I am frustrated by the pizza wheel marks on my DNs. In an effort to get control over this, I am trying to load a sheet of Pictorico Ultra Premium which is taped to a Poster board sled for loading via the front feed tray. After setting the load guide to Poster Board, I attempt to feed the board in the front slot. The printer will not complete the task, but wants me to close the grey front loading tray, which makes the intake of the poster board impossible. Has anyone run into issues like this, or have any suggestions for other ways around the pizza wheel problem. Using QTR and Print Tool, I cannot find a way to increase the platen gap (which might solve the DN scratching on the rear feed tray). Any thoughts gratefully received.
Hi Iain,
Pizza wheels and their assembly must be spec’d by EPSON with a wide range of tolerance so that only when a unit is shipped at one end of that tolerance does it affect printing and only for those with enough visual intelligence to notice. And yours may be at the end of this spec tolerance.
Keith Schreiber a long-time digital negative maker wrote this up in 2016 when one of his two 3880s would not produce negs without these pizza wheel marks - and hopefully it may help you. It is a method that works on the 3880 to disable them rather than remove them. I can not say if EPSON has prevented it from working on a P800 but the two printers share many components including print heads and paper feeds etc…:
best,
Jon
Thanks, Jon.
That’s very helpful. I’ll try to follow Keith’s process. Trying to use the front feed tray on a poster board sled has been a very frustrating experience. Still, pushing onwards! I hope you and Cathy are enjoying a good summer in VT.
Best, Iain
Has anyone using the SC P800 for digital negatives used Keith Schreiber’s hack for retracting the front feed mechanism and disengaging the star wheels? I believe I’ve followed Keith’s excellent instructions to the letter. However, when I insert a plastic swab into the leaf spring, I still get a message on the dashboard telling to close the front feed tray. Clearly I’ve failed to depress the leaf spring adequately. I have tried to be as aggressive as I dare with inserting the swab. Any thoughts or suggestions? Or even another way to deal with those durn pizza wheels. My preference is to use the Auto Rear Feed, so if anyone has had luck with pizza wheels using the rear feed, I’d love to know. I don’t have endless amounts of Pictorico Ultra Premium to waste! Thanks all.
Hi Iain,
I have never had the opportunity to try out the procedure described in my article on a P800, but here’s an article published on Medium that builds upon my 3880 specific article and adapts the same idea to the P800. Perhaps it will help.
There is no platen gap setting in QTR or Print-Tool, but I think it can be set on the printer control panel. At least that is the case on the 3880, so it may be similar on the P800.
I’ve never used a P800 so I can’t be more specific.
Hope this helps,
Keith
Thank you, Keith. This is most helpful. These Epson printers are great, but trying to combine the shenanigans that Apple has been up to in their printing protocols with QTR, AND Epson’s impossible to navigate menu, has got me scratching my head! I cannot find a platen gap setting on the 800’s control panel and it seems to be impossible to get to Apple’s paper settings when using QTR and Print Tool. However, I am about to jump in to solving the pizza wheel problem — again. Maybe this hack will do the trick. Wish me luck!
Thanks again,
Iain Paterson