• I want to thank all the members that have upgraded your accounts. I truly appreciate your support of the site monetarily. Supporting the site keeps this site up and running as a lot of work daily goes on behind the scenes. Click to Support Signs101 ...

Print quality problems with 800W - Any other owners having major issues?

thetsp

New Member
We were one of the first people to get an 800W in Canada, and have been really looking forward to utilizing the better ink gamut, pulled out overcoat and faster print times with lower cure temperatures.
From the offset we've had nothing but problems, and I'm wondering if anyone else with an 800W is seeing issues?
The printer has basically been sitting dead for almost 2 months now as the only thing we can print to it is basically mesh banner without noticing the issues with the print quality.
I've run tons of printers before, in fact we have a 360 for 7 years which printers better than this thing. Our 365 printer better too.
I've custom built ICC Profiles on our flatbed machine and so I'm quite familiar with what print quality should be achievable.
HP has gone back and forth on trying to do profile tweaks as they think that is the issue, but I've been trying for months to tell them its nothing to do with profile, it happens across all medias no matter what you do, no matter what profile you print / rip it as.

Here are some pictures running 8 pass 110 sat, and you can see the heavy banding in the green. Its a gradation banding, not hard lines. The banding is present in other colors as well.
I've swapped every single head in the machine, new maintenance cartridges, tried every media, tried manual advance, full color calibration, cleaned all encoder strips, the full gamut.

When printing mesh banner on the machine it also walks a huge amount in the print area, at least 1/2 left and right almost to the point it will start printing to the platen in some cases.
I've printed roll to roll for ages with our 360 and 365 and had it laser beam accurate for 150' rolls no problem for years.

We're basing this expectation on The main guy from HP - Timothy Mitchel - saying that we should be able to run 6 pass 110 sat "all day long" and that it's "all seamless"
He says if you want to go to 4 pass you can, but there is a slight introduction of banding at 4 pass. He says you "can" use 8 pass but he doesn't use it unless you have a temperature sensitive media of some kind. Last I checked Avery 1105 or CV3 isn't a temperature sensitive media
10 pass according to TImothy "has been thrown in the trash", its useless not needed.

Here is the link to the youtube video and I also put the time stamp on it where Timothy mentions all of this information:

With even the old 360 or 365 printers you can load any generic profile, throw some media on there and as long as the heads aren't insanely high and your cleaning / heads / maintenance are up to date you'll get near perfect print quality.

Still no answer from HP on what is happening. I know they are never going to give answers on what is going on globally, but I'm really curious if anyone has one of these and its printing flawlessly.
 

Attachments

  • 20210714_112711 (1).jpg
    20210714_112711 (1).jpg
    1.9 MB · Views: 9,897

jasonx

New Member
If it's your profiles don't they have a profile that's tested on another machine for a specific media so you can do a test and rule out if it's the profile or the printer specifically?
 

balstestrat

Problem Solver
It's called dark to light zone banding and you can't fix it. Your best options to reduce it is:
- Use more passes (12-pass, 8-pass UNI).
- Reduce the ink limit.
- Change to different material.
- Return printer.
 

ikarasu

Active Member
Really? So it's prelevant in all 800 series printers? I'd send your file to someone on here with it so they can do a test and see.


If that's true... That's pretty crappy. Our 560 doesn't have any issues. I like latexs, but they seem to always take 2 steps forward and one step backwards with new issues. I sold my 560 and was thinking of getting an 800 to compliment my Epson because I wanted the white ink, but I think I'll hold off for a bit now!
 

balstestrat

Problem Solver
Really? So it's prelevant in all 800 series printers? I'd send your file to someone on here with it so they can do a test and see.


If that's true... That's pretty crappy. Our 560 doesn't have any issues. I like latexs, but they seem to always take 2 steps forward and one step backwards with new issues. I sold my 560 and was thinking of getting an 800 to compliment my Epson because I wanted the white ink, but I think I'll hold off for a bit now!
It's on all 700&800. Different materials can have vastly different output.
My opinion it's a lot better in previous gen, L100/300/500.
 
