L25500 - One Colour will not dry

[spatula]

I'm running an l25500, and have had it almost 2 years. No real problems until lately.

However, my cyan does not dry any more. All the other colours are perfectly dry, but the cyan wipes right off. I've tried raising the temperature (in fact I maxed the temperature out on one test) and I've tried increasing passes but nothing makes any difference.'

To test it out I made a gradient of 1-100% cyan and the whole thing doesn't dry, so i'm not even sure if it's lc or C that is being affected (or both).

Any Ideas what may cause this? I am out of Ideas and any help would be greatly appreciated.

I'm currently printing on 13 oz scrimm, but it did the same thing on a photo paper. I'm running onyx 10 rip.

 

[jasonx]

Tried swapping out the cartridges?

 

[spatula]

I did try swapping out the lc cartridge, but that made no difference. But as I'm writing this, I realize there is probably some residual ink left in the printer from the old cartridge that I'd have to bleed out.

And maybe I'll try swapping out the Cyan as well.

 

[spatula]

I just swapped out both cartridges, ran 5 sqft of solid coverage and still the same results.

Any other ideas?

 

[spatula]

I haven't talked to support. I'm pretty sure there are not techs in Winnipeg, so we don't really want to have to pay to fly someone in, especially for something that's not mechanical, and seems simple.

 

[ddarlak]

usually it's not a long wait to talk to an HP tech, that's your best bet

 

[spatula]

Well I called the HP tech, and they agreed that it was bizarre. But Couldn't really offer much as far as suggestions. They said to try upgrading the firmware. So I did, and it didn't do anything. I'm now waiting on a reply to the email I sent him.

 

[Hicalibersigns]

Since all the other colors are drying, nothing else makes any sense to me but bad ink. Check batch numbers on your ink cartridges. If the ones you are using to replace it with are the same batch number, then you will probably see the same results. I am assuming that you are using HP ink?

 

[spatula]

Yeah, I'm using HP Branded inks. The one that I had in there is the same one i've been using for the last year and a half without any problems. The new one is a different batch.

 

[spatula]

Solved! Between the tech and I we decided the ink had probably been sitting too long and had begun to seperate. By changing the ink cartidges and bleeding the system the problem seems to have gone away. Thanks for all the help here.

I'll try to keep an eye on this site and lend a hand if I can

 

[jayhawksigns]

Question is now, how long were those inks sitting there? Good for everyone else to know at what point in time they might start having issues themselves.

 

[Hicalibersigns]

That would explain why we haven't seen this issue on our L25500. We blast through cartridges a LOT faster than that.

 

[spatula]

I've had that cartridge in there since I bought the machine about a year and a half ago. We use the printer for a few jobs a month. We're an Offset print shop that dabbles in large format printing, so we haven't been pushing it on our clients.

I thought right from when I first posted here the cartridge might be bad, but my boss didn't seem to agree. I swapped them anyway, and things didn't get better. But talking with the tech, I realized I didn't bleed enough old ink out. There's about 30ml of ink in tubing in the printer, so I had to bleed out quite a bit more than i thought (originally i tried about 10ml.)

 

[jasonx]

Glad you got it sorted. Sounded like it was the ink that was the problem.

Haven't had my latex's for a year yet and we've gone through 135 litres of ink.

 

[E36]

I often encountered issues with cyan color too. Multiple panels print job will shows color differences issue when joined together. The weird thing is this issue only happened with cyan color and not others. Anyone seeing this type of issue?

Based on your finding of ink cartridge is the main culprit, if the cartridge is still within the warranty period, I think this will be HP quality issue.

 

[Robert Gruner]

I hope HP Sales/Service/Marketing take time to review comments at this forum!

It's like the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

GOOD latex ink printers.

Sometimes BAD Tech Service.

Sometime UGLY spare parts delivery.

I am curious who Spatula bought printer from? If it was from a reseller, then why couldn't reseller resolve the issue?

I am also curious re: the poster at this forum who was given a 3 month lead time for a L25500 part? Did HP resolve his issue?