Is this a printhead problem?

[Pideas]

I have a HP Latex 310 printer. I was running 10 posters and on the last set of posters i noticed some banding in my prints. I immediately thought this might be due to a bad printhead. I ran a printhead alignment, printhead cleaning option and then ran the printhead plot. Here is a photo of the banding and my printhead plot.

The magenta/red on the printhead plot doesn't look solid and it kinda looks like the ink didn't dry. Any ideas what part could be causing this issue? I also have three inks that are fairly low in ink (black/cyan/latex optimizer) and wasn't sure if those could be the cause.

Thanks.

 

[chafro]

I would try a different material and see how it looks.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Ahmed Samy Nagada]

You are correct, the ink didn't dry out mostly because of media contamination, assuming that drying and curing temperature are ok.
You can overcome banding by switching to unidirectional printing or increase the number of passes.

 

[Pideas]

Ahmed,

The ink isn't laid down correctly before it passes through the heater so I am not sure if it's due to a curing issue. I can try increasing the passes to see if that helps.

 

[MHester]

I had the exact same problem last month. After aligning and cleaning the printheads, higher passes on the printing, swapping out material, etc., , it didn't really fix the problem. The problem kinda fixed itself after I rebooted the printer and RIP computer, but I'm not sure if that was the real problem. I'd be curious to hear what Pideas ends up doing... I haven't had the same problem ever since, but worry when it'll happen next.
Ahmed, I am curious what "unidirectional printing" option is that you're talking about.

 

[Ahmed Samy Nagada]

Increasing passes will definitely enhance banding present in Black text.


Since ink isn’t laid down correctly, it’s a problem with media (moisture), fine ink droplets are gathered together to form larger dots which makes it look that way because the media doesn’t have the ability to hold that amount of ink. You will see the problem decreases in areas where less ink is laid down.


MHester, unidirectional is setting the printer to print only when the carriage is moving in one direction then goes back to the start position without printing, etc……. That is very useful when printing hard solid colors or fine light colored text placed on a solid dark background. You can find this setting in almost any RIP software.

 

[bgraphix]

I have a HP Latex 310 printer. I was running 10 posters and on the last set of posters i noticed some banding in my prints. I immediately thought this might be due to a bad printhead. I ran a printhead alignment, printhead cleaning option and then ran the printhead plot. Here is a photo of the banding and my printhead plot.

The magenta/red on the printhead plot doesn't look solid and it kinda looks like the ink didn't dry. Any ideas what part could be causing this issue? I also have three inks that are fairly low in ink (black/cyan/latex optimizer) and wasn't sure if those could be the cause.

Thanks.


.

A lot of the time when I do an alignment or such, that is the way my magenta looks depending on the material. The one I use to check my printhead quality isn't that one. I'm currently away from my printer, but I know the way to get there is to go to:

>Settings
>Image Quality Maintenance
>Clean Printheads
>at the very top it says Printhead something? Not sure of exact wording, but this will print out showing all printheads with their numbers. If lines are missing, there is a printhead out

 

[sonia]

Please see some answers on the Latex Knowledge Center: Ran a printhead test. What does this tell you? - HP Communities

 

[Pideas]

First, I changed the paper stock and reran the poster job. I got the same results. Then, I ran the print head test and cleaning a few more times. After the third time, i finally got a message that one of my print heads needed replacing. I purchased a new print head and replaced the head. That seemed to have solved the issue.

I was hoping that after running a print head test plot I would be able to tell which print head was bad. However, that was not the case. I didn't have anything to compare the print head test plot to. If you have a good running machine, I would go ahead and run a test plot and keeping it handy as a baseline just in case if something similar happens to you.

 

[Ahmed Samy Nagada]

Thanks for sharing your experience, I never expecpet it to be printhead.