Z3100 Firmware upgrade & blue to cyan shift

[SimonOlding]

I have had a recent problem occur with my Z3100 which has caused me to attempt a firmware upgrade. The initial problem was a sudden and significant shift in colour of blues towards cyan which has occurred on 3 out of 3 paper stocks. The issue seems only to shift a certain colour range and not induce a colour cast though other colours or neutrals. Papers have been re linearised through the printer and printed exactly the same way through Photoshop with PS manages colours as I have been using for two years without change. I have done a nozzle check and all nozzles have are firing cleanly.

The only changes I have made recently have been replacing ink carts, Grey and Light grey being the most recent before the problem occured, both of which were the second carts in  twin packs.

As part of the  trouble shooting process I have attempted to do a firmware upgrade from 6.0.0.8 to the current 7.0.0.3-7. I can not get this upgrade to proceed without crashing the web server or print utility. I have tried using USB and ethernet. As soon as I browse to the .fwm file the application crashes. Even the HP proactive Support interface, which downloaded the update fails to open the embedded web server.

Is it necessary to upgrade to a lower firmware version first?

I am running a Mac Pro 2x2.66 DC xenon, 10GB Ram, OS X 10.5.7

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.


Regards

Simon

[Colorwave]

I had a very similar thing happen a few months ago, which caused much angst.  As best I recall, it resolved itself (after many other failed attempts at other solutions) by reinstalling the printer driver and utility.  I am certain that I did not reinstall the firmware.  I don't have any insight for you regarding your firmware upgrade.  I've had issues with past ones breaking things and did not see any improvements mentioned on the HP website, so I haven't bothered to upgrade to the most recent firmware.  Best of luck, and keep us posted.

[SimonOlding]

I have done some further tests on this problem.
I printed the same test file I use from a powerbook running 10.4.11 and CS2 and got exactly the same results. The blues are affected and almost all other tones are true. This is exactly as I get from CS3 or CS4 using OS 10.5.7 and the 6.0.0.8 firmware.

I used the powerbook to upload the latest 7.0.0.3-7 firmware and reprinted. Exactly the same result using CS4 as before.

I have installed the latest drivers and printer utility. Every other functions seems to be perfectly fine.

My only conclusion left is that there is a contaminated ink somewhere.

I have posted an image comparison if anyone cares to comment on the shift. These images were printed on Museo Portfolio rag, the top one is the correct rendition relative to the screen, the bottom is the current changed rendering. The image most affected is the landscape with the blue/magenta sky which shifts dramatically to cyan. I replaced the light grey, then the grey inks before this happened but it may have taken a while for the lines to bleed from old ink to new so I am not sure how longit would take to test a new cart.

Image: http://www.iccimagetec.com.au/publicimages...0_blueshift.jpg

Thanks for any comments.

Simon

[Colorwave]

An easy way to double check for ink contamination is to run a fresh calibration.  There is no ink mixing, and the direction for what to print comes internally from the printer, so you should be able to confirm if there is contaminated ink rather conclusively with the results from your calibration.