Need some help from the print masters!

[CES020]

You know those days when nothing goes the way you planned? Well, that's today. Okay, the past 5 days

I have a repeat job, saved as a PDF out of Illustrator about 6 months ago. I grab the PDF, drop it in Onyx, print it, it looks bad, printing on IJ-40. Last time I printed, I think it was on IJ-35, so I'm thinking it's a profile issue. I have a couple IJ-40 profiles, one I created, and one that's from 3M. The 3M one has worked good enough for what we print on IJ-40 and I've not had any issues.

I switched to my IJ-40 profile, same issue. I deleted the 3M profile, downloaded it again, installed it in Onyx again, tried it, same issue. I came back to the file in Illustrator, saved it again, same issue.

It's an HP latex, and the issue is the edges of the S in the purple square (this is just a sample of the customers colors). I started a new file in Illustrator, created a square, dropped the "S" in there, knocked out the background on the square, so it's pure white behind the "S", but it's like the edges are fuzzy and it's muddled looking. However, all text outside of the square is razor sharp and looks great. I have cleaned the heads, checked, them, aligned them, and everything seems to be in order.

In the photos, I printed the S in the square and outside of it. In the square, it messes up, outside, it's perfect. Then I changed the color to green and it's perfect.

I'm 30 ft in the trash so far and a wasted day and I'm no further along than I was when I started.

What am I missing here? I even tried the profile from IJ-35, and IJ-180, and they all did the same thing on this material. I'm grasping for straws at this point.

Any ideas? It almost looks like it's an overprint setting, but there's nothing to overprint because the letter is knocked out behind the text.

 

[CES020]

When I print any test prints or ink swatches for profiling, when the black prints in cyan blocks (think black lines to separate the blocks), the black bleeds all into the cyan. However, on the lighter cyan, the black lines are really sharp.

Any ideas? I replaced a black printhead last night but it solved nothing.

I'm totally stumped.

 

[CES020]

Sorry if you mentioned this - but does this happen on any other media?

I tried a different roll of the same media and it does it on that as well. I've tried 4 profiles, I think, by now. Keeping in mind, it's something we print on regularly and we haven't changed any settings.

You're sure that "overprint fill" isn't selected in attributes?

There's no overprint to happen, it's white behind the letter, plus it doesn't do it on the green.

Is it possible that the K ink limits were increased somehow?

That's somewhere around 180-200 (I don't recall exactly off the top of my head, but I did check it), and I have changed it various times through these trials to try and fix it. Knocking it down to 160 helps, but when you do, it screws up every other color that uses K in it and mutes the blacks.

I worked it a long time yesterday with no success. At 6:30, I get a call "Hey, we need some signs at a job site in the morning, can you help?". It was all printed stuff, about 32 sq. ft of media, I used IJ-40, told them I was having print issues and they said "We don't care, we just need signs there by 6:00 in the morning". So I printed all of them, mostly orange and black, and when I came in this morning and started printing maintenance test prints. I see no printhead issues at all. Then I printed the same file I had issues with, and the problem was all but gone. There's still a slight trace of it, but unless you are looking for it, you wouldn't see it.

 

[P Wagner]

You know those days when nothing goes the way you planned? Well, that's today. Okay, the past 5 days

I have a repeat job, saved as a PDF out of Illustrator about 6 months ago. I grab the PDF, drop it in Onyx, print it, it looks bad, printing on IJ-40. Last time I printed, I think it was on IJ-35, so I'm thinking it's a profile issue. I have a couple IJ-40 profiles, one I created, and one that's from 3M. The 3M one has worked good enough for what we print on IJ-40 and I've not had any issues.

I switched to my IJ-40 profile, same issue. I deleted the 3M profile, downloaded it again, installed it in Onyx again, tried it, same issue. I came back to the file in Illustrator, saved it again, same issue.

It's an HP latex, and the issue is the edges of the S in the purple square (this is just a sample of the customers colors). I started a new file in Illustrator, created a square, dropped the "S" in there, knocked out the background on the square, so it's pure white behind the "S", but it's like the edges are fuzzy and it's muddled looking. However, all text outside of the square is razor sharp and looks great. I have cleaned the heads, checked, them, aligned them, and everything seems to be in order.

