EPSON Stylus Pro 4000 printer

Page 3.

Setting up

Before moving on to the roll media holder lets take a look inside the paper tray and see how the media guides work. A small movable guide holds the media secure along the length, this only works with A4 media, I am not sure why such a long run has been allocated. The guide fold down for larger media. This is quite robust and does the job well. The side paper guide is tucked away inside the printer, but not difficult to access. To move this you have to squeeze the white side and move the guide to make contact with the media. The guide is L shaped and pushes under the media, it got snarled up with the A4 media I had loaded, lifting the media slightly allowed the guide to slide under.

With A4 media loaded	The paper guide moves freely and folds down.
The side paper guide is tucked away	For larger sheets there is a small roller

Besides the tray feed, the 4000 printer also gives you the option to manually load sheets or card. Loading individual sheets seems a complicated and less than certain process. I am not in a position to do printing at the moment so I will deal with this after the next section "First prints", I want to include several pictures for this so I will return to it. To use the manual straight path feed you need rear printer clearance of; 377.5mm for A2, 266.5mm for Super A3, 203.5mm for A3 and 80.5mm for A4 media. This means that the printer needs some serious real estate to operate in. I have a very wide desk which is against a wall and there is no way that I can do a manual sheet feed from the front. The other option is to use the rear gravity feed - as per most other inkjet printers, this seems to be an easier option, but will not allow 1.5mm thickness card to be used.

Roll out the paper

Although many photographers will want to use cut media, the real benefit from owning a large format printer is the ability to churn out prints by the metre, i.e. using roll media. Being a larger media than the other offerings from Epson (100mm X ???) you should not experience the same curl problems. So lets load up the first roll. I have three media types; Premium Semigloss, Premium Matte and Premium Lustre. The black flange of the spindle has to be removed and then the media can be loaded onto the rod. The flange has a 2" grey core holder fitted, this can be removed and other sizes fitted. The media should be loaded on a flat surface in the horizontal position, this avoids the paper slanting and unwinding. To fit the roll media, the rear cover has to be opened. This cover also doubles as an effective dust cover for the paper. The cover is on a pivot and is well constructed.

The roll media and spindle	A hinged cover protects the media from dust
Move the paper release to the Release setting	Raise the roll media support

Great care must be exercised when fitting the roll media otherwise the paper will unwind like a spring. The spindle fits comfortably in the Grey and Black slots, there should be no confusion as to which way this fits. The paper release must be moved into the released position to allow the paper to be fed in and the roll media support has to be in the raised position. Now the media has to fed manually through the printer. On my first attempt the paper seemed to get stuck on a couple of places, a slight bit of jiggling back and forth got the paper through. I'm sure that after a few rolls anyone should get the hang of it, a motorised feed would be a better solution. Once through, the media has to be manually rewound, until the leading edge is aligned with the hard to see A4/B4 marking on the paper catcher.

Manually feed the media through the printer	Rewind until the leading edge aligns with the A4 mark
Roll Auto Cut On selected	Install the drivers next?

With the paper in the correct position, secure the media by moving the paper release to the Secured setting. Close the rear media cover and turn the power on. The media is retracted back into the printer, about a minute of whirring and clunking takes place before the printer is ready to print. The roll media was automatically selected with Roll Auto Cut On, you can press the media button again and select Roll Auto Cut Off or sheet.

I have followed the Setup guide page by page so far, but before I can start printing I have to install the drivers and utilities. I would have expected this to be a first step before fitting the media etc. However, I shall stick with the setup order as per guide.