HP Z2100, looks like printhead is misfiring

[fixthecopier]

If a poster is being printed, there will be a pair of straight lines, from the cyan/black cartridge, sporadically all over the page. Facing the machine, it becomes very heavy to the right side, less to the left. It will lay these lines down even if thier is not suppose to be ink in that area. If it were a laser, it would look like a drum blade slipping. Kind of looks like it is misfiring, like a short is telling it to shoot ink.

Printhead changed with new one.

Ran all the cleaning and calidrations

Manually cleaned plotter

No error codes

No insight from manual

No pattern, except doing it heavier on the right side.

At this point I would think, carriage or encoder. Or maybe formatter. Don't want to guess. Any ideas.

[Kiran Otter]

Re: HP Z2100, looks like printhead is misfiring

Any way you can upload a picture of it?

Make sure there isn't some piece of debis or paper stuck to the bottom of the carriage and dragging ink from the service station across the paper (would explain why it's darker on the right.)

Did you remove/inspect/clean the contacts on all of the printheads?

Hopefully it's not the carriage or trailing cable. Customer would be in for a nasty surprise when they hear how much it costs to replace them now. Thanks to HP, they've changed the design and you have to buy the carriage AND trailing cable together. It's like $1300. (Though you could always try to find a NOS or used trailing cable/carriage.)

Kiran

[fixthecopier]

Re: HP Z2100, looks like printhead is misfiring

I am sorry it took me so long to respond, I actually did yesterday but must have not clicked send as I left the shop. I had an issue getting a camera into a military building. I had to move it into a different room, and when we hooked up and ran a print, the print was perfect. The issue was the network cable the whole time. I am sure glad it was discovered before I put a bunch of expensive parts in it. Thank you for responding to my post.

[Kiran Otter]

Re: HP Z2100, looks like printhead is misfiring

Network cable??? I want to know how that caused the problem you described!

[fixthecopier]

Re: HP Z2100, looks like printhead is misfiring

Network cable??? I want to know how that caused the problem you described!

I will keep you posted. He had a lot of print jobs to get caught up on, so we are hoping for the best. He said the problem started out gradually and got worse. By the time I saw it, it was consistently on every print and very bad. Once the plotter made a good print, we moved it back into it's room and made a bad one. That's when we changed the cable. Then again it may be messing with us and I will be posting about carriage replacement next week, but I am going with the good feeling for now. I am going to check on it tomorrow.

[fixthecopier]

Re: HP Z2100, looks like printhead is misfiring

Well, printing from different location was a false lead. It printed about 2 posters and started again. In further discussion with the customer, the subject of firmware came up. He told me that he had just upgraded the firmware, right before this all started. I suggested he go back to what he had. By end of day Friday, he said it was printing great. I followed up yesterday and he had been running it nonstop and said it would leave 1 mark every now and then, such as once every few posters, and he could live with that. If customer is happy, I am happy.