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

[jeffdpia]

I do know this is not an isolated issue. Two 800w machines banding as described, bought to run in 6 pass as advertised in Virginia. Final solution unknown, that was 1 month ago.

 

[thetsp]

I do know this is not an isolated issue. Two 800w machines banding as described, bought to run in 6 pass as advertised in Virginia. Final solution unknown, that was 1 month ago.

Interesting. Is this in your personal shop or just 2 machines that you know of in your area?
I would love to have some more info or contact the person with these machines to get some consensus. I keep being told by my wholesaler I'm the only one experiencing this, but I just cant see that since the two other 800w machines I've seen prints come off of are displaying similar issues, albeit not to the same degree as ours. They said they have 40 machines installed across Canada and no issues. But my gut tells me these are possibly installed in shops with print operators who don't really know what they're looking at, should expect, etc. I've seen a ton of prints from many shops across Canada that have all kinds of print defects and I think the shops just dont know any better when they are printing these.

 

[thetsp]

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.

Yep I've done this before on our 365 and 360 machines many many times when we had the odd issue with a print head and it seating or being detected by the machine. I haven't tried this option yet but I'll certainly give it a shot and report back to you guys if I note any improvements.

 

[balstestrat]

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

Yeah that's not good. You should ask them to fix it.
Althought it's not going to fix your issue.

 

[jeffdpia]

Interesting. Is this in your personal shop or just 2 machines that you know of in your area?
I would love to have some more info or contact the person with these machines to get some consensus. I keep being told by my wholesaler I'm the only one experiencing this, but I just cant see that since the two other 800w machines I've seen prints come off of are displaying similar issues, albeit not to the same degree as ours. They said they have 40 machines installed across Canada and no issues. But my gut tells me these are possibly installed in shops with print operators who don't really know what they're looking at, should expect, etc. I've seen a ton of prints from many shops across Canada that have all kinds of print defects and I think the shops just dont know any better when they are printing these.

Just 2 machines I know of in the area.

 

[Kwiksigns]

we have a 800W and an 800. Both have this issue. Have done fixes (techs came out and installed trailing cable. replaced all the heads. even had a tech from HP come out (level 4... whichever is the higher up).) This is how they print (apparently). When we have some busy prints, we can print on 6-8p. banners we can print 4p. but if it is cast vinyl and it needs to look good, unfortunately, 12p has fixed this issue... completely. Some of the colors just dont print good at that pass. It's funny, the whole reason we went on this 3 month issue with HP was because of green.

 

[pkeshtgani]

Also I don't believe the white clip is supposed to be there.

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

your image is correct but the OP picture is not the correct setup. this is what I was provided.

 

[Proofread People]

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.

do you get the same banding with different media, could it be a bad roll of media? Try Lower the saturation?

 

[thetsp]

do you get the same banding with different media, could it be a bad roll of media? Try Lower the saturation?

Yep same banding on all medias. Tried every single profile tweak imaginable.
Only thing that has actually removed it is going to 8pass UNI print mode which is the equivalent of 16pass, so thats not really a production acceptable print mode.

 

[jfiscus]

If it shows up more in the green, try to isolate exactly which color (head) is causing the banding you see in it. Make up some solid Cyan / Magenta / Yellow / Black (etc) blocks and be sure in your RIP that they are only outputting that channel (head) in that area. That way you can isolate which color is apparently suffering from starvation.

If you print it in unidirectional mode, then cut one end off, is the color the close to same from side-to-side? It sounds like on head has ink starvation or possibly a weak connection.

 

[balstestrat]

If it shows up more in the green, try to isolate exactly which color (head) is causing the banding you see in it. Make up some solid Cyan / Magenta / Yellow / Black (etc) blocks and be sure in your RIP that they are only outputting that channel (head) in that area. That way you can isolate which color is apparently suffering from starvation.

If you print it in unidirectional mode, then cut one end off, is the color the close to same from side-to-side? It sounds like on head has ink starvation or possibly a weak connection.

Its not head issue or starvation... You can't fix this issue.

 

[dypinc]

I am wondering does this also happen in CMYK mode or only in CMYKcm mode?

 

[thetsp]

I am wondering does this also happen in CMYK mode or only in CMYKcm mode?

I haven't bothered running just a CMYK profile to eliminate this. I need the full color gamut available since we're printing wraps on this, so even if that solved the problem, it just creates another almost bigger problem.

 

[dypinc]

I haven't bothered running just a CMYK profile to eliminate this. I need the full color gamut available since we're printing wraps on this, so even if that solved the problem, it just creates another almost bigger problem.

You gain nothing full color gamut wise printing in CMYKcm mode. In fact you may lose some gamut because you have 6 inks that have to be limited instead of 4. The only advantage of using the light inks is to minimize graininess. The dis-advantage of using the light inks is you risk ink starvation because of only one printhead with faster printing speeds. A well known problem with the 300 series. Large solids areas that use lots of light inks will most certainly risk ink starvation issues unless you slow the print speed down so that the light ink supply can keep up.

 

[balstestrat]

You gain nothing full color gamut wise printing in CMYKcm mode. In fact you may lose some gamut because you have 6 inks that have to be limited instead of 4. The only advantage of using the light inks is to minimize graininess. The dis-advantage of using the light inks is you risk ink starvation because of only one printhead with faster printing speeds. A well known problem with the 300 series. Large solids areas that use lots of light inks will most certainly risk ink starvation issues unless you slow the print speed down so that the light ink supply can keep up.

700&800 has two light printheads...

 

[dypinc]

700&800 has two light printheads...

That is great that they have gone back to two lm/lc printheads. Not great about this banding problem as I was think of acquiring a 700W.

 

[jfiscus]

You are not going to see any color improvement by running the (un-warranted) non-CMYK inks. You are going to see wraps fading quicker that use those colors.

 

[balstestrat]

You are not going to see any color improvement by running the (un-warranted) non-CMYK inks. You are going to see wraps fading quicker that use those colors.

The lights have the same warranty as the main colours and I would say about 99% of wraps done with latex is done with light colours enabled.

 

[Proofread People]

Yep same banding on all medias. Tried every single profile tweak imaginable.
Only thing that has actually removed it is going to 8pass UNI print mode which is the equivalent of 16pass, so thats not really a production acceptable print mode.

hmmm, weird. We have printed solid green on a 370 and last 4 years use a 570, (300dpi 10pass, 110 saturation on 180 cast) partial wrap sides (261" length) without any banding issues (cmykcm). Are all the printhead firing? Are the printing gutters on?

 

[Proofread People]

The lights have the same warranty as the main colours and I would say about 99% of wraps done with latex is done with light colours enabled.

700&800 has two light printheads...

I never knew that about the lcm, I'll have to try turning it off, why use the lcm if it won't make a difference on solid color.