Hello all,

I finally settled on a 3800 for B&W printing with Photo Rag. The prints have pizza wheel tracks and it's bad especially in the dark areas, it's really irritating. I know this is a known issue and it's particularly prevalent on 3rd glossy & semi glossy papers. I did the Bob Atkins A3 sized target on Premum Glossy and the tracks are there too, but not as bad. I asked my wife (non-photographer and perfect eye sight) and she says she can't see the tracks on Photo Rag. The problem is that I am selling these prints and if I am not 100% happy with them, I don't feel good passing them to my clients.

I've checked the forum and there are 2 possible solutions to this:

1. Increase drying time
2. Remove the wheels
3. Load from the front loader (Nikon forum)

I am going to try no. 3 and if that doesn't work, I think I will go for the 2nd option because I don't do borderless prints and I can afford the 1inch border. I have searched the net and found instructions on the removing the wheels on a few printers but no 3800s.

Has anyone attempted to remove them yet? I am all ears, I am no engineer but I am willing to try coz I really hate them tracks! :-)

If nobody has done it yet, I probably will try it out myself and take a couple of shots.

Best
Wes

I experienced pizza wheel tracks on a Hahn. paper. I reset the platen gap to wider or maybe widest, and it did away with my pizza wheel tracks. You could also try adjusting the paper thickness if that does not help,
Debra

I assume you mean the Photo Rag _Pearl_ paper, right? The regular Photo Rag (190 or 308) is a matte paper and isn't susceptible to the pizza wheel problem. But the Pearl is a different story.

You can try adjusting the Platen Gap, but in general I've found this doesn't really help. If anything it slightly decreases print quality by scattering the dots a bit more on the page.

This is also the issue with using the Front Feed. While the FF is marvelous in that it doesn't use the pizza wheels at all (this is why you can't do borderless or edge-to-edge printing using the FF, by the way), the problem is that the print head is set so far away from the sheet that you'll get distinctly ghosted output. It's as if you're using a shotgun to fire at a wall that's a mile away: who knows where the pellets will end up. One way around this is to temporarily mount the paper on a thick piece of cardboard (or matboard, or foamboard) and then use the front feed. A pain, but it works. BTW, the reason for the FF issues is because the 3800 assumes that if you're using the FF, you're using material that's between 1 and 1.5 mm thick -- i.e., quite thick stuff. In contrast, paper like Photo Rag Pearl 320 is only about 0.5 mm thick.

Hello Eric,

Thanks for correcting, I do mean Photo Rag Pearl.

Wow, it does look like it's a big pain to load into the front load. Sighz. But looking at the situation, it's either this way or removing/lifting the pizza wheels.

Btw, I want to thank you also for having the possibly best 3800 FAQ on the web. It has helped loads in understanding the quirks/advantages of this printer and reduced mistakes made by a new 3800 user.

Debra > Thanks for the info, I have tried widening the platten gap, the tracks are still there.

Best
Wesley

I've used HPRP with my 3800 and haven't noticed any problems like this.
I'd be curious to know what would causes this "pizza wheel" issue.

Is it the paper? The FF loader? And why isn't it evident with other
satin/lustre papers such as Silver Rag?

The pizza wheel issue is caused by the little pronged wheels attached to the ejection rollers of the 3800. It only occurs when using the Auto Sheet Feed or the Rear Feed. It does NOT occur when using the Front Feed because when using the FF, the front ejection rollers are automatically lifted up and out of the way, so that the pronged "pizza" wheels do not actually touch the paper.

The actual marks are caused by these wheels digging into the printed sheet of paper (on the actual print surface area) before the ink has had time to dry. It is most visible in darker areas of the print, where the ink coverage is heavier (e.g., areas of solid black or near-black).

In general, softer papers (e.g., the Innova FibaPrint papers) are affected more than harder surfaces (e.g., RC papers such as Premium Luster). I assume this is because the softer surface allows the wheels to "dig in" more.