In the photos, I printed the S in the square and outside of it. In the square, it messes up, outside, it's perfect. Then I changed the color to green and it's perfect.

I'm 30 ft in the trash so far and a wasted day and I'm no further along than I was when I started.

What am I missing here? I even tried the profile from IJ-35, and IJ-180, and they all did the same thing on this material. I'm grasping for straws at this point.

Any ideas? It almost looks like it's an overprint setting, but there's nothing to overprint because the letter is knocked out behind the text.

This is an issue that I have seen at customer sites over the past couple of years, and the short answer is that it is caused by ink that is coalescing in the print zone of the printer. It almost always occurs where black vector objects are touching other mid-tone colors. I've seen it with black merging into reds, blues, purples, and oranges. It typically does not occur when black touches highlight colors, as there is not enough ink to coalesce in that case. It also tends to happen more commonly toward the edges of the media versus the center of the media.

Understanding what is happening is key to understanding how to troubleshooting the problem.

The options to eliminating this include:

1. Building a profile that uses lower total ink limits, particularly the Total Ink Limit. This will reduce the volume of ink, making it less prone to coalescence.

2. Print using a higher pass count. This lays down less ink per pass, and gives the print heater more time to remove the water in the ink in the print zone.

3. Use more heat for the print heater. This heater maxes out t 131 degrees f so this is not always an option.

4. Add an Inter-Pass Delay to induce a slight pause in between each pass. This is very effective in allowing the ink to dry for a slightly longer time to avoid coalescence. I would set the value to 0.4 seconds. This is accessed on the printer itself (on the L2 machines) from the Latex 260's Ink Menu > Image Quality Maintenance > Inter-Pass Delay Value.

 

[danno]

I had a similar issue with my l26500 and it turned out the curing/heating elements were not reaching the correct temperature settings. We replaced the elements and have been good since then.

 

[CES020]

Thanks for the input guys. I've gone down the rabbit hole now and it's beating me badly.

No matter what I do, when I send over blue (pantone blues), they come out vivid purple. I've tried RGB and CYMK, I've tried about 10 different pantone blues, and no matter what I do, they come out radically purple.

They show blue on the screen in the RIP and they look like the right pantone color, but once it prints, it's purple. Not just a tint of purple, but full out purple.

I've clicked on the blue color in Onyx, printing a swatch of colors around it, with the CMYK colors, come back into Illustrator, created a CMYK document, used the exact CMYK colors from the swatch pattern, save it as PDF, open it in Onyx, and check the colors and they are different than the CMYK values I entered in Illustrator. I have turned profiles off, profiles on. Nothing seems to fix it. If I print that file directly, it'll be purple. I can, however, use the color replacement tool and enter the CMYK values from the swatch print out and the color comes out matching the swatch, like it should.

I honestly don't know what has happened, but I have apparently gotten something hosed up in a big way.

Prior to this, everything was worked wonderfully.

 

[dypinc]

You have rebooted haven't you?

 

[CES020]

Yes, the machine 3 times, the computer the RIP is on 4 or 5 times, and the desktop I'm creating the files on a couple of times.

I have some notes from a color management seminar I went to that says if you have the rendering intent set on Saturation, it pulls out of gamut blues to the purple side. However, I have Perceptual set in the RIP, so I don't think it's that.

We use Illustrator on this computer to print dye sub stuff as well, which has a massive color shift when you print it in order to make the color right once it's sublimated, and for the life of me, it feels so much like the color change for the dye sub is getting applied to the file, but in Illustrator, I've got our Latex preset saved, so I can't see where the color shift is coming from.

Even for RGB 0,0,0, the RIP is making that something like 97,97,97,100, which I know is was too much ink for black.

I don't know what I did, but I sure did it good.

 

[P Wagner]

Yes, the machine 3 times, the computer the RIP is on 4 or 5 times, and the desktop I'm creating the files on a couple of times.

I have some notes from a color management seminar I went to that says if you have the rendering intent set on Saturation, it pulls out of gamut blues to the purple side. However, I have Perceptual set in the RIP, so I don't think it's that.

