L25500 - ? how to disable, or opt out of printhead calibration??

[iSign]

I had 2 prints left out of 54 large reflective decals which was exactly how much printable reflective vinyl I had on hand... a few minutes to spare before leaving for an appointment, and a printhead to change...

No problem, changed the printhead in seconds.. and then it want's to do a calibration... which would use up my media...

...I ended up wasting 20 minutes trying to thwart that machine takeover. Does any method exist to regain control of this machine when the keypad is sticking to it's idea of what to do?

I ended up manually advancing the media out the front enough to cut my 52 prints off, and then roll the remainder out the back after shutting down the machine.
I think I had to power it down a second time once I realized I had to remove media or it would still demand a calibration before any other functionality was restored.

When I have to turn the machine off, there is more resistance to hold that media in & only if I manually turn rollers with one hand, can the media be moved...
...and even the phrase 'turn machine off' sounds simple, but dozens of times I've had to flip the breaker off on the back after watching the display say "cooling" for upwards of 10 minutes...

Anyway, I just want to ask how I could have saved some time if there is a simple way to say "no thank you" when this printer wants to calibrate after a head swap???

 

[Suz]

Doug,

I don't know the answer, but I'm interested in knowing this too. As you know, I have the same machine. Hope yours is running better now in general and making some money for you again. I have had my trials with my machine, but she's running pretty well now.

Spent several hours with a simple head swap the other day. Left me wishing for a simpler solution. Then I wondered if it was best to just let the machine go through the whole calibration procedure, because it probably flushes out a new head after it's been sitting on the shelf a while before using it. What I ended up doing was removing the material I was using, putting in some cheaper material to go through the whole calibration thing with the new head installed. Then I put the material that I intended to use back in the machine. Long procedure. Drives me nuts sometimes.

 

[Dennis422]

And I loved the way HP takes the film in the machine. All of its fits and fussing, it is crooked, please reload the film, and so on......
Could they have the easier way of loading the film?

I do not even do the automatic load any more, I just go straight to the manual mode with the new roll.

As far as the stopping/delaying the head alignment, I do not think that is possible. It would not make any sense. I would rather do a alignment then print a piece with that printhead being slightly off.

 

[ddarlak]

unfortunately the answer is something hard for most of us OCD,Type A personalities to grasp...

Patience...

you have to unload the material, put in cheaper stuff and let the machine do its thing.

on a side note, when loading the material, if you happen to get it in uneven and the machine prompts you to straighten it do the following:

when you pop the blue lever just reach on and roll the material back onto itself about 4 inches. 99% of the time this aligns it perfect.

 

[iSign]

So, two people are saying "unload importent media, & load scrap for calibration"

How is my question?

In this case, I was fine skipping calibration, but would have been happy just to postpone it to swap media...

So how do other people do that?

I wasn't asked if I wanted to calibrate, it just said it was starting...
And getting the damn reflective out of there required basically yanking the plugs out (ok, switch by fuses... basically the same) and the fighting against the rigor mortis of the dead printers evil clutches...

Once I was informed my printer was running " out of spec" when subject to 80 degree temps without AC, I renovated the space with AC and more ventilation around printer. Since then I've had less trouble. But that stupid calibration issue prevented me from printing the last two prints of the day before leaving for an appointment, so I had to return later and finish that job.

In attempting to do so, I ran across other issues... possibly caused by the fact that I dared to fight for control of the F'n robotic media wasting demands...

I sent the job, but flexi pops up a "failed to send data" error box on the monitor, and printer display says "processing" for like 20 or 30 minutes while I worked on something else...

So 30 minutes is obviously longer than I want to wait for a machine to realize a job crashed and regroup itself...

So, do we think the cancel button works? Or maybe the off button? **** NO! That never works, so off with the damn switch in back... Aaagain... then 10 minutes of status bar BS....

And then I got a new issue... Two green lights on front are flashing in alternate sequence, with little white letters on a dark colored background...

