HP z6100 Head Striking Issues

[Linoprint]

We have several HP z6100 printers. These run all the time using a 24" stock to produce book covers. It's been about 3 years since they've been installed and now all of a sudden it's producing sporadic head strikes on the prints (around the same area). This is occurring more on heavy black, blue and green prints.

We've tried several different types of media profiles on the printer but nothing seems to work. Originally we thought the stock was too thick for the media profile but it is now also occuring on thinner HP heavyweight coated stock using the HP media profile.

I think it has to do with too much ink being sprayed on the sheet but I'm not sure how to back it down.

Any ideas on how to eliminate these random head strikes?

[Stressed]

We also use HPZ6100's We have a similar problem from time to time and found it to be a blocked suction valve on the platen bed. Basically there wasn't enough suction on the paper to hold the sheet flat enough for the carriage to clear the sheet.

Rather than spend a fortune on an HP engineer we simply ran a vacuum cleaner along the platen and that did the trick.

[YoungTechnician]

also you can increasing your suction platen by the self test menu.
do you want more information.

[Yttrium]

We have a 60" Z6100 machine. About half the time this machine runs on 42" media. When running on 60" media we've also had problems with head strikes. The strikes were at the area where the edge of the 42" media was located. To cure this we had to clean the area underneath the platen. There was a large buildup of old ink/gunk in the "gutter" underneath the platen which made the airflow too low to hold the media down. Unfortunately there are 15.000 small screws on the platen which have to be removed to do this. Therapeutic work but it did the trick. Hope this helps you too!

[YoungTechnician]

hi dear.

do you use 3rd party media on your machine?