HP Latex printing with red hue

[MHester]

I have a HP Latex 310 and it's been printing beautifully for 1 year, having only to change printheads once. recently, for the past couple days, everything I print has a red hue/tint to is, especially when it prints greys. Anyone ever have this issue? Someone on another forum said to print at 6 pass instead of 10 pass, but I prefer not to do that, and haven't tried it yet. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance.

 

[papabud]

i run all my prints on a 10 pass. but if your picking up a red hue. i would suggest doing a color calibration. have you updated the firmware recently or changed anything

 

[dypinc]

Nozzle clogs most likely light cyan.

What does nozzle test look like?

Have you done a head cleaning on the lc/lm printhead?

 

[MHester]

i run all my prints on a 10 pass. but if your picking up a red hue. i would suggest doing a color calibration. have you updated the firmware recently or changed anything

I did a color calibration yesterday and everything looked fine. No, I havent done a firmware update in a couple months, nor have I changed anything on the HP, Flexi rip software or the way I'm exporting out of photoshop or illustrator.

 

[MHester]

Nozzle clogs most likely light cyan.

What does nozzle test look like?

Have you done a head cleaning on the lc/lm printhead?

The nozzle test look great, no problems at all. I'll check out the printheads, do a cleaning and see how that goes. Thanks.

 

[papabud]

i only print about 500 to 600 feet of material a week. so i calibrate about every 2 weeks.
look at the usage of your printheads. mine last about 5000 to 8000 ml of usage before they start having issues

 

[jkdbjj]

How about the artwork, are you printing cmyk or rgb?
Also, have you tried other grays on other files/images?

I have found that if I desaturate certain grays in photoshop or illustrator and then print as rgb it tends to get much closer to a neutral gray.

Also, are you using custom profiles or premade?

 

[MHester]

i only print about 500 to 600 feet of material a week. so i calibrate about every 2 weeks.
look at the usage of your printheads. mine last about 5000 to 8000 ml of usage before they start having issues

I'm about at 8k right now, so I'm sure I'm due for a printhead change now. However, The printhead test looks near perfect, and at the expense of changing those puppies, I'd perfer not to unless they really need it.

 

[MHester]

How about the artwork, are you printing cmyk or rgb?
Also, have you tried other grays on other files/images?

I have found that if I desaturate certain grays in photoshop or illustrator and then print as rgb it tends to get much closer to a neutral gray.

Also, are you using custom profiles or premade?

The file in photoshop is cmyk. Where it's printing red, there's actually no red in the image at all, it's solid black and percentages of black (It's a faux silver effect). So, being there is no magenta color there, why is it throwing down red ink?

The profiles are all premade.

 

[dypinc]

I'm about at 8k right now, so I'm sure I'm due for a printhead change now. However, The printhead test looks near perfect, and at the expense of changing those puppies, I'd perfer not to unless they really need it.

If you have have run that much ink through your lc/lm print head you damn luck. That one seems to fail for me by at least 3K.

 

[dypinc]

The file in photoshop is cmyk. Where it's printing red, there's actually no red in the image at all, it's solid black and percentages of black (It's a faux silver effect). So, being there is no magenta color there, why is it throwing down red ink?

The profiles are all premade.

Depends on your black generation, where your black start is set at. One of the dangers of using premade profiles, you really don't know. If it is the lc/lm heads that are causing the problem you could print with just CMYK. If black start is set higher than 0% and you GCR is set lower than 100% then your grays are still going to be made up CMY, just not the lc and lm.

 

[Outputtech75a]

I would clean the encoder strip.

 

[MHester]

If you have have run that much ink through your lc/lm print head you damn luck. That one seems to fail for me by at least 3K.

Sorry, I misquoted. On the lm/lc it's about 1.5K. I glanced at the wrong number earlier.

 

[MHester]

I would clean the encoder strip.

wait, what? what's that???? Quite curious....

 

[MHester]

Depends on your black generation, where your black start is set at. One of the dangers of using premade profiles, you really don't know. If it is the lc/lm heads that are causing the problem you could print with just CMYK. If black start is set higher than 0% and you GCR is set lower than 100% then your grays are still going to be made up CMY, just not the lc and lm.

Interesting.....
How do I adjust that info? ..or at very least look into it???

 

[MHester]

wait, what? what's that???? Quite curious....

Nevermind, I found a video on HPs website. Thanks

 

[MHester]

Problem Solved I changed out the lm/lc printhead, as well as cleaned the encoder strip. I also changed out the maintenance cartridge since it was at 98%. Not sure which one did the trick, but it's running great now, there's no red hue any more. Thanks everyone for all your help, tips, tricks, etc. Learned many new things along the way Ya'll are the best.

 

[papabud]

awesome to hear you got it running good again and glad we could help.

 

[dypinc]

Most likely the lm/lc printhead. Poor decision by HP to use only one. No redundancy and danger of ink starvation in certain situations. I think most of us that use print 8 pass or lower use only CMYK if the light inks are not needed just to avoid the issues with having only one lc/lm printhead.

I actually built a test file to show if the lc/lm printhead is failing. If the grays are not neutral I can tell right away.