There are several ways to load media.
The two I want to focus on is autoload and manual load.
It is my preference, my personal preference, to manually load.
In fact, I manually load all of the medias.
The reason I manually load isn't that autoload doesn't work.
It's that since you run, I run so many different kinds of medias, inside print, outside print,
wall coverings, you know, five different types of wall coverings, all with different characteristics,
I want to make sure that when I load media, I have almost no chance of having a head strike.
I want it to load the skew accurately the first time and I want everything to go smoothly.
For me, because of the variety of media thatI load, I manually load everything.
I find that the manual load feature allows me to lift the pinch rollers,
feed the media through and then have it go exactly
where I want it to go before I drop the lever and tell it what kind of media it is.
Also, I prefer to have the front edge of the material, right at along this front edge,
as far away from the evaluation of the print carriage as possible.
A lot of times the front edge of the material can become dog-eared or kind of beat up
or can get curled from loading it through and I don't want that anywhere near where the print head comes.
Also, I want to utilize the vacuum from the platen completely.
That is, I want all of the vacuum holes to be filled so that it has
the maximum on a vacuum when it evaluates the media.
Now I can always roll it back later to where I want to position it.
But during the load-in process, I want to make sure that the front edge of
the material is not near where the carriage comes across,
then determine where the edge is and then also determines the width of the material,
and that is a preference.
Also, I tend to cut the material, which you can sort of notice in here, into a little bit of a curve.
That is, this edge here curves out so that the apex of the curve is right in the middle.
This allows me to load the material a little easier through the printer.
But also, it allows me to use a little trick where I take a single piece of two-inch masking tape
and then use just the single middle piece to affix it to the take up reel core.
That way I have just one piece, it's just one quick little strip that wraps it around
the take-up reel, and that allows it to go on there with no fuss,
if you're trying to attach it to the take-up while it's printing, which is an option.
Uh, those are just some preferences, but my personal view is I tend to manually load everything.
The only thing I don't manually load is when I'm using the, um, the feeder for fabrics.
In that case, there's actually an option for that and then when you feed the feeder through,
the, uh, uh, fabric accessory, it kind of grabs it and then feeds it all the way to the bottom.
Now, if you do use a, uh, fabric feeding accessory for a 330 for example, then you want to manually load,
'cause that option for the feeder accessory category is not available on that printer.
But just a little idea of how I like to load and then also I like to cut this curve in it,
and then I like to use a single piece of two-inch,
I like the two-inch masking tape to attach it to the take-up if I'm putting it on the take-up while it's running.
Some of the issues people have with take-ups is that they have a straight line cut
and they have tape on the ends and they try to get it on both at the same time,
and usually one's on a little before another and that can cause a little bit of
drift or torqueing when it goes on the take-up.
Now, it won't show up right away but overtime what's going to happen is if it's on that
take-up reel a little irregularly or little uneven, eventually it's going to track back towards the print heads
and you could end up with a head strike.
So, when you put it on the take-up reel while it's running you want to have a nice smooth single operation,
so that it goes on there straight and accurate.
OK, that is my loading option or my loading advice, uh, for the Latex 300 series printer.