1) When I do a head cleaning, the print head carriage is not going all the way to the left (to the waste tray), so ink is being sprayed out onto the silver platform.
2) I have one image right now that I CANNOT get the white base to print. Every time I try, I get a strip of yellow, a strip of red, a strip of cyan, a strip of black, a big ol puddle of grayish brownish ew, and then two strips of white. The colors are all very defined except when they make the puddle. The SHAPE of the image is followed - just suddenly, there's this big old band of crap. When that happens, the printer is dumped offline.
I have tried opening the image as a jpeg, importing it into DRAW first, having it sent as a .pdf and as a .jpg, doing a white ink layer, doing a white mask layer... nothing seems to work.
There is currently a queue for tech support and I'm pulling out my hair. I fear for the answer, but I want to know if anyone has any insight.
Yep, cleaned the encoder strip and still it's not going all the way to the left. I'm wondering if I need to clean the encoder wheel, too... I'll check that.
1) When I do a head cleaning, the print head carriage is not going all the way to the left (to the waste tray), so ink is being sprayed out onto the silver platform.
2) I have one image right now that I CANNOT get the white base to print. Every time I try, I get a strip of yellow, a strip of red, a strip of cyan, a strip of black, a big ol puddle of grayish brownish ew, and then two strips of white. The colors are all very defined except when they make the puddle. The SHAPE of the image is followed - just suddenly, there's this big old band of crap. When that happens, the printer is dumped offline.
I have tried opening the image as a jpeg, importing it into DRAW first, having it sent as a .pdf and as a .jpg, doing a white ink layer, doing a white mask layer... nothing seems to work.
There is currently a queue for tech support and I'm pulling out my hair. I fear for the answer, but I want to know if anyone has any insight.
No need to wait on the queue or pull out your hair. There could be several things causing your issue.
First is the carriage motor gear that drives the belt moving your print head back and forth. Clean it thoroughly making sure you get in the grooves of the gear. Use a safety pin or needle. The gear does pick up "crud" which closes off the grooves and causes your belt to skip - possibly giving you your issues. Also lightly oil the rails with a light machine oil.
Second, you said you cleaned your encoder strip but double check that it is in fact clean. You might want to even take it out of the printer and clean it. Just make sure when you put it back on that the encoder strip goes through the slot on back of your carriage assembly.
Make sure that the rails that the printhead ride on are clean and oiled. This could be causing a problem as well, though I tend to side with Harry about the encoder strip.
You know, I didn't even think to do a nozzle check yesterday I was so frazzled. I'm cleaning things up today and oiling etc. and then I'll do one.
I do have a question - I'm not sure how to remove/reinstall the encoder strip safely. Are there close-up pictures of that part of the machine somewhere?
Problem 1) is solved. I cleaned etc. with not much luck. Then I noticed that the little ring that holds the encoder strip on the left was looking loose - the 'hook' end of it wasn't in its slot. That tightened up the encoder strip and my head cleaning discharge is now going where it's supposed to.
I'm about to try this print job again and see if problem number 2) is fixed or not. Our tech guy said try cleaning the wiper blade really well, and I cleaned everything I could. He said it could also be our capping station is dying though. So we'll see.
I had myself convinced that problem #2 had something to do with the customer's file. But just now I went to print something I made myself in CorelDRAW and had already printed once today. Sure enough, this time the white base was interrupted by a nice band of color... I think the last time something like this happened, Rip Pro was corrupted, so off I go to fight with software.
There are days when I truly, TRULY, hate this printer. Truly.
Bands of Color and Puddles of Ink 
Let me know.
