Troubled Greys

[printing by dan]

I am using a Ricoh 811 printer. Recently, I needed to produce solid greys with about 80% coverage. I can't seem to get a nice grey to save my life. Can anyone assist me in this?
I miss my film days.

Dan

[UberTech]

Nobody has replied here, I have no idea of the product you are talking of, but from a tech's point of view who has worked on many machines; you are asking alot. I assume you are getting allsorts of banding, judders and inconsistant prints? If you had a c650X I would say change the screen to dot2 type2, it's a lot coarser but it will give an even flat halftone. You may have screen options in your engine or your application to get a similar effect. Alternativly you should try and print the grey with a 5% cyan background, you won't see it but it will give you a much smoother halftone.

[printing by dan]

Uber Tech,
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I did in fact adjust the colour to a pantone grey that was definitely on the cyan side and the results were good. It also seems that laser printers band less or not at all if the colour are relatively light. Maybe I'm imagining this,
but heavier tones, especially with more red in the mix, seem to print badly. Anyhow, thanks for your help. The Ricoh techs are useless around here anyway.
Dan