- Anyone who occasionally sees an unexplained alignment-test-like line print alongside an image that has blank margins
- Anyone whose symptom is irregular — sometimes appearing, sometimes not — making the cause hard to pin down
- Anyone using the Skip feature (moving without printing over blank margins in an image)
- Anyone who wants to reduce this issue by adjusting the Flash before print setting
- The setting change described here is a software value adjustment — do not change other unrelated values at the same time
- Lowering the Flash before print value can slightly reduce initial jetting quality after the printer has sat idle for a while — check nozzle condition before printing in that case
- No issues were observed during continuous operation. This is a temporary workaround; a permanent fix is planned
- When printing images with blank margins, an alignment-test-like line occasionally prints along with the image, irregularly
- Suspected cause: leftover data randomly remaining in flash memory, which is not cleared before printing and fires as this line
- Temporary fix: change the SW’s Flash before print value from 3000 → 0
- No issue during continuous operation — check initial jetting condition after long idle periods
I. Symptom — Alignment Test Lines Printing Mid-Job
A customer using an ARTJET printer reported the problem shown in the photo below.
After thinking it through, we realized the image itself had blank margins, which triggered Skip (moving without printing over blank areas, then starting to print only where image data exists),
and just before printing started, the symptom shown in the photo would sometimes appear and sometimes not.
We reproduced the test on our demo machine.
We printed with an image that had margins — nothing happened at first, then we hit the same symptom ourselves.
This was the evening before. It would show up sometimes and not other times — and a problem with no consistent pattern is the kind we dislike most.
To find out whether it depended on some specific condition, we ran similar tests for over 5 hours straight, but could not find any consistent pattern at all.
We tried turning the GUI off, redoing the RIP from scratch, changing image conditions, changing the X-axis start margin,,, a pattern would seem to emerge, then when we repeated it, it wasn’t the same pattern anymore,,,,
II. How We Resolved It — Alignment Test Lines Printing Mid-Job
Since I was so focused on my own angle, what he said the first time didn’t really register. I kept running the tests I had in mind,, but simply couldn’t find any pattern,
so following what he’d suggested, I changed flash before print from 3000 to 0,, and after trying it several times, the symptom didn’t appear.
It was getting late, so we decided to run my own tests the next day,,, and called it a night.
We reprinted every image variation we had changed the day before, and the same symptom did not appear even once.
We ran roughly 30 tests, and since it hasn’t shown up so far, it looks like we’ve found a workaround for now.
Jetting the ink before printing is what warms up the nozzles and gives you good print quality — so we were concerned that starting the print with less pre-jetting than before might hurt jetting quality at the very start of the print.
As long as the machine has just been cleaned and nozzle condition is good, there was no issue with the initial output.
There’s no problem at all during continuous work — it’s better to be a bit more careful right after the printer has sat idle for a while.
After finishing testing, we discussed the direction for improvement with our director, and we plan to propose a fix that’s simple and doesn’t require touching much else.
If you’re seeing the same symptom with an image that has an initial skip zone, please follow the setting change shown in the video below.
As a seller, this isn’t something we’re eager to publicize,,
but for current owners of our printers, and anyone planning to use one,
you may run into the same issue when printing images with margins, so we’re sharing it anyway even though it’s a known problem.
That’s all for today.
IV. ARTJET UV Printer
