[CQ] 2232 slightly grainy looking and to red

[Blazer1087]

Hi everyone, I could use some advice again. This account uses thier 2232 for color printing. We sold them a mpc3500 in a differant dept also for color printing. They have compared the prints and noticed the prints from the 2232 are noticibly grainyer and have more of a red tint to them and want me to match the quality they get from the 3500. All supplies are OEM and not over life. Is the grainyness a problem or typical for this model? I have never had to adjust color balance on this model before, is it something they should do from thier application or are there settings on the machine that permanitly change color balance when printing? Both machines are set to 600dpi. Thank for your input;

[ptrflrs]

Re: 2232 slightly grainy looking and to red

Hi everyone, I could use some advice again. This account uses thier 2232 for color printing. We sold them a mpc3500 in a differant dept also for color printing. They have compared the prints and noticed the prints from the 2232 are noticibly grainyer and have more of a red tint to them and want me to match the quality they get from the 3500. All supplies are OEM and not over life. Is the grainyness a problem or typical for this model? I have never had to adjust color balance on this model before, is it something they should do from thier application or are there settings on the machine that permanitly change color balance when printing? Both machines are set to 600dpi. Thank for your input;

that was never a good cq machine and compared to the mpc3500 its a turd. have you tried running the auto color calibration (w/clean optics)and color registration? if it won't do the auto color calibration check if u have any recent codes for music (belt) density sensors.

[Blazer1087]

Re: 2232 slightly grainy looking and to red

yes it does the auto calibration sucessfuly but they print photos of people and the skin tones are always to red....other than the auto calabration how can I decrease a color in all prints, Im guessing i need less magenta? they come out perfectly on the mpc3500.

[ptrflrs]

Re: 2232 slightly grainy looking and to red

u probably need to let them know that they will never match exactly, u might get them close but ricoh will tell you different technology and different color space and toner color gamuts -throw some big words at them to let them know u have done ur homework. you might be able to change color a bit by changing the density defaults. in copy mode have you tried the photo and original type modes? i believe there is one for glossy photos and u might have to play w/different combinations of settings to make it less magenty. sometimes adding more of the cyan and yellow work better than withholding magenta also u might want to try removing the auto color calibration settings and leave it at default. it might be 5801-008 or whatever clears the sram for printing or engine - i haven't had to do that in a while though, don't remember the exact code. are the pcu's and dev units over their yields? r they using the correct driver? have u tried a different driver? latest firmware?

[silvia0073]

Re: 2232 slightly grainy looking and to red

For the graininess, try doing a force toner once or twice. That always helps at accounts where they never use color and when they do, the colors are all faded and grainy. As for matching color, you should let them know that these are business color machines, even two identical machines with consecutive serial numbers will not produce the same color output. This is why fiery was invented. If it's got a red hue to it, I doubt there's much if anything you can do. I actually just went through this with a customer just last week.

[Ianizer]

Party foul! Party foul!

Ah... The old Comparing Image Quality On Two Different Classes Of Machine trick...

Every color tech's nightmare. (The other side of that coin is color balancing to a single user file.)
Both single-handedly responsible for, personally, many many hours of my time, wasted. Vanished. Gone. Never to be reclaimed.

Entirely different configuration altogether. Different... everything, from CCD to Bypass feed, and all imaging components between.
The comparing party may think themselves quite clever, but it's comparing apples and oranges. Or, more precicely, comparing citri tangerina with citri paradisi.

The color and general quality will not be comparable, in any precise sense, regardless of any perception of quality.
They do not match, they will not match, they cannot be made to match, there is no convention to cause them to match.
I would not attempt in a can, I would not attempt it in a van, I would never ever ever even ever try it, Sam I am!

Service both to your level best based on each machine's own merits and, with clean optics and good stock, reset and perform ACC.

You are done. Move on. Thank you: My card. Have a nice day. You have calls and petrol to burn. You have much to do and little time in which to do it.
(And ring sales on your way to the next stop.)

