- Your prints look normal on regular images, but you see banding only on certain solid colors
- Horizontal line banding appears only in areas with heavy use of a specific color (e.g., Cyan)
- You need to confirm whether it’s a nozzle/aging issue or a channel/operation issue before replacing the head
- You’re considering a temporary workaround (Channel Swap) before a full printhead replacement
- Before changing damper positions, take photos to record the original connections
- After swapping: Ink Load (Pumping) → Cleaning → Nozzle Test → Test Print is mandatory
- If you forget to update the channel order in the software, you may get incorrect colors
- This is a temporary workaround; if the head is aged, a printhead replacement may eventually be required
- Symptom: Horizontal line banding on a solid Cyan color print, even though the nozzle test looked mostly fine
- Cause: Reduced nozzle condition and printhead aging
- Action: Instead of replacing the head immediately, swapped the Cyan channel with Light Cyan to reduce banding
- Why Light Cyan: it’s used less overall, so the same nozzle weakness is less visible there
- Limitation: this is a workaround — if nozzle condition keeps degrading, a printhead replacement will still be necessary
- Ink supply-related print errors (including cleaning and pumping issues) were recently updated.
- If your printer uses dampers, you can solve many of these issues using the guide below.
- This is a 23-post table of contents with photos.
- Printer Cleaning Problems Part 23 Table of Contents ARTJET 2026
- Part 1: Symptoms & Fix When a DATA Cable Is Contaminated by Ink
- Part 2: 17 Stored Used Heads: How Many Worked After Alcohol Cleaning & What Errors Appeared
- Part 3: A Specific Color Prints Abnormally During Printing
- Part 4: How to Handle Reflective Materials + a More Dangerous Cause That Can Clog Nozzles
- Part 5: Real Case: Reviving a White Head Not Used for One Month
- Part 6: Symptoms When a Printhead Reaches End-of-Life and How to Swap Heads
- but it becomes visible when printing certain solid colors.
- I’ll explain why this happens and share a practical tip to reduce banding on those solid colors.
- If your printer has a similar function, the same idea may apply.
I. Symptoms and Results After the Fix _ Solid Color Banding Fix Tips
I printed a blue solid color.
- As expected, a lot of Cyan ink was used.
- If you look closely, you can see thin horizontal lines along the X-axis print direction.
- This is what I’ll call “banding” (horizontal line banding).
This happens when one or two Cyan nozzles are missing, or when nozzle firing becomes unstable (angled/sprayed firing).
It is a symptom of printhead aging.
Without replacing the printhead, we improved the banding as shown below.
- This result was achieved by swapping the Cyan channel (poor nozzle condition) with another channel in better condition.
- Ideally, the head should be replaced. But if you don’t have a spare head available, you can reduce visible banding by swapping channels.
II. How to Swap Color Channels _ Solid Color Banding Fix Tips
As shown below, when one or two nozzles are missing in the printhead (or firing becomes angled/unstable), banding appears when printing a solid color that heavily uses that color.
When printing normal images, multiple colors are mixed, so banding is less noticeable.
But in images dominated by a specific color, missing/unstable nozzles become clearly visible as banding.
Before: Damper order was K C M Y Lc Lm. After swap: it becomes K Lc M Y C Lm.
- Since banding appeared in the Cyan channel, we swapped Cyan with Light Cyan (which had better nozzle condition).
- Light Cyan was moved to the Cyan position.
In the software, update the channel order to match the new damper positions: K C M Y Lc Lm → K Lc M Y C Lm
When you change damper positions, the ink inside the printhead must be replaced via Ink Load (Pumping) so the head is filled with the new ink.
Ink Load (Pumping): after ink starts coming out into the waste tank, keep it for about 10 seconds, then stop.
After Ink Load (Pumping), make sure you do the following before printing:
- Run printhead cleaning
- Run a Nozzle Pattern Test to confirm the ink swap is applied correctly
- Print an ARTJET test file to confirm output is stable with the swapped ink
III. Why Light Cyan Was Chosen for the Swap _ Solid Color Banding Fix Tips
“Won’t banding appear in Light Cyan as well?”
- Yes. If you print a color that heavily uses Light Cyan, banding can appear in the same way.
- However, Light Cyan is a supporting color for Cyan, so it is generally used less than Cyan.
- Lc and Lm are light support colors used to reproduce light Cyan and light Magenta tones that CMYK alone cannot express well.
Light Cyan Usage Range
- When printing a 0% to 100% Cyan (or Magenta) gradient from an Ai file:
- 0%–35%: only Light Cyan ink is fired
- 35%–55%: Light Cyan + Cyan ink fire together to express the gradient
- 55% and above: only Cyan ink is fired
- Since Light Cyan is used less overall than Cyan, banding is typically less noticeable even if one nozzle is weak or firing is angled.
- That’s why Light Cyan was selected as the swap channel.
However, if the solid color is mainly Light Cyan (a very light Cyan solid), banding may still appear in that color.
This method is a workaround. If the issue does not improve, the printhead should be replaced.
For how to replace the head by disconnecting only the head-side cables (without removing cables from the board), refer to the link below.
V. ARTJET UV Printer
