Xerox aftermarket ink and smears.

**fixthecopier** · 03-02-2015

Customer called with smears on prints and blobs of ink. I ran it through the cleaning process about 5 times to get all clean sheets out. First print looked like crap, smears and blobs and light. Then I discovered they had switched to cheap ink after their Xerox contract ended. I know the ink quality will make a difference. My question is, will removing all the aftermarket ink, replacing it with OEM, and running prints to purge the old ink help, or should I look at printhead replacement?

**Flash** · 03-02-2015

Not sure which model you are working on but I would try OEM ink before I replaced the print head. Also check the drum cleaning blade. Make sure the rubber has not peeled off. Sometimes you will find it in the cleaning unit.

**fixthecopier** · 03-03-2015

Originally Posted by Flash

Not sure which model you are working on but I would try OEM ink before I replaced the print head. Also check the drum cleaning blade. Make sure the rubber has not peeled off. Sometimes you will find it in the cleaning unit.

My mistake, it is an 8600.

**Exok** · 03-03-2015

You can probably purge out the bad ink but you'll need to run a lot of full solids of each color. Get a few boxes of OEM toner of each color. That's one way to teach a customer that cutting corners doesn't save them any money in the end. I had a customer once with an 8560 on a rickety table. Someone bumped the printer and all the colors mixed. They placed a call because everything was printing brown. After running around 500 pages of each color it was looking pretty good again.

**pfinn10** · 03-03-2015

Haven't worked on the 8600. but worked on the colorqube 8870, 8900x. When a customer runs non genuine and the CQ starts to fail easiest thing to do is put genuine ink sticks in and run full colour bleeds and purge in the maintenance. Eventually CQ will recover, after a few hundred prints.

GL