This has been a public service announcement.

-I

[Blazer1087]

Re: 2232 slightly grainy looking and to red

thanks everyone for the advice. all supplies are under yield and color is used all the time. the problem was not a problem until we installed the mpc3500. I kind of knew it would turn out to be the differance between the two models that was the problem but I had to try.

[Ianizer]

Re: 2232 slightly grainy looking and to red

...The problem was not a problem until we installed the mpc3500.

Of course.
-I

[ptrflrs]

Re: 2232 slightly grainy looking and to red

i liked sylvia0073's advice to force toner however i don't know how long it will last. try to force only cyan toner since it takes magenta and yellow to make red then run the calibrations again to lock it in, hopefully?

[teebee1234]

Re: 2232 slightly grainy looking and to red

To get the best possible output, you will be better off starting from scratch. Gut the inside, clean the ID sensors, remove the transfer belt, clean the transfer rollers or replace if need be) and scrub the aluminum roller that faces the ID sensors, replace the transfer belt, replace all pcu's and dev units and recalibrate. What you should end up with is the best that it is capable of, which will be less then the mpc3500 but better then you have now. Trying to tweek the densities by forcing toner will just prolong your grief.

[silvia0073]

Re: 2232 slightly grainy looking and to red

To get the best possible output, you will be better off starting from scratch. Gut the inside, clean the ID sensors, remove the transfer belt, clean the transfer rollers or replace if need be) and scrub the aluminum roller that faces the ID sensors, replace the transfer belt, replace all pcu's and dev units and recalibrate. What you should end up with is the best that it is capable of, which will be less then the mpc3500 but better then you have now. Trying to tweek the densities by forcing toner will just prolong your grief.

True, but if the customer hardly use color, doing all that would just be a waste as even after all that, a couple energy saver cycles and auto cal cycles, colors are again grainy and washed out. So easy fix, force toner. Even the MPC series have this issue.

[George J]

Re: 2232 slightly grainy looking and to red

I'd like to add this little point, only because I spent nearly a 7 hours working to get this resolved.

Client called to say that the color quality was off, but only when printing. They did the calibration etc etc... but compared to their HP printer the colors were too yellow and grainy! At first I did go through the whole 'colors can't be matched exactly between different makes, models' speech, but with certain prints the quality was really awful. When looking at the prints without further reference the quality was acceptable at best, but it lacked detail and had over pronounced yellows.

Nothing I did seemed to change this. No sp mode, toner forcing, changing PCU/Dev units/ t belts helped for more that 6 - 7 prints. Now the odd thing was: the colors were fine when copying!

I called in assistance and the senior tech checked all the sp settings, did the calibration again (as I did 3 or 4 times before?) and found nothing wrong. He finally changed the NV RAM and after setting all the SP modes the colors for printing were the same as for copying. And more importantly for the customer they were in the same ballpark as the HP printer.

The senior tech then remarked how it's not the first time that he found a faulty NV ram to cause weird print quality issues...

[silvia0073]

Re: 2232 slightly grainy looking and to red

Good to know!

[Ianizer]

Re: 2232 slightly grainy looking and to red

It's certainly no new "Tech Bulletin" to remind that color quality has a habit of degrading drastically with low volume color usage one both these series. Force toner add may be one solution, and of course a deeper problem could exist...
May I suggest simply running 200 full color copies, inducing Forced P-Ctl & pwr cycling before proceeding?
-I

[silvia0073]

Re: 2232 slightly grainy looking and to red

It's certainly no new "Tech Bulletin" to remind that color quality has a habit of degrading drastically with low volume color usage one both these series. Force toner add may be one solution, and of course a deeper problem could exist...
May I suggest simply running 200 full color copies, inducing Forced P-Ctl & pwr cycling before proceeding?
-I

Absolutely, correct! I assumed each tech knows their machines and their history, simply going to another tech's machine and doing forced toner is definately a poor decision. Knowing my machines this works out quite well.