Problem with HP B9180 installation

[DarkPenguin]

Saw this over at the online photographer from Mike Johnston

I hope it's not too crass to mention that all of these prints are examples of what the new HP B9180 can do. I'm finding it to be a balky, cantankerous beast with lots of bad habits—I'll update you chapter and verse in these pages soon—but the results are so stunning I'm already flat-out dreading the time when it will have to go back to HP.

That sounds about right.

[DarkPenguin]

Got my new printer.  Replacement ink and paper included.  Had to use the old print heads.

This one has the same issue as the old one.  I have an image sized to the sheet of paper it is going to print on.  8.5x11 in this case.   The image has a fake white matte.  When I print this borderless at 100% I get one or more odd black rectangles printed in the white "matte" area of the print.

This isn't a real interesting problem since I've only about 2 images done this way and it doesn't seem to happen on normal borderless images (those that the actual photo is edge to edge) or on images that are printed smaller than the given media size.  (Which would be about 99% of what I print.)

Anywho.  The new printer works fine except for this one odd issue.  

I'm still shocked they sent me a new one.  It had a "I don't know, try a new printer." feel to it.  I doubt I'm even going to pursue this any further.  I just want them to enter it as a defect and try to fix it if they ever see the issue.

[llama]

Hope the others who were going to get replacements remember to post their respective outcomes.

I'm very interested in this printer and have always had good experiences with HP support.

Thanks!

[Henrik Paul]

Due to some requests, here's the epilogue of the thing:

I got my replacement yesterday by courier. The package was a normal retail package that apparently has been used many times - it was torn, battered and taped several times. Also the styrofoam end paddings were barely holding together. But inside was a full B9180 unit (the ton of tapes and all), along with a 'calibration pack' (approximately 10 sheets of HP Advanced Glossy) and a similar pack of inks that the retail box comes with. If this model normally ships with reduced capacity cartidges, these most probably are too (as Vivera cartridges are sold separately only, not in sets). The only thing I had to take from the old printer were the print heads. I wonder if I'm still going to receive a fresh set of inks sans magenta and a 50-box of Advanced Glossy (as initially promised), or is this what I got instead. Not that I'm complaining, but a non-reduced set of inks is always non-reduced set of inks and 50 sheets are 50 sheets.

Anyhow. The replacement seems to work well. No problems during installation. The matte black head was entirely clogged due to the inability of the previous unit to do a regular maintenance on the heads. After an automatic printhead service and the initial calibration of the new unit, the print quality was up to par. The service seemed to drain heavily on the matte black cartridge, as the old one is giving low level warnings. But, as said, I have a replacement handy, so everything's ok.

So, things seem eventually to work out. Not as fast as I would liked, but apparently as fast as HP possibly could've been given their current arrangements of central storages and such.

Edit: I today received another package by courier, containing 7 retail packaged ink cartridges and a pack of HP Advanced Glossy paper. Excellent.

[Ronny Nilsen]

I got my replacement unit yesterday, but would have gotten it 1 1/5 week ago if I had not been out traveling.

The new unit seems to be working ok, but there is one issue I have to look into. I had time for only on print yesterday after setup, and it had a thin white stripe about 5 cm down from the top in a landscape print. It does not seem to be mechanical, as it it is not visible on the alignemnet prints from the printer. Strange. Will check it out if I have som time today or tomorrow.

[Ronny Nilsen]

I had time for only on print yesterday after setup, and it had a thin white stripe about 5 cm down from the top in a landscape print. It does not seem to be mechanical, as it it is not visible on the alignemnet prints from the printer. Strange. Will check it out if I have som time today or tomorrow.
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I have now confirmed that this is not a hw issue, it's not somthing dragging over the image.

If I print the image in landscape orientation I get the stripe, if I rotate the image and prints in portrait orientation the image comes out perfect, no stripe. Must be something in the printer firmware or something, the driver and sw on my computer are still the same as I used on the other printer.

[cyberworldsinc]

I have now confirmed that this is not a hw issue, it's not somthing dragging over the image.

If I print the image in landscape orientation I get the stripe, if I rotate the image and prints in portrait orientation the image comes out perfect, no stripe. Must be something in the printer firmware or something, the driver and sw on my computer are still the same as I used on the other printer.
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Ronnynil -

Are you using the Photoshop plugin? This sounds like a known bug with the plugin, which doesn't show up if you use "Print with Preview" or another program (such as Qimage) to print.

Jack

[Ronny Nilsen]

Ronnynil -

Are you using the Photoshop plugin? This sounds like a known bug with the plugin, which doesn't show up if you use "Print with Preview" or another program (such as Qimage) to print.

Jack
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Yes! I think you have solved the problem.   I used the Photoshop plugin for the first time when i tested the new printer. Never used it before so that explains it. Used the time when i waited for the printer to set up papertypes etc. so I though I should start using the plugin as that is easier to use.

Thank you!

[theo867]

I've had the same problem with the black rectangles appearing on landscape oriented pages where a smaller image was placed onto an 8x11' page. I had used the Photoshop HP plugin as well, and had selected that the printer to not do any scaling.

