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Author Topic: HP Z3100: Can't profile Epson Enhanced Matte  (Read 7777 times)

alpard78

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HP Z3100: Can't profile Epson Enhanced Matte
« on: April 27, 2012, 02:58:29 pm »

Hello,

I recently bought a used Z3100 24" in good conditions. I had to change the belt and I cleaned the carriage, printheads, and carefully cleaned the Spectophotometer because it had some remains of ink spray. I replaced a worn printhead. I calibrated everything, paper advance, color, etc.

I have successfully created profiles for the two following media:
* Epson Ultra Premium Luster Photo paper
* Lexjet Metallic Paper

Last night I received a new roll of Epson Enhanced Matte. I started by creating a new paper preset, named it, then named the ICC profile. After loading the roll, the Z3100 then printed the small colored pattern (for calibration, it's always the first step), it waited for it to dry, then the carriage came out and started reading the pattern.
Everything was normal until now. But then, just after the sensor finished reading (I assume it's calculating) the front panel suddenly says "Cancelling" and the whole process stops. The computer then shows a message "Calibration failed, try again" or something in that lines and the process also stops.

I tried repeating the process with different settings (matte photo paper, Professional Matte Photo, even Premium Instant Dry just to see if it would even finish), rebooting both the printer and PC with no success. It always does the same, prints the first pattern, reads it, then cancels itself...

Just to confirm if I had a sensor failure, I loaded the Luster paper and run a calibration to it. Printed, read and finished with no problems! I've seen other people are able to calibrate this particular paper, so any help is appreciated.

One more note: I had to uninstall Internet Explorer 9 as a solution to a failure in the HP Color Center software (I read this somewhere). In the Color Center software, when trying to open the "Profile Paper" option, the window would show up briefly and then disappear. So I solved that, but the problem with the calibration on Epson Enhanced Matte persists. I think I saw this behavior before with HP Collector Satin Canvas, but that one is know because the way the texture reflects light in all directions would cause inaccurate readings... but with Matte paper???.

I tried both using the USB port and also the Ethernet cable. Both communicated well, same problem happened.

My Z3100 has the FW 7 version.
Any ideas? thank you!
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chichornio

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Re: HP Z3100: Can't profile Epson Enhanced Matte
« Reply #1 on: April 27, 2012, 04:23:28 pm »

I have had very good results using the HP canned profile of the HP Litographic paper. Tray to use this paper preset and only calibrate the paper. It worked for me.
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alpard78

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Re: HP Z3100: Can't profile Epson Enhanced Matte
« Reply #2 on: April 27, 2012, 05:42:22 pm »

Thank you,
The problem is that even if I use another paper preset, I can't calibrate the paper itself, it cancels the process and gives me an error, reports it as not calibrated.
There seems to be some issue with this particular paper because as soon as I calibrated another paper it succeeded, went back to the Matte and failed again.

Another option... Does anybody have a proper ICC profile for the Epson Enhanced Matte on a Z3100 with FW 6 or later that you are willing to share?.

Thanks!
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Ian99

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Re: HP Z3100: Can't profile Epson Enhanced Matte
« Reply #3 on: April 27, 2012, 07:14:53 pm »

I have sent a PM.
I have a profile that was created with no problem.

Ian
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alpard78

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Re: HP Z3100: Can't profile Epson Enhanced Matte
« Reply #4 on: April 27, 2012, 09:36:24 pm »

Thank you Ian!
I sent you my e-mail in a private message to your account.
I'll try it and let you know how it works.

If anybody has ideas as why my Z3100 won't calibrate this matte media but will calibrate luster and glossy with no problems please shoot your ideas.

Thanks,
-Alvaro
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Ernst Dinkla

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Re: HP Z3100: Can't profile Epson Enhanced Matte
« Reply #5 on: April 28, 2012, 04:38:55 am »


If anybody has ideas as why my Z3100 won't calibrate this matte media but will calibrate luster and glossy with no problems please shoot your ideas.

Thanks,
-Alvaro

Still keeping an XP system at hand here for more software that is not becoming better with every OS change. It is the most reliable system to do calibrations and profiling on the Z3100 + Z3200 too. Even then I have to restart the printers from time to time to keep those features going. That is purely a software issue your problem seems different. I have had problems like that but can not recall exactly what the reason was.

Did you calibrate other matte papers?  Which media preset did you use to create the custom media preset for EEM/EAM? Are the gloss profiles. gloss prints as good as they can be?  There could be an issue with the spectrometer or there could be an expectation in the software  for certain values that are not met, based on the chosen media preset. Just a guess. Some media presets even do not allow calibration if I recall it correctly, bond paper category.

I must have an APS created Z3100 profile for EEM somewhere. Probably based on HP Matte Litho-Realistic. Not the best choice after all if I compare the spectral plots, HP Premium Matte should fit better + has a similar weight.


