Black blobs coming from my Hp z3100 and z3200

[exposestudios]

Hello,
At our studio we run two 44" printers, a z3200 and z3100. Lately both printers are randomly dropping these black/grey blobs onto the paper. When you try to wipe the blob off it appears gooey and leaves a smudge. I believe it's semi dry ink but I'm not sure.  Has anyone any experience with this issue?
I appreciate any input.

[Ernst Dinkla]

Find the service manual, for example in the archives of the yahoo Wide_Inkjet_Printers mailing list.  Take off the right side cover, the SM will guide you. I am able to keep the printer going while I remove the cover but you might put the head carriage in the middle by the head exchange menu selection and then pull the power plug. Clean the maintenance station and make sure everything there is wet and not dried in. Clean the heads and for as far as possible the head carriage. Put the cover back and do not fasten that one screw down there behind the front panel, it will save you 15 minutes work the next time you want to clean the machine. There have been threads on this subject at more places on the web.

Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
December 2014 update, 700+ inkjet media white spectral plots

[Nora_nor]

We had that too, and the maintenance station was very full of gooey ink
Very annoying
I have seen a thread here where someone posted one should clean this once a month, dunno

[William Chitham]

Definitely worth a proper covers off clean if they've done a lot of printing but before you do have a look at the drop detector. There is a felt pad on the side of it which can accumulate a pile of gunk that will eventually be clipped by the underside of the carriage and deposited as small dark spots on the print, usually where the carriage changes direction. You can see this easily with the carriage over to the middle as Ernst describes, and it is pretty easy to scrape the worst off with a piece of card or what have you - just try not to drop any thing down the slot in the drop detector.

William Chitham.

[exposestudios]

Thanks for the advice gentlemen, it's much appreciated. The local tech is on vacation so I'll have to take a Crack at it.
On a side note, is there a method to getting both printers to give the same colour output?
I've done all the calibration I can find but it seems to be a closed looped system as far as tweaking individual colour outputs.