Black Ink Marks on the border of prints - Canon iP4500

[Kettering_Jeremy]

Hi,

I have a Canon Pixma iP4500.

Printing is fine - except, when I use Ilford Gallerie Fine Art Paper there are feint black marks on the border of the leading edge, and heavier black marks - including a heavy blot on the trailing edge. The main print itself is fine.

I've run the maintenance cycles to clean the bottom plate & platten with no effect.

I imagine I'm going to have dismantle it and tray to find where the contamination is.

Any suggestions that mean avoiding taking it apart, or to point me in the right direction of what to do would be much appreciated. Maybe even a link to a service manual?

Thanks in advance.

[RogerB]

You may be suffering head strikes at the start and finish of the print. With heavy papers you generally need bigger margins top and bottom to ensure that the paper is firmly held before you start printing and is still held at the end of printng. How big are your margins?

The other common problem is that the paper has a bit of a curl. You can often correct that by giving it a bit of a reverse curl before you load it.

[Kettering_Jeremy]

Thanks Roger.

Interestingly the two prints I have been having problems with have greatly differing margins.

One is a panorama crop with large margins top and bottom, which gets marks at the paper ends.

The other is a 10x8 print which has very narrow margins top and bottom, and large margins at each end. This too gets these marks.

I printed out some borderless prints last night using Staples Satin, with great results.

Despite what I say about the borders you may be onto something with the head strike theory. I should emphasise that the paper is stored flat, and that the marks appear whichever paper path I use (the front loading curved path and rear straight through one).

Not sure what one can do about head strikes.

By the way I also bought some Canon Paper yesterday to see if that will solve the problem - I do like the Ilford Galerie papers though.

Thanks again.

[RogerB]

There may be a bit of confusion of terminology here. The problem I was talking about occurs on the leading and trailing edges of the paper - not related to the "top" and "bottom" of the image.

[Kettering_Jeremy]

Hi,

thanks for the clues about "head strike".

I found an option in the "Maintenance" tab to "Avoid paper abrasion" which lifts the print head a little further away from the paper.

When this option is selected a warning appears just prior to printing to say that "Print Quality May Be Impaired".

The print came out fine - no marks, and no discernable loss of quality!

The warning is useful because it reminds one to reset once printing on this thicker paper is complete.

Thanks once again.