Funny printing on HP Z6100 and Onyx

[jonkovach]

Has anyone ever seen this?
I am running the latest version of Onyx, to an HP Z6100. It will do this at the beginning of a print, and then go away. If I add white space to the file, it solves the problem.

Anyone?
Thanks,
Jon

 

[PrePress Guru]

It looks like it has to do with the way HP designs the print heads.
They need to warm up a bit before they will print nicely.
An HP tech explained this to me when i was going threw hell on the Z3100's.
He said this was an issue with the Z6100's.

It could be that the print heads are dirty or clogged. Did you try to clean them or run a recovery.

-ian

 

[VladCanada]

jonkovach - I bet, if you sent back to re-print the same job without extra white space immediately after success print, you would get the same good result.
Not only HP but AGFA and some others use the same piezo(AT-cut crystal) printheads from South Korea. And I've met the same results as you published.
Partly clogged nozzles change the direction and speed of ink micro-drops and spoil a beginning of your job output.
Shortly that crap (builded along the edges of nozzles) becomes softer and your job comes out fine... BUT if you stop printing for an hour or more, you will come to a startpoint of your trouble.
Actually that's not a real warming up (PrintHead is not getting warmer), I'm sorry, PrePress Guru... but we could call that improvement as warm up effect.
Clean PrintHead regulary or even more frequent than it's recommended to avoid that problem down the road.

 

[jonkovach]

I don't know if it is, in fact, a matter of the printheads warming up... though it does make sense in some cases. I will see this happen even while in the middle of a day full of printing. It's always at the beginning of a print, though. I can start a print, see that problem, restart it, see the problem again - I can duplicate that over and over... but as soon as I add white space, the problem goes away.

I clean my printheads often, and keep them from getting gunked up - I will try to keep a better eye on that. I will check back if I continue to see the problem occur.

Thanks,
Jon