Epson Stylus Pro 9900 with Piezo Pro Inks - Printing & Cutting Skewed

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Wondering if anyone else has experienced this strange issue we are having with prints on our Epson 9900 which we just turned into a Piezo Pro Ink printer…

On a 24 x 18 inch print using Hahnemühle Bamboo Fine Art (290gsm) 24 inch roll paper - the top left edge of image to the top right of image is skewed by 6 to 7mm from leading edge of paper.

36mm on left top to 42.5-43mm on top right

After many tests - I also noticed - after placing finished cut print on a cutting board with grid - with the roll side edges aligned to grid - that the bottom edge cut was also skewed by approx 3mm

Equally strange is that - having drawn a rule line halfway down the print (at 9 in) the bottom half seems to print square - only the top half of image is very skewed

On the left and right sides of image (roll edges) the image is fairly square - ± .5mm to 1mm difference top to bottom - which to me is (and has been) an acceptable tolerance

But certainly not 6-7mm!

I never had this issue show up before - and after dozens of tests can only surmise that somehow this is a paper feed issue (advancing paper slightly more on one side) - which would also explain the skewed cut at the bottom

I have tried various things to see if I can figure out what’s going on…

This includes:

  • Placing roll paper on gridded cutting board - and ensuring that the leading front edge of paper is completely square with edges of the roll - and then carefully loading paper into printer - so the printing starts with completely straight & aligned paper

  • Thoroughly cleaning the paper path - including all the pressure rollers and bar behind them

  • Brand new cutter blade - and ensuring that it is securely fastened to printer

  • Brand new paper roll holders

  • Different new rolls of paper

Nothing seems to fix these issues - and before replacing with a newer model (this one’s long been out of warranty) - I wanted to reach out and see if anyone out there had a cost effective solution?

Thanks,
Joseph

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The 9900 has a “feature” that continually measures the leading edge position of the paper and attempts to center the image on that. If the sensor/timing/encoder is funky and/or the paper is skewing back and forth during the rollout (aka, non-level printer or funky tension or rollers) this can cause that problem. You can turn skew control off on the printer and see if that fixes it but you might see the image itself skew in relation to the paper. It can be a crap-shoot with older 99s. I’ve seen this problem be intractable on a few, fixable on a few others.

Best,

Walker

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Walter - thanks for the input… did not know about that “feature” on the 9900s
And since you mentioned it - I had given thought about the “levelness” of the whole printer - since we had recently relocated this printer to another part of our print room - so just finished doing another test where we now have the printer perfectly level - started with completely squared paper loaded correctly - and still seeing a top skew of 4-5mm (better but still not acceptable) from leading edge of paper… skewed image still occurring
On the skew control - I had already considered this and had turned it off for my previous tests…
So now - another test - with printer perfectly level - and Skew Control now enabled - and skewed image still occurring
So at this point feeling like - as you so aptly put it - this problem may just be an “intractable” one…

Joseph