Hi there, I usually write to forums to ask questions, but this time I have some information that might be of use to someone using 7x10 greeting card format Moab Lasal Matte paper and an Epson R1800.

I've recently noticed banding with the above combination that had me pulling my hair out. The symptoms were as follows:
- each pass was slightly lighter at the bottom than at the top - noticeable in blocks of colours
- some passes showed a thin black horizontal line
- some passes showed a thin line slightly lighter than the rest of the band

I did a few head cleans, tested head alignment more than once, tried the "thick paper" setting on the printer dialog box, but nothing worked.

The odd thing was, a text print of each block of colour (red, blue, magenta, etc) on standard inkjet paper and luster paper were perfect.

A few internet searches later I came up with the following solution:

Choose thick paper under the Printer and Option information on the maintenance tab.

Download the latest driver from Epson support. I have upgraded to 6.52.

Download and install the Moab Lasal Matte ICM file from this website. If you have Photoshop open you might have to restart it for it to be included in the list of profiles.

You will find that paper is too small to use in the rear feeder (the minimum is letter size), so the recommended ultrasmooth option (which insists on using the rear feeder) cannot be used as the chosen profile. Instead, version 6.52 of the epson driver has a "new" option called "double sided matte". Use this instead.

Clean the printer if there is still a problem, but do so with care and knowledge that you could damage your printer. There was probably paper dust and coating debris on the printer, so I bought some alcohol pads and cleaned the paper rollers, then I soaked the middle of some paper, shook off the excess and passed it through the printer half a dozen times. Only do the middle or the paper won't feed correctly. Of course, do all of this at your own risk! This action removed the black banding. Leave the printer to stand for a while so the alcohol has time to evaporate.

Doing all of this means that now all of my prints this afternoon look exactly like the image on my calibrated monitor and that none of them have any sign of banding or other defects.

I hope this is of help to someone.

Jason

A quick update - on my system at least, and bearing in mind R1800s can be temperamental when it comes to printing authentic colours etc, so your experience might be different to mine. Anyway, I've noticed that "SPR1800 Enhanced Matte" ICC file has a better colour/brightness match than the Moab Lasal R1800 specific ICC file.