An alignment routine is a small calibration exercise. It asks the printer to produce a pattern and asks you to identify the best result. Choosing a number at random can make the calibration less useful even though the routine reports completion.

Prepare a readable test

Use the paper and procedure specified for the printer. Resolve displayed errors first and allow enough time to finish the pattern without interruption. Keep an ordinary sample showing the original problem so you have something concrete to compare afterwards.

Epson's ET-2850 guide, for example, uses plain paper and Maintenance, Print Head Alignment. It offers vertical and horizontal alignment routines and asks the user to select the most solid pattern in each set. The guide also says not to cancel while an alignment pattern is printing.

Follow the illustration for your exact model. Other routines may ask for the least visible banding, the straightest lines or an automatic scan of the sheet. Those are different selection methods, so a remembered instruction from another printer is not sufficient.

Read every set independently

Place the fresh sheet under even lighting and make sure it is the sheet just printed by this routine. Work through the numbered sets in order. Do not select the same number in every group simply because it was best in the first group.

If the choices are indistinguishable or the pattern is incomplete, pause rather than inventing a preference. Check the guide's advice for an unreadable pattern and whether a nozzle-quality problem must be addressed first. Alignment and cleaning serve different purposes.

Once the routine finishes, reprint the original sample using the same paper and settings. Look at the affected text or lines, not just the page as a whole. Record whether alignment changed the symptom. If it did not, that result helps narrow the next investigation and avoids cycling through calibration repeatedly without evidence.

Sources: Epson ET-2850 alignment instructions.