GRAYS COMING OUT PURPLISH - HP LATEX & FLEXI

[twmiller24]

A while ago, we were having a similar issue, and it turned out to be a firmware problem where there was too much electrical current going to one head (or something like that). It's been awhile, but all of our grays were going green, and the light cyan/light magenta head would not print consistently. We updated the firmware, installed new heads - bingo. New machine.

 

[StickerGuy83]

3500-4500!!!? Damn, I wish I was even getting 10% of that. These printheads have a little over 200 ml put through them.

It can get frustrating trying to determine which print head is bad, as the drop tests performed through the machine can pass with flying colors even though a printhead may not be firing at 100%, causing the color shifts. One way to diagnose it, is to open up photoshop or whatever editing software your using. Most of them will have color changing options. Find one with the CMYK slider. Determine the color that's changing, and make a big square of that color. Than open the color editing tab and use the CMYK slider. slowly reduce one color at a time and watch the shift in color. If it starts to turn the color that is printing off, than you can assume that value (color) is the bad printhead in your machine. This may be a little harder to determine if its one of your LC or LM heads.

HP will warranty the printheads up to 1000 ml. You have to go through a song and dance before they ship them out, but they know the printheads are not as durable, and with the heating up and cooling down of the thermal printheads, it can deform the nozzles and cause color issues. If you get 3-4000 ml out of your printheads, god bless you. Atleast one black/yellow head went bad around 900ml, but when they checked the all pages, it was past the 1000 ml mark by that time. They still ended up sending me ALL the printheads, being the first two did not fix the problem as per a level 2 HP tech.

I know stock full sets of printheads for this reason. They're cheap enough.

 

[Mary Gotcher]

We have had a similar issue using our new Latex 335. It WILL NOT print correct pantone colors. So, what we do to get around it is we print a pantone chart. The colors of the pantone chart will be different from the ones in your pantone book. But, you can look and correct your artwork to use the pantone color that matches what your printer prints. This is a huge pain in the ass but you can at least see what your printer will print when you change over to the colors in your chart. I worked for two weeks with HP on this issue. They are clueless!

 

[greysquirrel]

Mary, what rip?

 

[StickerGuy83]

We have had a similar issue using our new Latex 335. It WILL NOT print correct pantone colors. So, what we do to get around it is we print a pantone chart. The colors of the pantone chart will be different from the ones in your pantone book. But, you can look and correct your artwork to use the pantone color that matches what your printer prints. This is a huge pain in the *** but you can at least see what your printer will print when you change over to the colors in your chart. I worked for two weeks with HP on this issue. They are clueless!

My issue was a printhead not firing 100%, causing the color to shift. I'm not sure if your pantone colors not matching is a printhead issue, it surely can be among many other things as well.
What fixed my issue with the grays printing with a purple tint to them, was replacing printheads. Specifically magenta/yellow.

 

[shepherddesigns]

Just thought I'd follow up with this. The problem we're seeing is colors starting to shift when the ink cartridges get down to around 200mL. Replaced the ink and calibrated and everything was fine. Just sucks that I end up throwing out around 30% of a cartridge.

 

[balstestrat]

Just thought I'd follow up with this. The problem we're seeing is colors starting to shift when the ink cartridges get down to around 200mL. Replaced the ink and calibrated and everything was fine. Just sucks that I end up throwing out around 30% of a cartridge.

How much do you print? Easy to check total amount for sqfeet and amount of ink ml from web server and how long you have had the printer.
What I'm after is how long do your ink cartridges sit in the printer? If you don't use it much and they sit in the printer for months and months you should shake them periodically.
It's not a problem for people who use the printer and replace every cartridge every few weeks or once a month. But left sitting for longer a shake would be in place even if it's not a official advice.

 

[Kustom Art]

We had the same issues. it's got nothing to do with heads etc.... We ran 2 HP Latec 335 machines and both from new printed all greys with a purple hue.
My workaround is: Take your generic front lit pvc banner profile and create a copy, create your passes you want to print 10/12/16... Adjust the temp and other setting accordingly and there you go. For some reason the banner profile prints grey the closest.

If the grey is still a bit out go to default job properties - colour management - advanced - pure hue - click the gray tab and move the tolerance slider to the right

 

[Kustom Art]

 

[bowtievega]

On our HP365, to fix this issue we started creating our own profiles with linearization and calibration and bingo, nice neutral grays.

 

[balstestrat]

On our HP365, to fix this issue we started creating our own profiles with linearization and calibration and bingo, nice neutral grays.

Sadly on all the other lesser models they can't do that (on the machine).
But I still agree, usually color calibration still fixes this issue if printheads are okay.

 

[Chimuka]

I was having the same issue. My dealer (I should give a plug) Northlight Color suggested an incredible simple fix , but it worked!
Follow insructions for changing color cartridges and remove the cartridges and then gently shake them. Then calibrate....
I would have never believed this would fix it, but it did.

 

[balstestrat]

I was having the same issue. My dealer (I should give a plug) Northlight Color suggested an incredible simple fix , but it worked!
Follow insructions for changing color cartridges and remove the cartridges and then gently shake them. Then calibrate....
I would have never believed this would fix it, but it did.

I hate to break this but the shaking had absolutely no effect if you did the calibration straight after it.

There is 20-30ml of ink in the tubes for every colour. One cleaning cycle might use few ml of each. You will only see the "fresh" ink after a while.

If the printer uses 1ml of ink per 1 square feet, it would take about 150 square feet of printing to refresh the ink to the printheads. Assuming we could use all the inks equally.

 

[Chimuka]

Now that I recall I did print a few yards of brown before I calibrated. My imitation gold color and reds were all coming out lighter than my chart of just 2 months earlier as image shows. After the shake them up maneuver my charts matched the earlier chart and my grays were quite neutral. My printer is 7 years old, I am not a new user, but you are correct the ink in the lines needs to be run through.

 

[RandyDe]

My HP Latex 115 is printing grays with a purple tint, blacks do not seem as rich as they were a couple months ago.

I've been working with HP about this but I am getting nowhere.
I already replaced the LC/LM print head and the Optimizer print head. Same result.
This was not happening when I first started printing with this printer. I'm using the same
ICC profile, the same SAV. I've gone through hours and hours or diagnostics with HP with no
resolution.

I'm open to anything at this point. I feel as though it may be a printhead issue still. HP will
not send me all replacement PH's because it will look "suspicious".

If anyone has experienced this issue before, please chime in on what you've done to combat
this problem and if you have had any luck.

TYIA!

Confirm if your media supplier changed their formulation or factory that builds it for them. I've had several medias sold, and purchased under the same brand name, model number, etc. and after having print issues and follow up with sales & technicians it ended up that there were indeed actual changes to the media or the making of the media.