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HP 315 struggling with grey tones (light grey is pinkish)

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depps74

New Member
I've been having this problem for a few years. Sometimes I can work around it, others I can't and just can't deliver a print that resembles the grey its supposed to be. Light grey/ sliver tones are printed with reddish hues. Regardless of material it happens. All my other tones and colors are printing fine. My printheads are fine. MY OPAS sensor is cleaned.

I've tried: alternate profiles, tweaking profiles, calibrating, recalibrating.
Then I tried, changing the tones and to overcompensate for the grey tones, but this can effect the other colors in the print.

Totally baffled (though I am new to printing so I am quite possible overlooking or just not doing something right).
 
balstestrat

balstestrat

Problem Solver
You say your printheads are fine but are they? How much usage do you have on them? How old are they?

Other than that you must have the correct profile for the material so the ICC profile is the correct one. Then do a colour calibration on that.

You could also try to clean the line sensor.
 
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Caleb Jones

New Member
Stickerguy is right. I'd bet your LC head isn't working. Process gray without light cyan looks pink (sepia) The times when your grays print correctly, its probably true gray which is only using the black head.

If you're using Onyx for RIP, you have some good ink controls, we shifted all our cyan and magenta to the C & M heads when our LC/LM heads died. Basically converted our Roland XC540 to a CMYK machine. Prints great.
 
MF Matthew

MF Matthew

"Give me PRINTING or give me DEATH"
I have a 335 and 360. I noticed that when I have problems with grays/silver tones, it is usually the LC/LM printhead. I will replace them at around 2000ml because of that issue, then run Optimization. Colors come out better then.
 
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AGCharlotte

New Member
have that issue, even with 0 M in the build. very light colors tend to drift though on lots of equipment. Have that issue on my small format machines as well.
 
balstestrat

balstestrat

Problem Solver
AGCharlotte said:
have that issue, even with 0 M in the build. very light colors tend to drift though on lots of equipment. Have that issue on my small format machines as well.
Click to expand...
That will most likely happen as long as you have colour correction turned on. It will compensate the output according to the profile.
You have to turn off all colour management and it shouldn't happen.

That way it's possible to print test images from RIP and have the colours 100% as the values you set.
 
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Proofread People

New Member
depps74 said:
I've been having this problem for a few years. Sometimes I can work around it, others I can't and just can't deliver a print that resembles the grey its supposed to be. Light grey/ sliver tones are printed with reddish hues. Regardless of material it happens. All my other tones and colors are printing fine. My printheads are fine. MY OPAS sensor is cleaned.

I've tried: alternate profiles, tweaking profiles, calibrating, recalibrating.
Then I tried, changing the tones and to overcompensate for the grey tones, but this can effect the other colors in the print.

Totally baffled (though I am new to printing so I am quite possible overlooking or just not doing something right).
Click to expand...
Caleb Jones said:
Stickerguy is right. I'd bet your LC head isn't working. Process gray without light cyan looks pink (sepia) The times when your grays print correctly, its probably true gray which is only using the black head.

If you're using Onyx for RIP, you have some good ink controls, we shifted all our cyan and magenta to the C & M heads when our LC/LM heads died. Basically converted our Roland XC540 to a CMYK machine. Prints great.
Click to expand...
I'm going to try that the next time I have a pinkish grey. I guess run a jet test to see if it is firing. Just out of curiosity how many shots fired are people getting out of their printheads? We run a 570 and I've been getting to about high 8000's. Is that average, short or long?
 
balstestrat

balstestrat

Problem Solver
Proofread People said:
I'm going to try that the next time I have a pinkish grey. I guess run a jet test to see if it is firing. Just out of curiosity how many shots fired are people getting out of their printheads? We run a 570 and I've been getting to about high 8000's. Is that average, short or long?
Click to expand...
I would call that average. Long would be anywhere up from 10k ml. I've seen those heads go close to 20k ml in heavy use.
 
C

ColorCrest

All around shop helper.
MntPrintHead said:
in Onyx you can do an overall shift if the image is raster or a straight up color replacement in preflight/job editor if vector.
Click to expand...
The OP says only their light grays have a reddish hue. What if all light vector grays and all light raster grays are reddish?
 
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depps74

New Member
balstestrat said:
You say your printheads are fine but are they? How much usage do you have on them? How old are they?

Other than that you must have the correct profile for the material so the ICC profile is the correct one. Then do a colour calibration on that.

You could also try to clean the line sensor.
Click to expand...
I have the correct profile, however what do you mean "so that the ICC profile the correct one" aren't they one in the same?
 
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depps74

New Member
balstestrat said:
You say your printheads are fine but are they? How much usage do you have on them? How old are they?

Other than that you must have the correct profile for the material so the ICC profile is the correct one. Then do a colour calibration on that.

You could also try to clean the line sensor.
Click to expand...
LM is 1478 ML and installed 2/24/20 printhead test shows no broken lines
 
C

ColorCrest

All around shop helper.
depps74 said:
Totally baffled (though I am new to printing so I am quite possible overlooking or just not doing something right).
Click to expand...
Your trouble is calibration. Color printers are to be calibrated to result in neutral grays as the base color. Do your best to learn (read?) about how to do that with your setup.

More later. (Out of time here at the moment.)
 
balstestrat

balstestrat

Problem Solver
depps74 said:
LM is 1478 ML and installed 2/24/20 printhead test shows no broken lines
Click to expand...
Surprise surprise, that (or other head) can very well be your problem there. The test doesn't mean anything else that all the nozzles are firing. It can have other issues when you actually do a print job.

depps74 said:
I have the correct profile, however what do you mean "so that the ICC profile the correct one" aren't they one in the same?
Click to expand...
Yep I do mean exactly this. It does include the ICC if it's pre-made/downloaded.
Only the colour calibration needed after that.
 
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