The pizza wheel issue actually affects all glossy/luster/semi-gloss papers -- any paper that takes the PK ink -- not just Photo Rag Pearl. It affects RC papers, Silver Rag, etc. -- to varying degrees. To see the problem, just aim a strong light at an angle to the print (e.g., a SoLux directional bulb) and tilt the print at various angles to the light. At certain angles, you ought to see the problem quite clearly.

I've just printed out 2 large images on Silver Rag printed on 13x19 sheet paper
using the auto sheet feed and still can't see the pizza wheel effect. I supposed that's a good thing, right? Holding the prints in front of natural window light, all I can see is the soft texturing of the Silver Rag, very strange indeed.

Hi!

It's probably a good sign. :-)

Seriously though, do you have perfect eyesight? I don't and I have a habit of inspecting photo prints without my glasses (800+ degrees for each eye) up close and personal. And like what Eric said, it most noticeable in dark flat colors/black. Honestly though, I don't think this problem will affect most users. Just me being idiosyncratic.

I am probably going to try to increase drying time to +50% OR 100% on the slider before trying the front load.

Best
Wesley

No, my eye sight isn't perfect, in fact, far from it.
To be honest, Wesley, I'm not even sure what to look for. What does a pizza wheel pattern look like? Perhaps if I knew, I'd know what to look for on my prints. I just assume what I see on Silver Rag (the only paper in this category I've used extensively) is the soft texture of the paper. Can you describe in more detail?

thanks!
SteveZ

It looks like tracks running in the same direction as your feed, they are tiny pink prick dots, about 1 to 2mm next to each other. Here's an example.

http://www.inkjetart.com/pizza_wheel.html

But seriously, if you take out your glasses and you still can't find them, it's ok. Don't let it bother you. Trust your own judgment, and your eyes.

Btw, I have to report that increasing drying time to the maximum (5sec) still does not help. The pizza wheels are still there. I did 2x A4 PhotoRagPearl 320 prints with the exact same setting (manual rear feed, platen gap 'wider', etc) and only difference was the drying time. Not only were the pizza wheels still intact, I had head strikes and smearing on image edge on the 5sec-delay print.

Best
Wesley

Thanks, Wesley, this helps. I'm going to take a closer look at my Silver Rag prints now that I know what to look for.

Hi Steve, you make a good point, which is that artifacts such as these can be hard (sometimes impossible) to spot unless one knows what to look for. So there may be cases where the pizza wheel marks are indeed there but will be invisible from the client, so it doesn't matter. Or in gallery situations it won't matter, since the way the prints are displayed and viewed (and lit from above) prevents the spots from being seen.

Actually, Eric....Wesley's thread has me on a witch hunt for pizza wheels as I've been checking my prints made on Silver Rag very carefully in different lighting and...sure enough...yep....I can see them....very faint and not noticeable to the average person. Had Wesley not posted this thread, I probably would have never had noticed them either.

I also had some issues with roller and pizza wheel marks on my 3800 with non-matte papers. In particular I have a batch of Epson premium semi-matte which at first I was quite frustrated with because of these problems.

However, my last prints on this type of paper seemed to be much better with respect to marks from the 3800's transport mechanisms.

By widening the platten gap, setting the drying time to 0.2 (I think it was that much) seconds, and only printing uni-directional allowed me to make a print with dark areas where I wasn't able to find any types of markings. I only print this way when making my final image, since it really does increase the printing time. Now this was on a 17x22 sheet and the amount of time for each head pass is longer than when printing on an 8x10 sheet, so increasing the drying time for smaller sheets may prove helpful.

Derek

Hello Derek,

Thanks for your info. I am printing 8x10s, and as mentioned I tried the longest printing time, the pizza wheel tracks are still there.

Best
Wesley

Keep in mind the pizza wheel marks do depend on the kind of paper as well ...