Oh yes. I had a 30 minute conference call with several folks at HP in Barcelona on Tuesday. I had also worked with one of the people in their Customer Assurance group for a day or so using email. She had asked me to check and reset a couple of parameters, run a head clean and a diagnostic pattern check, then try a print using a new profile and test print created off the Proofing Gloss Paper type which runs at a high head setting.
On the diagnostic pattern I see banding on the matt black patch. As I’ve not run any matt paper this shouldn’t have affected anything I've done, but it will need to be cured at some point if the printer stays. After resetting the papers and making the new profile I ran the same test print I'd been using before, a dark reflection off the ocean of a pre-dawn sky. R/G/B = 40/50/70 if I remember right.
I didn't see any head strikes this time, although the paper buckled pretty badly, in fact the pics I posted above came from this test. I though it was a little less buckle than I had seen before, but it easy to say that and I didn't take any photos last time. The image looked flatter though (pun intended, ie less contrast). I did try my old ICC profile customer paper setup for HM FAP and also didn't see a head strike this time. I did see the wide band I've always seen along the bottom of the print, 1/4" wide about 1/2" from the bend of the print. In one of the images I posted with the close up of the zebra stripe you can see it cutting through the stripe column.
I had also been asked about the humidity here, so I bought a temp/humidity gauge, a cheap analog one for the garden. It was at 40% on Monday night when I tried the tests, but it could have been lower when I started the machine up as we had some frigid air in Mass at that time. Someone said that HM have a tight spec for their papers, 40-60, but the PDF got HM FAP says 35-65.
The discussion on Tuesday morning was interesting, a lot of it within the HP attendees, including; architect, customer assurance, sales, colour engineering and others I believe. I captured the following, pretty much all of which revolved around getting the right amount of ink on the paper to prevent this, not about re-engineering it to keep the paper flat; calibration problem with the paper causing too much ink to be deposited, ink vs GE ratios, humidity...there might have been one or 2 other, I don't have my notes, but I think those were the main ones I picked up. When I mentioned that the test print I ran using the Proof gloss paper setting was flat they said this was to be expected as it uses less ink. It was clear that this was just a test they were asking me to run, not any kind of a solution.
One of the architects will be in the US next week and is planning to visit on Monday. I may try some HM PR 308 prints over the weekend given the positive results people have reported. I'd like to see how much it buckles, and I have a ton of Epson 4000 prints for comparison, but I'll have to fix the MK banding first. I also plan to startup a humidifier I have and run it to get the humity up to 50% on at leas tone day and try the HM FAP again.