Shades of grey look pink on L25500??

[Tim Aucoin]

Hoping someone can shed a little light on this for me. Lately (and it happens randomly), some shades of grey are printing with almost a pinkish hue on my L25500!! Wondering if anyone has run across this problem before. It has happened on both banner and vinyl (two different ICC profiles), so I am thinking it's not the profile... not sure if it is some issue with the PDF file? Weird thing is that I can be printing 3 of something... 2 will look fine and the third will have that pinkish hue in the shadow/grey areas... I'm at my wits end!!! Thanks for any comments/thoughts!

 

[P Wagner]

Hoping someone can shed a little light on this for me. Lately (and it happens randomly), some shades of grey are printing with almost a pinkish hue on my L25500!! Wondering if anyone has run across this problem before. It has happened on both banner and vinyl (two different ICC profiles), so I am thinking it's not the profile... not sure if it is some issue with the PDF file? Weird thing is that I can be printing 3 of something... 2 will look fine and the third will have that pinkish hue in the shadow/grey areas... I'm at my wits end!!! Thanks for any comments/thoughts!

If it were a consistent issue, I would think it would be a profile-related problem. In this case, with the problem being more intermittent, I would look first at printhead performance. Your Cyan/ light cyan head(s) may be getting a bit flaky and developing intermittent nozzle dropouts as the print progresses. That would potentially account for the grays turning pinkish in the middle of the print.
Look at the amount of ink that has passed through the Clc heads. If it is more than 2 or 3 liters (ea) I would replace them with new heads and see if it resolves the issue.

 

[Tim Aucoin]

If it were a consistent issue, I would think it would be a profile-related problem. In this case, with the problem being more intermittent, I would look first at printhead performance. Your Cyan/ light cyan head(s) may be getting a bit flaky and developing intermittent nozzle dropouts as the print progresses. That would potentially account for the grays turning pinkish in the middle of the print.
Look at the amount of ink that has passed through the Clc heads. If it is more than 2 or 3 liters (ea) I would replace them with new heads and see if it resolves the issue.

Thanks for this reply... this may make a lot of sense now. I think I have a larger issue than meets the eye. The Clc heads are relatively new (one has fired 737ml and the other, 713ml). For the last few months, after a run of about 3 or 4 posters or banners, I keep getting the message "Replace Clc Printheads"... even though they are far from their expiry and have fired very little ink. This tells me that there is something deeper going on here... something electronic maybe. Your pointing me to Clc printheads misfiring and causing the pink hue make a ton of sense now that I put it all together. The Magenta would be overbearing in the shadow areas, thus causing the pink look. I will be calling tech support tomorrow for sure. Thanks so much for pointing me in the right direction... it is very much appreciated!

 

[Dennis422]

I'm new to L25500, just purchased an used one few weeks ago. So, I'm probably wrong on this.

I did print the same design on a two different substrates last weekend. That design is a grayscale only design. I had color bars running on the sides.
Design printed great on Avery 1005 EZRS and it had a slight magenta hue when printed in 3M IJ35C.
I used Avery profile for 1005 and IJ35 profile for 3M film.

See if you can use a different profile and get a better result.

 

[ddarlak]

its the heads, if there are under warranty, call and get new ones.

I try and stretch the living hell out of heads and this is what they start doing...

 

[Tim Aucoin]

its the heads, if there are under warranty, call and get new ones.

I try and stretch the living hell out of heads and this is what they start doing...

I have to agree with you here ddarlak... the heads are the culprit for sure in this case. Yesterday, I found a new C/LC head, switched it out and it printed beautifully. The attached photo tells the story (I'll let you decide which is which!!). Funny thing is that I had 4 NEW heads that I was using... all giving me the same issue. I guess it is possible to have a bad batch of printheads. The "bad ones" have all fired less than 1 litre of ink, so I will definitely be making a warranty claim on those. Will be picking up some new heads from my supplier this morning and getting the rest of this job run.

The even odder thing is that I looked at the usage on the M/LM heads, and they have fired over 5 litres of ink each, but are giving me no issues... (or are they??)!!! Status still says OK, so I'm not sure.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

There were a few bad batches of Cyan Heads when I still had my L25. Its a known issue and your supplier should be able to warranty them for you.