Need Help HP Scitex FB550 black printing with fuzzy/splattered edges

Bad batch of ink. We've had three bad batches in the past 2 months. Buy a new black ink, empty/refill the head 2-3 times and it'll be fixed. Lots and lots of people are having this issue right now. HP will send you a new ink if you call it into them.

 

what ikarasu said. ive had 5 over the last month. print 3 prime bars for hp and send pics. i made the mistake of doing the empty/fill procedure before and theyre being dicks about the return. your cyan seems alittle off too. id check that in the prime bars too.

 

There's an option under service printer. It'll print a bar a few inch wide and long from each head with labels. It's good to tell if it's an ink issue.mm if both blacks are misting odds of a bad batch of ink are a lot higher than two heads failing at the same time.

On Monday I'll check the exact steps and post back if you can't figure where it is... It does look like a cyan and a black issue, I've had bad magenta and bad black... But it wouldn't surprise me if magenta also went bad.


After going through this 5 times and our printer being down for days... We switched to nazdar ink. Been using it for a month or so now and no issues... I don't jnownifnid trust it for long term signs, but our flatbeds used for 99% real estate so if the ink fades faster it's not an issue for us.

Sad... It's not even about saving $50-60 a box of ink... It's more tired of getting bad ink and having to resort to a third party who isn't having issues.


From what our techs have told us, Canada got a huge huge batch of bad ink... I'm told almost by customer has had to return ink, it's so bad that hp doesn't want the techs to handle the returns anymore and customers are to do it directly.... Whereas the first time we were told it's a service issue and we couldn't submit it to go ourselves.

Search HP misting on here... There's been a dozen or so threads the past few months. Most have step by step instructions on how to diagnose it.

 

ooooh really ikarasu. you switched to nazdar?! we were offered a cube when we switched our roland to a bulk system from nazdar. is it that good? at the time i didnt want to throw it in for fear of voiding our warranty/service contract.

 

forgot to tag you! see above post ^^^

 

Ink is probably the lowest cost when it comes to making items. Saving pennies a sqft isn't worth using non tested ink to us... So we never switched or considered it before either. We use nazdar ink for a ton of our screen printing inks... So we know they're a good brand already.

Everytime we.had misting... It'd take 2ish days to get a new ink set... That's two days of downtime and late production, once I can understand... Two is bad luck, but this happened over 5 times in the past few months on different colors. The last time we didn't even call HP up for a replacement... We switched to nazdar for our magenta and our black which was having problems constantly. We'd get through 20-30% of a box and the issue would come back.

Ever since switching to nazdar we haven't had a single issue with the misting. Customers haven't complained about anything... And our red is more red. I'll upload a photo of our pure 100% magenta print... The hp magenta is way more pink/light than nazdars. We actually can get really nice reds with the nazdar, where with genuine ink we could.get decent reds after Profiling.. but nothing as good as this.

With HP setting the end of life on their fb500s we figured it was worth the risk. We're happy with nazdar, no regrets or issues so far.... Been using it for a month and a half. So I can't comment on longevity... But it passed our scratch tests and it adheres and cures perfectly like oem. Nicer reds... no bad ink batches, switchings a no brainer. We originally were just going to do it temp until HP got.their ink under control... But we've committed to doing a full changeover.


But as I said... 99% of the stuff we print is real estate. Stuff that is out for a few months and then gets thrown out. If I were doing long term signs id do more testing and maybe hesitate a bit more before making the switch... So our situation it made sense to switch.

 

So top is nazdar ink.. just 100% magenta. Bottom is hps. It's supposed to be a "plug and play close color match" but you can see it's different. Imo, it gives better reds... We've switched magenta, lm, and black so far. Lm and bk were spot on. No idea.about cyan yet. But be prepared for a small color shift if you make the change

 

That’s not bad batch of ink. It’s low humidity in the room. We had that issue one winter. Check humidity in the room it was at 15%.We bought a humidifier and humidity went back to 40% and it went away.

 

oh wow that is a massive difference. that has pushed me a little more in their direction. it was tough to make the justification for it considering we still have our full service contract for it due to us being a decently high volume shop and cant afford for it to be down for any length of time. this has pushed me considerably closer. is it cool if i check in a bit down the line and see how things are going. could switch by next year. we may be looking to replace it at some point within the next 18 months so it could be an option to lower COO for the end of the printers life anyway.

 

It's too uniform to be low humidity. Low humidity oversprays due to static and it grabbing the ink - there would.be drops everywhere, not just on the edges. We have a humidifier as well because we get the same issues, especially in winter.

 

Please post when you do get a final fix so we can learn what the issue is.

 

On second look i notice it’s only on one direction (left or right, not sure which direction was your print going) which makes you correct it should be everywhere when there is static. Try going to tools menu on bottom of screen and do bidirectional calibration. It seems like your printer over spraying since it loosing its spot.

 

This is likely the problem. We have had the same problem in the last 3 months. HP admitted they had massive amounts of ink problems with a recent manufacturer. Get a new box from with a later date on it and empty and refill the heads.

 

I'm worried I may have the same issue. At first i thought maybe it was a damaged head or bidi calibration out of whack as any text/bidi lines were blurry, but the jet mapping shows all nozzles firing fully. However, the prime bar looks like crap. Can anyone suggest if this is a bad batch of ink or is there another problem I should address?

 

thats a pretty telltale sign in the primebars there. do you have another black ink on hand that is a different lot/expiration date??

 

Unfortunately I do not have one on hand. The current ink is only a month old or so with a warranty until July 2020. I just created a case with HP support after so many people said it looks like an ink issue, so hopefully that will deliver some results. Thanks for the quick response!

 

In my opinion this is definitely caused by defective ink from HP. I have seen this exact problem several times (especially black). I've switched over to using Bordeaux ink and ever since doing so I don't have this splatter problem.