--
Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

340+ paper white spectral plots:
http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
update april 2012: Harman by Hahnemühle, Innova IFA45 and more


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alpard78

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Re: HP Z3100: Can't profile Epson Enhanced Matte
« Reply #6 on: April 28, 2012, 11:59:41 pm »

Hi Ernst,

I think I'm close to nail this problem down. I have been able to calibrate and profile glossy and luster media but not ANY of my matte medias: Epson Enhanced Matte Photo paper or Epson Exhibition Canvas Matte.
For both of these I have tried different flavors of settings in Color Center with no success. I used to have a Z3200 and I know that the software is flaky, but the fact that glossy and luster media Calibrate properly and create profiles with no problems and I can't get pass the Calibration with ANY Matte media indicates to me that the printer is not reading the Calibration patch properly due to programming (firmware).

I think there's a bug with FW 7.0.0.3. I read a post in the HP forums about the exact same problem. The guy involved explained how the technicians changed almost every part in the printer that could cause this with no success (PCA, Formatter, Carriage, Spectrophotometer...), he never mentions about trying to go back to FW 6.0.0.8.
Some other guy solved this same problem by replacing a printhead because it was not laying down the patch to be read. I hope my problem was that easy! all the patches show up properly. The patches for the Color Calibration are different for Matte or Glossy as you know. The black ink is different.

Could you confirm something to me? In my printer, with glossy/luster media, the calibration patch prints strips of hexagons with 10 inks while with Matte media there are 11 strips of hexagons. Is it the same with yours? See the quick cellphone image I attached. On top, the glossy, on bottom the Matte, see the extra Black strip on the left. I assume this is the Matte Black ink, not used in Glossy media.

I also checked the error log in the printer and all of these errors are 94:08. They are related to the sensor but gives some hint at an error in a specific line of the code, blames "writing systems". I think HP screwed something up with this FW version. I don't believe it's a sensor failure since it's able to do the whole thing right with non-matte media.

Anyway, what I did is that I loaded the paper as "HP Lithorealistic Matte" and then used Ian's profile in Photoshop to print. It worked very well, thank you... But I want to solve this problem. I still have the Epson Exhibition Canvas and also a Hanhemuhle Textured Matte that I need to calibrate but I haven't found any ICC profiles for the Z3100 and those media out there...

Last thing I tried last night was to reinstall FW version 6.0.0.8 but the only file I found out there for download was unsuccessful... HP does not have it in their website anymore.

Do you have a copy of the FW 6.0.0.8 file (about 360MB) that you are willing to share with me?.
Or do you know somebody who might have it? I will start another post for this file and also the ICC profiles I need, I might get lucky and get by for the meantime.

Thank you!
-Alvaro
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Ian99

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Re: HP Z3100: Can't profile Epson Enhanced Matte
« Reply #7 on: April 29, 2012, 07:27:07 pm »

Alvaro,
I know you have experience with the Z3200 and have successfully profiled some glossy papers on the Z3100, but I can’t help but think that your problem is related to the presets you chose before starting the calibration. Some comments:

1.   Yes, to answer your question, Matte has 10 hexagons and glossy has 11 in the calibration strip.

2.   The profile I created was done on FW 7.0.0.3 and I think the preset was “Fine Art Paper”, but it might have been “Photo Paper Matte”, the only difference between the two is the “ink limit”. 

3.   In my very poor understanding of the process combined with HP’s Color Center (surely one of the worst pieces of software inflicted on mankind), the process of dealing with a new paper is in two parts. First you select a Preset, from among the limited choices available to you. Then you rename your paper and calibrate it.

4.   Choosing the Preset used to be some kind of mystery until I found the following pdf which explains it to some degree:

http://h10088.www1.hp.com/gap/Data/Z2100&Z3100_Working_with_other_commercially-available_paper.pdf

So now what I do is pick something from the allowed list which comes close to the paper I want to calibrate and go from there.


Before wandering off with FW 6, I suggest you use one of the presets I mentioned in point 2 above, and go from there. If that does not work then you have something very strange going on.

Ian
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alpard78

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Re: HP Z3100: Can't profile Epson Enhanced Matte
« Reply #8 on: April 30, 2012, 01:48:23 pm »

Hi Ian,

When I created the Paper Preset for the Epson Enhanced Matte (EEM) in Color Center, I tried it several times choosing the following on the presets:
* Photo Paper: Photo Paper Matte
* Photo Paper: HP Litho-Realistic Matte
* Fine Art Paper: HP Matte Canvas (I only tried this to see if I could cheat since being Matte it would use the same patterns to Calibrate and Profile).

None of them worked. The failure mode was exactly the same in all of them. When it finishes scanning the Calibration patch, it suddenly displays "Cancelling..." "Calibration failed due to scanning problems" and on the PC a message pops "Calibration Failed, please try again".

