Need Help HP L26100 Inconsistent print

[Carl Marlette]

Anyone seen this? I've worked through everything I know and searched for answers, but no luck.
I've cleaned the print heads and ran test plots, which showed all nozzles are firing. I did substrate advance calibration and print head alignment, still nothing. The inconsistency print is always horizontal, I rotated the image and had the same problem.

 

[WYLDGFI]

Did you try in a tighter or greater pass count? If it happens then....rubber rollers may need to be cleaned. Looks like pass on pass banding to me.

 

[Carl Marlette]

After some searching I ran into this:

Color intensity varies If some printhead nozzles are in use while others in the same printhead are not, water evaporates slowly from the ink in the unused nozzles, making the color more intense. Thus, in such cases you may notice variations in color intensity in areas where the color of the image should be constant.

Its suggested to add color bars, i'm in the process of testing this. I never had this issue but realized we switched to an off brand ink and may have developed this when the ink finally made it to the print heads. I'll keep you all posted.

 

[Jay Grooms]

Those really look like roller marks to me, have the rollers been cleaned?

 

[Carl Marlette]

After exhausting everything to my knowledge, I reached out to HP. They had me run a 'force drop detection' test. Even though the test plots showed good coverage, #4 showed 234 nozzles out. I'm waiting for the new print head and hopefully that solves it.

 

[PrintItBig]

I’ve seen similar to that on many HP printers over the years. Looks like ghosting from the colour it’s adjacent to. I always thought it was some kind of software / firmware issue with the printer itself, but not sure. I would also have suggested running continuous colour bars down the sides of the prints. Did that not work? Doesn’t look like a head to me.