We use Illustrator on this computer to print dye sub stuff as well, which has a massive color shift when you print it in order to make the color right once it's sublimated, and for the life of me, it feels so much like the color change for the dye sub is getting applied to the file, but in Illustrator, I've got our Latex preset saved, so I can't see where the color shift is coming from.

Even for RGB 0,0,0, the RIP is making that something like 97,97,97,100, which I know is was too much ink for black.

I don't know what I did, but I sure did it good.

Is the original issue resolved (coalescence)? This (blue / purple) would appear to be a completely separate issue from that one.

 

[P Wagner]

Thanks for the input guys. I've gone down the rabbit hole now and it's beating me badly.

No matter what I do, when I send over blue (pantone blues), they come out vivid purple. I've tried RGB and CYMK, I've tried about 10 different pantone blues, and no matter what I do, they come out radically purple.

They show blue on the screen in the RIP and they look like the right pantone color, but once it prints, it's purple. Not just a tint of purple, but full out purple.

I've clicked on the blue color in Onyx, printing a swatch of colors around it, with the CMYK colors, come back into Illustrator, created a CMYK document, used the exact CMYK colors from the swatch pattern, save it as PDF, open it in Onyx, and check the colors and they are different than the CMYK values I entered in Illustrator. I have turned profiles off, profiles on. Nothing seems to fix it. If I print that file directly, it'll be purple. I can, however, use the color replacement tool and enter the CMYK values from the swatch print out and the color comes out matching the swatch, like it should.

I honestly don't know what has happened, but I have apparently gotten something hosed up in a big way.

Prior to this, everything was worked wonderfully.

I would have to assume that your Media Profile (output) has become corrupted in some way. I would propose that you go into Media Manager, and delete the media there, and then re-install a known good OML for the media that you are printing to.

 

[CES020]

I would have to assume that your Media Profile (output) has become corrupted in some way. I would propose that you go into Media Manager, and delete the media there, and then re-install a known good OML for the media that you are printing to.

I've done that, twice. I've also changed from IJ 40 to a Oracal product, changed to the profile for that, and it's doing the same thing.

I've tried 2 or 3 IJ-40 profiles, some we made, some from 3M's site, IJ-180 profile, and now the Oracal material, all have the same issue.

If I have an illustrator file that is CMYK, and I draw a box and make it 90,90,90,90, when it opens in Onyx and I sample the color, it's 95,95,95,90.

I've tried RGB files, CMYK, and I've even saved it out as EPS instead of PDF and it does the same thing.

I've used SWOP v2 for CMYK, SRGB61966-2.1, in Oynx, it's set to Perceptual, Color table off (that was on for most of this experiment).

 

[CES020]

Is the original issue resolved (coalescence)? This (blue / purple) would appear to be a completely separate issue from that one.

No, it's still present if I'm using RGB. If I change over to CMYK, then it goes away, but it's still there in RGB files.

 

[P Wagner]

I've done that, twice. I've also changed from IJ 40 to a Oracal product, changed to the profile for that, and it's doing the same thing.

I've tried 2 or 3 IJ-40 profiles, some we made, some from 3M's site, IJ-180 profile, and now the Oracal material, all have the same issue.

If I have an illustrator file that is CMYK, and I draw a box and make it 90,90,90,90, when it opens in Onyx and I sample the color, it's 95,95,95,90.

I've tried RGB files, CMYK, and I've even saved it out as EPS instead of PDF and it does the same thing.

I've used SWOP v2 for CMYK, SRGB61966-2.1, in Oynx, it's set to Perceptual, Color table off (that was on for most of this experiment).

There is a tremendous of confusion on this subject. With color management enabled, the RIP will use the ICC profiles for the media to re-interpret the color in the file, causing the CMYK values to change. With color management turned off, (when using a CMYK-based file) the CMYK values in the file are passed through to the printer with out reinterpreting by the RIP.

Please see the examples below. The one with Color Management listbox set to Custom, note that the output CMYK values at the bottom of the window are being re-interpreted by the Media's ICC Profile, and the color values are different from the color values in the file.

In the other example, (CM set to All ICC Profiles Off) the values are essentially passed through without change (if you round to the nearest whole number).