Last edited:

thetsp

New Member
So just to bring everyone up to speed.

I've tried 8pass, 10pass, 12pass with different saturations ranging from 80-120, it exists in all of them.
I've tried 4 different types of medias, Oracle 3641, Avery 1105, IJ40, IJ180cv3, it exists in all of them.

I've sent my file to another wholesaler in Canada who has a demo 800W and I could see VERY VERY slight hints of it on their 8 pass profile, albeit I would say it was "borderline" passable. I think I could sell it.. On their 6 pass profile it completely fell apart, and looked like absolute garbage. And that is straight from the demo machine of a wholesaler who is supposed to be selling these machines to people. Gotta say when HP is saying you should be printing 6 pass all day, that is a HUGE HUGE lie.

I've tried everything profile related, using HP's default profiles, and then custom building all of my profiles.

In terms of going UNI directional, I haven't actually done that yet. At that point if I'm going 12 pass and uni directional for printing roll to roll vehicle wraps, I may as well throw this thing in the dumpster as it would be printing twice as slow as a 360 printer from 7 years ago at worse print qualities. The only advantage is being able to pull out the overcoat in order to avoid delamination issues with 1360z and some other laminates.

Hoping to get some kind of decent response from HP. But crickets for weeks and weeks now.
 

thetsp

New Member
So good and bad news.
I cloned the generic profile and ran an 8-pass UNI with 110 sat (So the equivalent of 16pass) and the Dark Light banding is now gone. So thank you guys for solving that problem!
But in theory this presents and even BIGGER issue in that the only way to get rid of this light dark banding is to use basically an 8 pass uni mode. This means when printing anything of substance the print time on this machine is going to be insanely long.
I've mentioned this to the company we bought it from in that I think this is a problem inherent in potentially all 800W's. I think some customers may have it worse than others, or it may get worse with more time and use?
Hard to say at this point, but at least this gives us a starting point at going back to HP with some updated results.

FYI I've been using this print color sample as its shown up the worst in the green, but the Light dark banding does show up in almost all other colors when we were running other tests. Some a bit more apparent and others a little bit less.
 

Attachments

  • 20210817_083335.jpg
    20210817_083335.jpg
    1.5 MB · Views: 714

chrisphilipps

Merchant Member
I have had my demo 800W since early March and have installed a 700W and 800W since the demo unit and not one of the three units is having this issue and most of them are running in 6 pass. What firmware do you have installed on the printer? How long have you had the unit?

The only reason I asked about the age of the unit is there was a modification that was supposed to be done to the trailing cables during the installation of the original units. It required removing a zip tie from one spot and making sure the ink lines and cables ran smoothly before putting a zip tie in another spot. If that wasn't done maybe that is the cause of this issue on your unit.
 

thetsp

New Member
We have had it installed since late April, early May

I didn't watch the technician do any of the setup , un packing so I can't confirm if that was done or not. Is there anyway of confirming if that was done?
Firmware has been checked / updated before all this and the most recent version is PLS_20_21_10.10
 

chrisphilipps

Merchant Member
This picture is the new location of the zip tie after everything was checked. The old zip tie location was further up to the left of where this picture was taken. This is in the top middle of the printer being viewed from the backside.
56f745db6a3973928fa0785f533e79f1.jpg


Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk
 

thetsp

New Member
Yep checked and it looks like that clip is installed correctly.
 

Attachments

  • 20210817_172702.jpg
    20210817_172702.jpg
    3.5 MB · Views: 665

pkeshtgani

New Member
I got 700W that was having same issue. What it turned out to be a simple fix. took literally 6 people to figure out what the issue was. Try this since this fixed my issue. I dont remember exact process but I would say for safety turn off the printer. pull out all the print heads clean the electrical connections on the heads and the carriage with the stick and wipes that are provided with the printer. my problem there was ink build up on the printhead and the carriage, even the printer was 4 weeks old at that time.
 

chrisphilipps

Merchant Member
Watch it when it prints and make sure everything moves smoothly. Not saying that is the issue but at least it would be ruled out.

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk
 
Top