...& once again NO BUTTONS WORK!!!

This **** is what has sucked hours of my life out on dozens of occasions, and it always goes like this in that one seemingly simple glitch compounds into pure insanity!!!

 

[dypinc]

From now on when you know you have to replace a head or want to swop heads, take the media out first if you don't want to do a head alignment on it, it will then ask you to load media and you can load what even media you want providing it is a acceptable media for doing a head alignment.

 

[iSign]

Yes, perhaps when printer first said "C/LC printhead is expired" I could have swapped media then, had I thought of it.

Then again, I don't know that it would have let me given the usual craziness... but I will certainly try that next time!

 

[dypinc]

Sure you can. Cut your media, lift the blue lever and pull out you media, lower the blue level and printer will nag you, satisfy it by changing printhead, then load media when it asks and let it do it's thing.

 

[danno]

My solution is to ditch the latex and purchase a Seiko. Don't have to change any print heads.

 

[dypinc]

My solution is to ditch the latex and purchase a Seiko. Don't have to change any print heads.

We know that when your heads have to be replaced it just cheaper to replace the whole printer. Been there done that.

 

[iSign]

Still want to mention that I was printing 36" prints on a 10 yard roll... Getting 9 prints leaves me with over 2' (after waste on leading edge)...

So in this case, I could afford to cut media & still have enough to print my last yard even with waste on leading edge, as well as risk of "media detached from roll" warning (which is another printer control freak behavior I'd like to opt out of) but sometimes there is not enough excess material to have to play all these games...


If I ever needed to remove media from my Mimaki, I could easily spool 8 or 9 yards back thru printer onto the roll...

With this P.O.S., I would spend an hour, and worry the whole time that I was breaking plastic gears, or wtf is in there, clutching on to my media with pit bull jaws

 

[GAC05]

I feel for you Doug and hope you get this worked out.
I have looked into Latex but the complexity of the printer (with support being multiple hours away by jet) is over shadowing the benefits Latex brings to the table.
I'd see if you could get any kind of trade in value on the HP and take a step back to a 4 channel, dead simple eco or full solvent ink sprayer.
Greg from One Shot over there stops by here once a year or so and had some deals on Rolands & Mimakis in January.

wayne k
guam usa

 

[tomence]

I wish I never bought this P.O.S Latex Printer, I really don't know how you guys like or love this printers.

I've been having problems with this printer since i bought it brand new. While it was under warranty nobody from HP bothered to send a tech out to look up my problems, now warranty expired a week ago, i call HP for support and the first thing they say is Oh Yeah We Can Send a TECH Out to check what the problems are but it will cost you.

Errors, Reseat Print Heads, Replace PH while new, stopping in the middle of a job for nothing and throws an error, or it says something stupid.

I have done everything they asked me to do to the printer and still the same problems occur.

I have had 8-10 year old Rolands and Mimakis and never had this kind of problems or having to wait one hour if something gets screwed until it starts printing again.

I wasted so much money into screwed up prints and material i don't even want to think about it coz it hurts. And this fu%cks from HP would not even bother sending me at least one roll for my troubles.

 

[iSign]

thanks for the comment Wayne, and Tomence...

Tomence, sorry to hear you have had the same hell I've had...

I will give up a weekend someday & tell the story of this fiasco that has done it's best to put me out of business when I happened to buy it in the most financially challenging moment of my 19 year career... and have allowed it to suck money, time, reputation & nearly the last shreds of positive attitude out of my business...

...when I add up my losses, it would honestly have been the smartest F'n thing ever to have burnt the POS, and paid cash for a decent printer 3 years ago... I would have (theoretically - assuming the alternative was a successful purchase like my old Mimaki) made so much more money with less headache, in less time, that just chucking this boat anchor off a cliff would have been the most profitable thing I could have done with it.