It is also really important to note that when changing media, in order for this to be updated, you need to go to the Preview and Size Tab, and Apply the Change, before the values will update to the new media.

 

[dypinc]

I've done that, twice. I've also changed from IJ 40 to a Oracal product, changed to the profile for that, and it's doing the same thing.

I've tried 2 or 3 IJ-40 profiles, some we made, some from 3M's site, IJ-180 profile, and now the Oracal material, all have the same issue.

If I have an illustrator file that is CMYK, and I draw a box and make it 90,90,90,90, when it opens in Onyx and I sample the color, it's 95,95,95,90.

I've tried RGB files, CMYK, and I've even saved it out as EPS instead of PDF and it does the same thing.

I've used SWOP v2 for CMYK, SRGB61966-2.1, in Oynx, it's set to Perceptual, Color table off (that was on for most of this experiment).

Have you tried Relative Colorimetric rendering?

 

[CES020]

Have you tried Relative Colorimetric rendering?

Yes.

Spent time with HP tech support on the phone, they said I needed to clean and oil the rails. Not sure how that is causing color issues, but I did that and nothing changed. Called Onyx tech support, they logged in, uninstalled Onyx, installed it again, setup a couple of presets, and we ran out of time for their shift. After I hung up, I downloaded the 3M profile for IJ-40 and installed that. Went through the calibration page of the media manager for that material, it printed, all looked crisp and clean, it scanned it all, and then I printed a test print and it's a mess.

The Onyx Quality test print prints some areas great, and other areas it fails miserably. Mainly, the woman's face on the top left is washed out really badly, the car interior is washed out, and the woman with the black hair is all washed out. However, things like the fruit seem to be very colorful. Not saying they are right, just that they are colorful.

I have included photos of the test prints and then photos of the ink limit print. Everyone says "That's the only subjective thing you have to look at". Okay, then I need some help with that because I'm not understanding it. Is it looking for the last good color for that line, or the darkest one before you see artifacts? If you take it to the darkest one before you see artifacts, you'll be up in the 300's on some of them. However, all the base settings always seem to come in the 165-180 area. I've included the print of that if maybe someone can help guide me to the right numbers. Sadly, the downsampling of the photo has made it look like artifact windows really low, in the 150 range. In person, those don't appear until much later on the chart.

I'm leaning more towards this printer has a problem right now, but maybe it's just the ink limits and profile? Seems really odd that we can go from working great to this mess without changing anything and reinstalling everything doesn't get us back to printing great, which makes me think there's something wrong with the machine at this point. I hope I'm wrong.

 

[dypinc]

Have you replaced printheads?

 

[CES020]

Yes, last week I had a Cyan head go bad.

 

[CES020]

What's interesting to me is that the preview in RipQue looks just like it printed, meaning it appears to have the haze in the preview as well. Take a look....

 

[rjssigns]

Your print error is relatively consistent across a wide range of media. To me this would rule out media and profiles. I'd be checking cables and electrical connections and calling a tech.

 

[CES020]

Your print error is relatively consistent across a wide range of media. To me this would rule out media and profiles. I'd be checking cables and electrical connections and calling a tech.

I've opened a case with HP, I've sent all the info and they are waiting for their engineer to get in. He had me do a manual print head alignment, which I thought some of the settings were way off, so I'm sure that was good to do anyway.

I'm not sure why the preview in Onyx looks washed out, just like the print does. To me, it almost looks like Onyx is printing exactly what it's told, and in this case, that's a washed out print. But it could just be that the preview pane doesn't render that well.

 

[rjssigns]

I've opened a case with HP, I've sent all the info and they are waiting for their engineer to get in. He had me do a manual print head alignment, which I thought some of the settings were way off, so I'm sure that was good to do anyway.

I'm not sure why the preview in Onyx looks washed out, just like the print does. To me, it almost looks like Onyx is printing exactly what it's told, and in this case, that's a washed out print. But it could just be that the preview pane doesn't render that well.

Just remembered something. Check the power supply on your computer. Long shot I know, but we had one that was going out and it caused all kinds of issues. After it died and was replaced everything was right with the world.