I just learned a valuable lesson and thought I should pass it along. I've been printing a 19 print show of 30" x 40" photographic images on HP Professional Satin Photo Paper. I have another thread about the problems I've been struggling with regarding intermittent paper transport marks on this paper, but it relates to this thread's subject in that I'm having to make a lot of reprints due to this problem. For three days, I ran the printer non-stop for 16 hour each day. Each print took about 48 minutes if I sent the file to the printer before the previous one finished, to avoid file transfer time.
I first noticed a few small, random drops on a HP Smooth Fine Art print that I made about 10 days ago, but had no problems with excess ink on any other prints until yesterday. With a big print yesterday, though, on the Professional Satin, there were over a dozen large drops of ink about the diameter of a pencil lead. That prompted a call to HP Tech Support and the suggestion to pull and clean my printheads.
When I pulled the printheads, I was shocked at how much ink was all over the sides, concentrated on the contact side and the short vertical face to the front of the head surface. I cleaned the ink with a coffee filter as directed and was told that this is normal if using a high ink demand paper like the Professional Satin. I also noticed overspray inside, all the way to the left side, extending from the felt catchment tank up past the encoder strip and above the drive belt. Tech Support says that this too is normal.
Today, after printing only two more 30' x 40"s, I made a print that had a horrible color balance. Since it was a reprint from the printer's hard drive, I did not suspect a file problem and asked the printer to recalibrate the paper. I found that the blue and magenta were not firing. I had the printer clean the printheads and tried another calibration, with the same result.
I then pulled all my printheads and really examined them under bright light. To my horror, I saw that there was again ink all over the lower portion of the sides, but more alarmingly, there was gloss enhancer all over almost all of the gold contacts. The gloss enhancer extended across the whole face, all the way up to the middle of the upper rectangular contacts. My printheads were not firing because the signal was being blocked by gloss enhancer!
I also noticed large pools of ink on the damper (?) where the printhead parks when it cleans itself or rests, and on parts in front of and behind the damper. After about an hour of cleaning, the printer is again firing on all cylinders again and turning out beautiful prints.
My take away from this is that I will need to perform regular, manual cleaning of the printheads as preventative maintenance. I don't plan to always print on Satin stock, but have some concerns about how the printer will perform day in and day out if I use it for moderate to high volume.
Perhaps the smooth fine art stock, which will probably be my most common paper over time, will not have these issues with excess ink. I'd love to think, though, that the marking problem will be solved with the Harman Gloss and would expect it to behave similarly to the Professional Satin.
The learning (and occasionally cursing) process continues . . .
Ron H.
[attachment=3355:attachment] Printhead
[attachment=3356:attachment] Printhead receptacle
[attachment=3357:attachment] Right side
[attachment=3358:attachment] Left side