Tomence, regarding the lack of service calls in your history... maybe my story sheds a silver lining on that, because I've had a dozen service calls, and at least 11 out of 12 did little more than postpone my continued problems until the 12th time I was finally told to air condition the room. (oh... did I mention each unsuccessful service call would kill an entire day of my focus on getting any business done when I'm making myself & my machine available for a full day each time)

I'll be sure to write a scathing post someday about the vendors lack of awareness about ideal printer environment requirements, I spent several thousand dollars building the room for my printer, while it sat in it's box for several months.
Back then I could have easily designed for more airflow around printer, as well as installing AC... but instead I personally sat in the room, heated in part by this piece of s#it, enduring 80+ temps every day for 4 years, because i was trying to save a struggling business & couldn't afford to squander money on AC... but nooooooo.... the vendor had no freakin' clue... or just didn't bother to tell me... and to make matters worse, HP shows up & works with me in 80+ temps 11 F'n times before finally telling me to cool the damn room... and then they wouldn't renew my service contract until I proved that I did lower room temps... (to the tune of $3000)

of course, once i had built room to ALL specs I was given back in 2011... and moved in & operated in that space for 4 years... as you might imagine, it was a much bigger chore AND expense, to redesign everything after the fact.

...still would love to sue HP's a$$ for taking $2500 a year for service AND NOT F'N SPOTTING A RATHER OBVIOUS ISSUE FOR 3 YEARS ("obvious if you're supposed to be a trained f'n tech anyway)
Those vendor chumps had less to do with HP techs sucking at their job... but they still made money selling me a lemon, and have done so close to nothing about it, I'm just barely able to keep myself from naming the greedy bastards.

 

[tomence]

What can i say, i have done everything that i was told to do, i have air conditioned room, it is cleaner than my dentist's office, professional electrical wiring, professional hook up to my pc, everything was done by a pro.

I am out of work the last couple of days and i will be out of work until Monday when i call HP and see what they say, I am still getting this error to Reseat the y-k printheads, i cleaned all 6 connections and all 6 printheads because i was told to do that, but i still get an error.

I get random error codes, i am so pissed that i don't even want to think about it. I spent freaking $20K including the RIP to not have problems, that's why i buy brand new, and 3 days after my warranty expired they were quick to offer me an extended one at almost $3k for a year - what a joke

When i started my business back in 2009 i bought my first printer Roland FJ52 converted to eco sol and had it for year and a half and made tons of money and sold it to guy that kept making money with it, then i bought i Mimaki JV3 for $1500 which i fixed myself by just cleaning PH and replacing pump which was dirt cheap and made tons of money, then sold it to couple of guys that are still using the printer, then i bought my first brand new printer Roland RE-640 and made good amount of $ and sold it just because i wanted the new Latex Technology from HP and that is when i screwed myself ( I would not get this kind of screwing even in jail)

Since i bought the HP since day one i had PH failures and up till this day they have replaced more than 35-40 PH under warranty (doesn't this tell them that something is wrong with the printer, but no the won't say anything until my warranty expired and like i said they were quick to offer me a tech to come out to see what the problem is but for a charge or extended warranty)
When i called about the 79.04 error code i was told by them that this code is really hard to fix that this is out of their hands, but when my warranty expired they told me that they could send a tech to come out and try to fix the problem for a charge - WTF)


So far in the past year since i got the HP i have lost more than $10K in material only, i have lost customers because i could not deliver on time, basically i have lost trust from my clients.

I don't even feel good selling this printer to anybody.

 

[FrankW]

I work as as supporter for an HP Dealer, and we have 99% satisfied customers. Error Code 79:04 is a really strange error because this error code stands for "no known error", better said "a problem we can't assign". But of course this could be solved too, there are detailed informations where this error happens available too, and our technical department will solve that problems during warranty with replacing parts. We are regularly successful with that.

Print head calibration does have a sense ... when not carrying out print head calibration, you could face problems with print quality.