When printing long panels we find that the width of the panel prints correctly on either a Pro 42E or Pro 50 but the lenght can be out by plus/minus 3 to 5%.

Is this a setup problem or related to the acuuracy(!) of the Encad Novajets.

This also causes problems when re-ripping and printing a tiled document.

Thanks and I await your reply

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1998

Answers

The Nova Jet products as all inkjet printers advance the paper with a stepper motor. This motor my vary slightly over the distance of the print. Length of each panel may vary somewhat over a distance of 7 or 8 feet. To reduce this problem the user must be sure that the paper is tracking properly thru the plotter. Make sure there is no drag on the feed roller. Also, perform the x-y calibration and the paper calibration on the plotter itself. This will make sure that the plotter is stepping forward in the proper increments. The precision is in thousanths of an inch. On a ten foot tile, the image should line up within .5 inches.

-- Anonymous, November 06, 1998

Our company prints hundreds of tiled murals every year on Encad 42e and 600e printers. We have done a lot of testing to reduce the error in panel length associated with these machines. The four main factors we have found are media selection (stay away from high gloss media and use media with a universal coating which has a rougher finish eg. Rexham white poly film), keep the encoder strip clean, keep the feed rollers clean and do not stop or pause the printer between panels. Following these points we are able to maintain a tolerance of less than 1/8" between panels. You might also want to check your version of Onyx. There was a real problem with version 4.0 which caused erratic tile sizes. We noticed this when we upgraded from 3.5 but it seems to have been fixed with later versions.

-- Anonymous, June 10, 1999

We had the same problem printing to 4 different Encads Pro50 to 600e. All of our tiles were .5 inches short. The problem disappeared (1.5 years later) when we upgraded to 4.5. The accuracy of one panel to the next however has always been extremely accurate. We regularly clean the advance rollers with denatured alcohol and slightly scuff them with a Scotch Brite pad. Even glossy feeds accurately.

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2000