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HP 365 colors have gone to #$&^(#@

Pat Whatley

Pat Whatley

New Member
We brought in a new HP 365 back in July and everything was great. Bright, vivid colors. Good Pantone matching. Good color matching between jobs.

About a month ago that all went to hell. We didn't change anything but suddenly banners are horrible. Lifeless, almost washed out colors, horrible vibrancy. We changed the profiles, cleaned the heads, calibrated, all the usual things but they still look bad. HOWEVER, if we print banners by telling the printer that adhesive vinyl is loaded the colors are great. We used that as a work around for a while but now I'm having the same problem with vinyl....dull, lifeless colors.

I am trying to print another copy of a job we did two weeks ago. I simply reloaded the job from Onyx, it's the same ripped file, no changes have been made, and the same roll of IJ140 and the colors from the two prints are night and day different.

Anybody have any idea where I should start trying to figure this out?
 
Geneva Olson

Geneva Olson

Expert Storyteller
Is your maintenance kit full? I had a print problem with my HP315 and it turned out that the maintenance kit was full even though the computer said I had 10% life left on it. The colors came back when I got a new one.
 
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balstestrat

balstestrat

Problem Solver
So if I read correctly you have not replaced the printheads?
Please check and post here how many millilitres has every head printed.
Also please do print a nozzle check and take a picture of that as well.
Is there any particular colour that you see it? Blue, black, red etc. Or all colours?

And to confirm, you have done Colour calibration to the banner profile?
 
Pat Whatley

Pat Whatley

New Member
20201228_141845.jpg 20201228_141944.jpg 20201228_141951.jpg 20201228_141959.jpg 20201228_142010.jpg
The TODAY/TWO WEEKS AGO photo makes the colors look a lot closer than they are. Two weeks ago it was almost fluorescent....today it's almost a mossy color.
 
balstestrat

balstestrat

Problem Solver
Okay, no real winner there or obvious issues.

Could you print this and take a good picture of it?
It's an HP check plot made for issues like this. It should be printed 1:1.

https://latexregistration.heleni.me/docs/HP Control Print -30x20inch.pdf

And you are 100% certain that there is no way that RIP could have somehow different colour profiles by mistake? If you pull up an old job from the list and press "reprocess the job" it will RIP it again and not use the old settings.
 
eahicks

eahicks

Magna Cum Laude - School of Hard Knocks
Noticed this with our old 260. Printing some poster paper for a customer, repeat job, that was dull and blues looked purple. Ran them again with an Avery vinyl profile and they were beautiful. I guess something changed in the profile? Who knows.
 
S

signman315

Signmaker
I'm not sure but I've seen situations where the on board profiler is dirty/damaged and is taking off measurements and resulting in off profiles/calibrations without any user change/input...HP latex is a great machine for a lot of reasons but color accuracy has been something they've always struggled with in real world applications, i'm sure in the test lab under perfect conditions everything is great...they added the on board profiler to increase color accuracy/consistency issues from previous generations and it opens a whole new can of worms and potential problems...latex is a great technology imo but it's weakness is color consistency and so the on board profiler is kind of a "retrofit" to attempt to solve the problem, which it does for the most part...but what happens when it has issues? It's kind of like autopilot on an airplane, superior when it works, but the pilots get spoiled and crash the plane if autopilot goes awry lol...just my half a cent...may be a hardware/profiler issue? Of course check the heads and cleaning kit first....
 
K

kanini

New Member
Do you have automatic firmware updates? If the firmware updates it can in some cases (at least this was the case with some versions ago) cause you to have to recreate profiles or uninstall/re-install media profiles. A color calibration did not resolve the issue. Will give you weird issues like that but easily fixed by reinstalling the profile. Try to download and install a new similar banner media profile, RIP and print a job with the new profile and see what result you get.
 
balstestrat

balstestrat

Problem Solver
Have to say I don't see any issues in that test plot. Other than the image (small town) being a little dull.
This would point us more towards your RIP having an colour management issue or the print profile broken somehow. But that is extremely rare that it would break like this and with two profiles.

Does the green print like this "mossy color" from the start to the end? There is no gradient of the right and wrong colour?
Did it just happen suddenly one day or slowly went like that?
 
Pat Whatley

Pat Whatley

New Member
balstestrat said:
Does the green print like this "mossy color" from the start to the end? There is no gradient of the right and wrong colour?
Did it just happen suddenly one day or slowly went like that?
Click to expand...

The mossy color is a good, solid print end to end, just the wrong color. A majority of what we do isn't color critical so shifts in color wouldn't really be a big deal and would probably go unnoticed. When they were noticed it was blamed on creating art in CMYK instead of RGB or vice versa. The first time I noticed it was printing photos on banners. There was no depth to them, they looked like they were old and faded, not at all like the prints we were used to.

I'm going to dump all the profiles on the printer and in Onyx this morning and just start from scratch.
 
V

VTSigns

New Member
I'm not familiar with Onyx but with Caldera there is a check box that enables color correction and I remember accidentally checking this box and it majorly screwed up how colors printed on my HP 360's. Not saying this is your case but make sure some global setting hasn't been accidentally enabled without you knowing. Just a thought.
 
I

ikarasu

Active Member
If you don't have color correction turned on then the printers profiles won't do anything.

That's the first thing I'd check...is color correction on on the main page of job editor? A good way to see if it's a printer issue is to toggle it, if it's on.... Turn it off and see if its more accurate. If it's off, turn it on and see if that fixes it. Thatll rule out a profile issue.
 
MelloImagingTechnologies

MelloImagingTechnologies

Many years in the Production Business
Switch to printer using Piezo heads.
The HP Geniuses insist on using Thermal printheads so you have to buy another product from them regularly.
I have attempted to discuss this with them in their Atlanta shop but they refuse to discuss.

One of my oldest customers bought the ColorPainter M64s from me in the fall of 2013 and he still runs it.
He has run 2.8 million square feet on it and he has had to have only one head replaced- Cyan. $2600.
Just replaced the carriage drive motor as well since it's worn out in Mileage!
He wants to buy a new one which is now carried by Mimaki but when I told him it's exactly the same machine he's holding off.

I don't understand how throwing printheads and maint kits in the garbage is safe for Ecology!

All the best,
Bruce
melloimaging.com
 
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