Designjet Z6100 banding

[theengel]

Re: Designjet Z6100 banding

Thanks.

I tried telling the machine I was using another media, and it did the same thing. They use this media for just about everything, and have used it for a long time. They use it on 2 different Z6100's. The printing of the same test pattern on the same media looks completely different on the two printers--there's not that white band that appears during the printing on the other Z6100. I haven't tried changing the media type to plain paper yet--I might try that, and if it works, look into the media profile updates.

Ha Ha--OMAS, not OMAR. I cleaned it with a damp cloth, and it looks pretty darn clean. Maybe I'll try some alcohol.

I've replaced all of the printheads at this point, but I might try swapping them with the machine next to it. The nozzle patterns look pretty good.

I reset the paper advance, then ran the paper advance calibration, then fiddled with it, then reset it, etc.,.

[Kiran Otter]

Re: Designjet Z6100 banding

OK. I spoke to HP about this because I wanted to know what's going on, and this is apparently very common.

It's due to a dirty or contaminated drop detect sensor. The printer thinks way more nozzles are bad than really are, and is trying (desperately) to compensate for the bad nozzles with working nozzles. You need to clean the drop detect sensor (damp q-tip or just a folded up paper towel, damp.. cram it in there and work it around.)

Then go into the service utilities menu, diagnostic print, others, and select forced drop detect. The display will show how many nozzles are missing for each printhead. You can compare these numbers to what the image quality print is showing. Obviously if it says there's 100 nozzles out but you only see one or two missing in the print, this is your problem.

If cleaning the drop detect doesn't do it, I would just replace it.

I'm sorry I didn't think of this sooner.. I sort of always clean the drop detect as part of my PM I do anytime I work on a printer so it didn't occur to me it might be the problem.

Kiran

[theengel]

Re: Designjet Z6100 banding

Sadly, I lost this job. This was third or fourth party work, and someone in the chain (possibly the end user) wanted a new guy... I've put too many hours into it without results. Oh well... it's nice to finally know the answer though. Thanks.

[Kiran Otter]

Re: Designjet Z6100 banding

Well that, as they say, sucks.