So, I moved on, I have a new roll of Epson Exhibition Canvas that I needed to create a Paper Preset for so I started the process, I chose:
* Fine Art: HP Professional Matte Canvas

Needless to say, it also failed to even calibrate. So, my problem is narrowed to ALL Matte media.
There's no error codes, but I noticed that with each failure, it recorded a warning, here's the list of warnings, all of them are 94:08. See the two images attached describing the warning. It's funny that it points to Writing Systems and a line of code in a particular file.

So I thought that the Firmware got corrupted since it always points to that file. I reloaded FW 7.0.0.3 from scratch, successfully. I also removed the Formatter in the printer and blew away tons of dust. Then I tried to Calibrate the Epson Matte paper... same fail mode again! So it's not FW, at least that has been proven.

Tonight I will try to load Color Center and all the drivers in my wife's laptop, just to see if it's a SW issue in my particular laptop, even though I uninstalled and reinstalled everything twice. I know sometimes there are leftovers in the Registry that mess up things.

Lastly, just two more thoughts:
1)  The date/time in the printer is ahead by almost a day. If you see one of the images I attached, it says April 30th and I did this last night (29th) at around 9PM. I didn't find anywhere on the printer or color center to change that. I just wonder if the date mismatch to the computer gives problems when trying to save the calibration file or whatever...
2)  My printer has the HPGL2 upgrade but I've never used it. Is there an advantage for fine art/photography prints? I read that is mostly for CAD applications.

I'll let you know what happens. Let me know your thoughts.
Thanks!

-Alvaro
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Alberto dy

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Re: HP Z3100: Can't profile Epson Enhanced Matte
« Reply #9 on: April 30, 2012, 06:22:56 pm »

the HP service manual say:

System Error: 94:YZ
Color calibration Error.
Try the following:
Profiling failed due to a different error (not algorithm / data processing).
Perform the Color Sensor (ESP) calibration. You must use glossy paper for
this calibration.
 If the System Error continues, replace the Carriage PCA
If the System Error continues, replace the Formatter

System Error: 94.1:YZ
Profiling algorithm failed.
Try the following:
Profiling failed due to a different error (not algorithm / data processing).
Perform the Color Sensor (ESP) calibration. You must use glossy paper for
this calibration.
If the System Error continues, replace the Carriage PCA
If the System Error continues, replace the Formatter
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alpard78

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Re: HP Z3100: Can't profile Epson Enhanced Matte
« Reply #10 on: May 01, 2012, 02:45:51 pm »

Alberto,

I tried calibrating the ESP sensor last night with success, but it didn't use the paper or even moved the carriage at all, I don't know if that's normal. I also tried Drop Detect sensor calibration and Line Sensor calibration with success. When I tried the Scan Axis test it failed because it couldn't detect voltage feedback from the Power supply fan and the test stopped. I know the fan is turning, I've seen it when I disassembled the printer.

So after all of these messing around I tried to calibrate... failed. I tried it directly from the control panel.
Any more ideas? I can only point to a faulty ESP sensor, but it said it calibrated fine.

Thanks,
-Alvaro P.
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djhs

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Re: HP Z3100: Can't profile Epson Enhanced Matte
« Reply #11 on: February 07, 2013, 10:52:47 am »

Hi

We have just started the get this problem, Did you ever sort it?

Kind regards

Darren
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alpard78

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Re: HP Z3100: Can't profile Epson Enhanced Matte
« Reply #12 on: February 07, 2013, 11:57:32 am »

Hi there,
No, unfortunately I couldn't fix it. I'm suspecting that the electronics of the spectophotometer on the carriage PCA or even on the main power supply PCA have gone bad. I got a hold of a new power supply and will replace it as soon as the thing fails completely but so far I've been able to keep printing as usual.
My workaround to create icc profiles has been to go to the internet and look for the icc profiles done with the specific paper on this printer. So far so good, I don't use that many papers.
Sorry... if there's any updates I'll let you know, it's frustrating, I know.

Oh, I'm also suspecting that a blotch of ink from the service station somehow got into the little window of the spectophotometer but you have to disassemble the whole carriage to get to this so I haven't tried it yet.

-Alvaro P.
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djhs

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Re: HP Z3100: Can't profile Epson Enhanced Matte
« Reply #13 on: February 07, 2013, 01:59:49 pm »

Thanks for the prompt reply.

I tried cleaning the Spectro, but still the same problem.  Its totally bizarre on how it will calibrate satin or gloss medias with no problems.  Also profiles that I have created in the past cannot be exported as they are not listed when you try to export them in the HP Utility.  I am thinking that the software or profiles on the printer have got corrupt somehow.

Does anyone now how to reset these machine back to the factory settings?, the onboard reset seems to do nothing!

Kind regards

Darren
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