One print had 2 rectangles at the right edge, top and bottom. After moving the image up a bit, I only got a black rectangle at the bottom.If anyone wants to see how this looks, let me know and I'll attach or url a jpeg.

My workaround last night was just to crop the image and get rid of the faux matt area and click the Pshp printer setting to center the image on the page. This looks like a workaround, but I'd rather the HP people fixed the plug-in so none's needed.  

I've had the printer about a month, and had brought a print with the rectangles to the HP booth at the recent MacWorld (though I'm using a PC, btw). At that point I'd only had the printer a few days, and I'd only had that problem once. However, the rep advised I should contact HP if the problem recurs.

I'm hoping others will let them know. Don't know if the HP people read this forum. But it does sound like something's off with the Photoshop plug-in.  The reps at MacWorld really felt I should stick to their PShp plug-in  to get the most consistent results of matching up what one sees on screen with the print.

My biggest concern was their lack of support for any papers other than theirs. I think this is not only unrealistic but shooting yourself in the foot when the Epson people seem to be bending over backwards to be compatible with other papers.  Epson's dominated this market, so HP should be competing by being as compatible as well as giving us a better printer altogether without the grief of the Epson clogging printheads.  However, I digress here.  

Wondering Dark Penguin if you've had any recurrence of the black rectangles, or if you've cirumvented this problem in some other way?  

Got my new printer.  Replacement ink and paper included.  Had to use the old print heads.

This one has the same issue as the old one.  I have an image sized to the sheet of paper it is going to print on.  8.5x11 in this case.   The image has a fake white matte.  When I print this borderless at 100% I get one or more odd black rectangles printed in the white "matte" area of the print.

This isn't a real interesting problem since I've only about 2 images done this way and it doesn't seem to happen on normal borderless images (those that the actual photo is edge to edge) or on images that are printed smaller than the given media size.  (Which would be about 99% of what I print.)

Anywho.  The new printer works fine except for this one odd issue. 

I'm still shocked they sent me a new one.  It had a "I don't know, try a new printer." feel to it.  I doubt I'm even going to pursue this any further.  I just want them to enter it as a defect and try to fix it if they ever see the issue.
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[DarkPenguin]

I think i'm supposed to call their techs.  I haven't yet.  I really should now that someone else has seen this.  I finally bought Qimage to print with but haven't printed one of the problem images yet.  (Been in a massive image archive reorg.  I'm not even sure I can find the problem images.)

This has been seen by me on 2 printers and yourself on another.  Clearly they have an issue.  If they would just run a print they would see it.

As to 3rd party paper have you seen these two sites?

http://www.shadowbrush.org/wiki/index.php?title=B9180Papers
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/hp9100Series/

[theo867]

Thanks for the urls--I have seen these. I'm going to have to try a bit more experimentation on the ICC profiles at the Yahoo groups site. Not sure now--I think it was the Ilford Smooth Pearl, I had much better results just using HP's settings for Advanced Satin-Matte or even Soft Gloss--but maybe I didn't follow the procedure correctly.  

The two HP people I spoke with January at the MacWorld booth both relied completely on using the Adobe plug-in, and leaving the Pshp proofing setup to SRGB.  They both warned of potential settings conflicts when one starts using the print preview and making settings changes from there.  

BTW, one thing I won't use again is the Other Photo papers choice. That produced the worst results.

I'll be very interested to hear of any results you have with Qimage.

It's kind of a drag to have to resort to that though, as I think the burden should really be HP to make their Photoshop plug-in work flawlessly, AND acknowledge that people ARE going to use other high quality papers in addition to their own.

Greater compatibility, hardware and software reliability, not just competitive pricing, are what can make this printer finally a solid alternative to Epson's product line. I truly hope the HP folks realize this!  
 
 

I think i'm supposed to call their techs.  I haven't yet.  I really should now that someone else has seen this.  I finally bought Qimage to print with but haven't printed one of the problem images yet.  (Been in a massive image archive reorg.  I'm not even sure I can find the problem images.)

This has been seen by me on 2 printers and yourself on another.  Clearly they have an issue.  If they would just run a print they would see it.

As to 3rd party paper have you seen these two sites?

http://www.shadowbrush.org/wiki/index.php?title=B9180Papers
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/hp9100Series/
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[Henrik Paul]

Oh, here's a nice one. The replacement B9180 I received some time ago... I haven't been able to print all that much because I was in Thailand and due to other matters also.

Anyhow. Today I thought it would be a good time to try the A3+ sized papers. As I fed the paper in, and tried to print, an error came up, saying that I should close the special media tray (which I was using). Okay. I cancelled the job and the paper was fed back to the front of the unit. Guess what I found lying on the paper. One pizza cutter. No, this is not a joke.

I'm putting HP back to the boycott-list and will seek for a refund for this unit.

Edit: The printer seems to work nevertheless, but i found stripes at the same direction as the printhead cartidge travels. *sigh* You would think you would get something worth your money with these 'pro' printers.

Edit2: Inspecting the print more closely, over the vertical lines, there's one smudge along the pizza cutters that shines when light is reflected from a certain angle. But the smudge is from the opposite side of where the pizza cutter fell off. A retry of the same print yielded in satisfactory results.