Need Help Latex 330 Pink streaks in Solid Blues

[Justin Danielson]

Having an issue with our Latex 330. Whenever we print solid blues, the printer puts big pink streaks through it at random. It seems to only happen on the stroke after the printhead has visited the maintenance cartridge, but it doesn't happen every time.

Tried adding the biggest color bars I could and that didn't seem to help. Replaced the maintenance cartridge a few weeks ago when it ran out and that doesn't seem to have fixed the issue. Thinking it may be a printhead issue but I don't want to just blind fire the parts cannon at it without knowing it's going to help.

I attached the best picture I could take. It's really hard to see on camera, but it's super noticeable in person.

Any ideas what might be causing this? It really sucks that we have to toss about half of our prints with solid blues in them.

 

[balstestrat]

Take out your colour printheads and do a proper cleaning to the connectors. Use the tool that is in the small plastic box with the oil. Also check the bottoms of the printheads that there is no damage to the flat cable that goes around the nozzles.

How much ink have they had go in ml? You can see that in the front panel under inks and printheads.

If this doesn't help, print this document 1:1 and take a good picture of it.

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

 

[Justin Danielson]

Thanks for the suggestions! I cleaned the connectors and replaced a Yellow-Magenta printhead that had a bit of damage on that cable. The next print I ran still had streaks but they were lighter blue instead of pink so that seems like progress. Looking at the ink usage on the printheads, I'm guessing I should probably replace at least the other Yellow-Magenta and one of the Cyan-Blacks. Here is the usage after I swapped the one printhead:

I ran that test print that you sent too. Here it is. Best camera I have at the moment is my phone that's on its last legs so I don't know that the picture will be good enough to be useful.

 

[balstestrat]

Yeah with that amount I would go straight to replace 4 and 5. You are probably seeing the head starve during the print and then recovering. Pretty usual with worn out heads and large flat colours.

 

[Justin Danielson]

That seems to have fixed it. Thanks for the help. I had assumed the printer would tell me when it needed new printheads. I'll have to keep better track of those going forward.

 

[balstestrat]

Yeah more realistic is, replace when you see have an issue.
It only tells you if it's not working at all or missing a good amount of nozzles. But that you can already see yourself.