Crop Circles?

[blackcat4866]

Aren't crop circles caused by aliens? Well I guess I must have an infestation of aliens.

It's a CS-2560, and it only does this when printing, not copying or facsimilie or scanning. No two are alike. The customer re-started the print card and its gone, for now...

I'm thinking main PWB, myself. Anyone seen this?

[xeroid]

Looks like a PDL problem to me. Have you tried changing the printer emulation to something different or using a different driver

[aragul]

Stuff that I would try, in order of cost

PDL
Newest firmware
Try some older firmware
Bad memory on main PWB
Bad hard drive
Bad firmware dimm
Bad main PWB

I'm with xeroid, it reminds me of a PDL error.

[blackcat4866]

I didn't look at the emulation. If I get a re-occurrence that's where I'll start.

This customer has their own IT dept, so I'm not involved in the setup. On my own setups I usually select PCL XL emulation from the driver, and Auto at the printer. It sounds counter-intuitive, but KPDL emulation has some issues when printing PDFs that PCL XL does not.

This is not a new placement by the way. It's been in this location, using this driver for the last two years. It's just strange that it would start now. =^..^=

[fixthecopier]

I saw something like that years ago. The machine was a HP4550 and would print the picture and put big blocks of black over it. They were using the wrong drivers. The IT people had installed them.

[knightfall]

does this happen only on 1 computer or all the computer? I would update the firmware and replace the print driver first before thinking about memory. Good luck.

[Jimbo1]

I agree. This looks like it might be generated by the program and not the unit. There may be something they had set really strange in the preferences. If it comes back I would look at their settings before I did any headstands and lunch hours there.

[blackcat4866]

I have the print offs, but the problem was cleared by the time I arrived.

According to the IT guy, he was able to reproduce the from his own PC on a Windows test page. For me, that rules our an application error, but still could be driver settings or maybe corrupt packets arriving at the printer. The machine restart wouldn't have done anything to fix either of these issues though.

It's been a week with no re-occurences, so it's officially a fluke. If it comes up again I'll give it some more thought. =^..^=

[blackcat4866]

Follow Up

I stopped in today to check on this customer. The image quality has not been an issue since last week.

They commented on jamming on duplex prints only (not affecting copies or single sided prints). The error log recorded a whole raft of J00 jams each accompanied by a cf620 error. Clearly the cf620 codes are causing the J00 jams.

The firmware is at v. 2.42A (the most current, this week), and the driver is v. 5.0. As an experiment we changed emulation from PCL5e to PCL XL. We were not able to reproduce the code or jams after the change in emulation. Time will tell... =^..^=

[mojorolla]

I had a a Bizhub 600 print negative images..i.e. black page with white text last year. It was the oddest thing. I thought the customer was bullshitting me until they showed me an example! Rebooted, did the firmware and it never returned.


Now i have jinxed myself and will get this call tomorrow...

[banginbishop]

ok, saw exactly the same symptoms today on a km-3050. The customer knew what it was without me even saying what was causing it. An end user was changing the setting from hp to raster? what ever that was! The IT guy was getting pissed cause the end user keeps changing it.

[blackcat4866]

Re: Crop Circles?

I should have updated that thread sooner. But the final outcome was that somebody with a local driver had selected "vector" printing. Honestly I didn't know it was there until it was pointed out. =^..^=