HP Designjet 500- smudges

[RandyW]

We looked at a Designjet 500 that was smudging on some print jobs.

A service print page with ctg and printhead info on it looks ok.

I attached a photo they tried to print. Sure used up a lot of ink.

Supposed to be new inks and printhead.

I believe the smudges are mostly with the purplish color here/attachment

[Kiran Otter]

Re: HP Designjet 500- smudges

I can't really make out what that picture is.. but my first question is: What media are they printing on? What brand and type? Are they using genuine HP inks or 3rd party?

Kiran

[RandyW]

Re: HP Designjet 500- smudges

I'm fairly sure they are using HP inks. They have an assortment of HPs at this place and use only HP supplies.


Print media- I took a look at the paper the Service Print info was printed on and compared that to the
paper the photo was printed on and they are different. The Service Print page is printed on
what feels like 20lb paper. The large poster size photo is on much thicker paper that appears to
be glossy on 1 side. I wouldn't say cardstock thick but definitely thicker than 24lb. Maybe a photo paper.

[Kiran Otter]

Re: HP Designjet 500- smudges

Well, it's hard to diagnose remotely. If the printer prints correctly on other media, then I would blame this glossy media they used. Recommend they use the HP Instant-dry Satin media (vs. glossy; glossy media causes reflections and has a bad history of not working well in the HP Designjets.) HP Premium Instant Dry Satin Photo Paper | LexJet.com

Many times have I had people buy the cheapest photo gloss media they could find, and it has horrible performance in HP printers. If you can find out specifically what media it is it would be helpful.

If you can get a better picture or scan of the problem, please post it.

Kiran

[theengel]

Re: HP Designjet 500- smudges

I can't actually see any streaks.

One thing I notice with the 500/800 series, no matter what kind of paper I'm loading, I always tell the machine it's plain paper. I can never get solid blacks when I tell it any other kind. All the colors, in fact, come out odd and look faded.

[Lance15]

Re: HP Designjet 500- smudges

It almost looks like it's missing a color, but, like Kiran said, it's hard to determine from that picture. It definitely looks like a gloss type paper of some kind by the "white streak" going up from the lower right diagonally to the left.

[Iowatech]

Re: HP Designjet 500- smudges

We looked at a Designjet 500 that was smudging on some print jobs.

A service print page with ctg and printhead info on it looks ok.

I attached a photo they tried to print. Sure used up a lot of ink.

Supposed to be new inks and printhead.

I believe the smudges are mostly with the purplish color here/attachment

While I didn't see the smudges, that image has an awful lot of coverage, and will use a lot of ink. No way around that. If the media being printed on cannot accept that much ink throughout the printing process you will get smears and smudges.
Looks like that was a pretty popular concert though!

[RandyW]

Re: HP Designjet 500- smudges

Designjet 500 color scan.jpgI'm going to see what they are printing on.

Here's a scan from putting it on top of a copier. I kept looking at the scan and now I'm wondering if
they are thinking what looks like smudges isn't just how the machine printed the photo with the different lighting.

I'll see if they have tried printing that image on regular paper too. Still might not matter with how it is printing the
images in the crowd and the lighting.

[Iowatech]

Re: HP Designjet 500- smudges

Update -
If the smudges you were talking about were on the left hand side of the first picture you shared, I did see them. Those are artifacts produced by the spotlights at the location that picture was taken at because of how dark it was there. To get rid of those they need to be filtered out of the original picture.

[Lance15]

Re: HP Designjet 500- smudges

That's a much better version of the picture.

It's a pretty dark picture.

Like Iowatch mentioned, any touching up needs to be done at the picture level before it's printed.

Have always found that LED lighting reeks havoc on digital photography. The CCD's just can't seem to interpret the lighting correctly yet.