HP Z3200ps - Green ink has changed to dark green

[HCHeyerdahl]

After accidentially having been without power supply for more then a year, I got my HP Z3200 ps to work again.
THE GREEN INK AND PRINT HEAD WERE REPLACED (The "new" being beyond expiry date).
For reference only https://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=143392.msg1258556#msg1258556

However, after a short while the green color shifted to a dark almost wine bottle green. Se attached image of test patch.

Most of my printer heads and inks are beyond expiry date, but I have never had issues whith that before.

Perhaps something has happened to the distribution of dye in the ink?  Perhaps vigourusly shaking the ink could help, but I am concerned about creating airboubles and although I have only printed one print maybe I have already drained to much dye to ever get this right?

Any suggestions on what to do is greatly appreciated.

Chris

[Paul_Roark]

I agitate carts with smooth but quick rotations and inversions.  Shaking can cause small bubbles that can take longer to dissipate.  Even with my monthly agitation of pigment inks in Epson-compatible 9800 carts, I wait over night to turn on the printer.

FWIW

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com
https://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/

[Kyle Jackson]

Hi, yeah that green definitely doesn't look normal. You said this is a newly installed green ink cart and B/G printhead? Are you sure they're legit HP products?

Like Paul said, just basic rolling back and forth to move ink from one end of cart to the other is enough. The ink is quite heavy and you can hear/feel it mixing.

If this really is a pigment mixing issue (don't recall ever seeing that before), it'll take a while for the mixed ink to push through the lines and head to give consistent output. You may notice some colour drifting until it stabilizes so you'll have to repeat cal/profiling/test prints to be sure.

You may want to burn some green ink on a green test print. Note it'll burn some other colour(s) too, since we can't tell the printer to just print one colour channel. But it should be less wasteful than the onboard "Purge Ink Plot" that does all the colours and cooks like 6 ft of paper.

[HCHeyerdahl]

Thank you for your suggestions.

I have some time this week and will se what some agitation of the ink and print head, followed by printing green will do.

Chris

[HCHeyerdahl]

SOLVED: Just to finish the topic:

I removed the green ink and spent a couple of minutes agitating it with smooth rocking and rotating movements for 2 minutes.

I used the image on the botom of this page:
http://z3200.com/Cleaning_HP-Z3200_Print_Heads_Manually.htm
Imported it into Lightroom, made a virtual copy with a crop of only the green part.
I printed about 3 feet /1 metre of this.

Now when I print a diagnostic image fromt the printer panel, the green patch is correct again!

Re-Printing a couple of favorite images confirm that it is printing colors correctly.

Thank you all for valuable comments and suggestions :-)

Chris

[Kyle Jackson]

Hey that's great news, glad that it sorted out! Wild that it went so dark like that, don't recall ever seeing that before.

You probably already did this but I'd recal and re-profile now to make sure it's dialled in.