scans in this post. I believe that the groupings are changed at distinct intervals across the nozzle check, so it is entirely possible that you may see very light vertical bands where this happens. Since it is very light, I wouldn't worry about it.

If you want to investigate further, run an extended nozzle check to make sure that every nozzle is firing, then scan a small portion (to keep the image size down) of your original nozzle check in the area of the color change at a very high resolution to see if there is anything obvious at the boundary.

 

[ghwellsjr]

I didn't realize that the images were of a nozzle check, is that the case, twinkle? If so, then my suggestion doesn't apply and Grandad35's observation is correct. The nozzle check for colors on most Canon printers repeats itself four times across the page so whatever defect you see during the first quarter will be repeated again three more times.