HP Latex 360 uneven banding issue !!

[Cossack81]

The issue has been ongoing for a year now in which both our latex 360 printers have an uneven band starting from the right hand side and fading half way across the media.

I've nozzle checked at every banding occasion and all have looked perfect as well as doing a alignment check and cleaned the sensors.

I also talked with our HP tech and he believes it's an manufacturer error with the maintenance cartridge contaminating the head at cleaning intervals with the cloth feed not advancing enough to be a 'clean part of cloth', and as such there is no cure except change to a new maintenace cartridge in which the same banding starts happening again within 10 metres of printing.

This problem only started happening after a couple of years with both printers, probably within 4 months of each other, I haven't had any real answer except that the Tech is waiting to hear back from HP about it (this was 8 months ago btw), I just can't believe I have not heard of anyone else having this problem ? And yes I have tried printing with the color gutter to try and help to no avail

I would love a soild answer how this is happening and how to fixed as it is serverly affecting the amount of quality prints completed for our customers.On a textured polyprop substrateon a polymeric vinyl

[Roy_Kuzmich]

Hi Cossack,

Keeping with the Maintenace Cartridge theory, there is a motor that moves that cloth as part of the Service Station -easy to replace.

Also, have you had the Maintenance KIT#3 service done yet? As part of this Maintenace, many parts on the Carriage and Service Station are replaced and the Heating/Curing curtain are cleaned thoroughly. There is usually a lot of dried ink built up around one of the motors for the Service Station.

I would try these to see it resolves your issue.

Out of Curiosity - How old are your PH's? I have seen what appears to be healthy PH's cause odd quality issues and if yours are out of warranty maybe replacing them may help despite the positive results of the diagnostic checks.

Good Luck,

Roy K

[skuks]

LM/LC printhead usually does that - after 1L of usage it starts this effect.

1. Restart printer often;

2. print colour bars if possible

3. clean printheads connectors and carriage connectors with ethanol or isopropyl alcohol

4. like the coleague said - check for dryed ink around printhead  or the wiping rubber on maintenance kit...
Hope I helped 🙂

[ColorLabsMitch]

Hi, I was wondering if you had found a solution to your problem? I am experiencing the exact same issue with my HP 570, not even 2 years old. It's been killing us this week.

Thanks.

[skuks]

Hi.
its sum of problems not only one. Main problem is ink delivery (lm and lc) to the printhead. Possible air, vacuum or low pressure in tubes and dampfers. Mainly - printhead isn't firing ink - nozzles are out at the beginning (multiple reasons) and then filled again after few passes. There is only one LM/LC PH and it's must print all in one pass, not like other 4 colours meaning ink is much more through PH compared to the other printheads - therefore PH is early worn out. 2 years ago we had 360 (now we have 570 - same problem) and we get to another conclusion - electronics, PCboard, short circuits and etc. Firmware is like android for the phones - defective commands leading to abnormal behavior. Our tech minions found empty folders and error log files. After cleaning file system of junk printer was OK for about a year.

Recent solution for this banding - replace PH, shake ink cartridges (in our case ink boxes) after some time if not printing, master restart of printer for 5 minutes (from switch on the back) once a week at least.after one year of workstrange result before PH replacement

[Cossack81]

Nope solution to the problem , no help for techs  and after trying everything mentioned here still no cure !

It IS caused by either an firmware update or mechanical failure which cause the head to strike the maintenance cartridge  incorrectly and block the Lc/Lm head for 1 pass, I am literally watching it do it right now after changing the head, maintenance cartridge and turning it off for 10 min. No help from HP in any shape or form tbh, probably because this massive flaw looks to be a firmware related as it happened to both our 360 printers inside 2 weeks even though they were purchased 1 year apart.

We are now turning most of our solid colour printing to our Roland and will be upgrading our fleet to 100% Roland in the future due to this terminal problem.

Sorry as this won't help you ColorLabsMitch but I 100% feel your pain as it has been killing us for the last 2 years 

Anyway good luck to anyone who can fix this problem we are just pulling the pin instead 

Thanks to all with some helpful tips they were greatly appreciated !!

( What is happen this very minute ) 

[skuks]

Cossack81 right now a tech minion is at the maintenance cartridge case (all row of printheads are hitting and has to be replaced at once) with our 570, but my thumbs up for moving from hp latex...only problems... when done (if case is solved) - will tell 🙂

And one more advice to ColorLabsMitch - you have to shake often boxes with ink to skip color issues like green or blue instead of normal colors...

[Exhibitpro]

Hello,

Has a solution been found for this problem. We, like ColorLabsMitch, are experiencing this banding.

[Roy_Kuzmich]

Quick thought here,

Has anyone increased the interpass delay ? - clicked the Long Run consistency box? - removed and reloaded a media profile?

increased/decreased the Optimizer %?

Again, just some thoughts,

Good Luck

Roy K

[skuks]

Last updates about "maintenance cartridge problem" - we replaced the SSD - bad or broken firmware from the beginning and bad firmware became worse...so far no problems, the printer behaves like new...even in low passes prints with old printheads like with brand new ones...But still after sleep mode it reacts slow, touchscreen behaves oddly...but no banding problems...