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Grainy prints on HP Latex L26500
Hi Guys
Im all new to this machine and have been spending the past week printing out test images on a variety of media. I have been geting a grainy issue with most prints, especially on vinyl media both gloss and matt. Been using Image perefct brand from Spandex for these. I have included images below of the issues on these test prints. I cant seem to get a true solid colour and it shows up reall y bad especially on Yellow and light browns as you can see. Ony colur that doesnt seem affected is black.
any help for this newbie would be so much appreciated before i rip all my hair out lol
Steve
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3 Replies
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Few easy things to check, may not be the cause but worth checking anyway…
1. Do a clean
2. Do a nozzle test print/check state of print heads
3. Check your media profile is correct, try installing a different self adhesive profile -
So far I have done the following
cleaned printheads
Aligned print heads
Adjusted drying temp up and downIll change the profile today and see what I can come up with. Cant be the medi itself as I know someone that uses this exact media and has the same machine and they seem to do ok with it. I cant get hold of them to ask about it currently as they are away on holiday for 2 weeks.
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The first thing I would try and rule out is my profile. Get this wrong and no matter what else you do, the problem will still be there.
The best advice I was ever given, was by Hugh on these forums. I basically use the same profile for practically everything. At first I didn’t think this would work, but so far, it’s been magical. Obviously, for materials very sensitive to heat, you may need to make some slight adjustments, curing, drying, vac etc, but I found my magic profile to work for most of what I use.
So, for testing purposes, you need to use a profile you have used before, printing an image that regularly comes out perfect for you, using the same media you printed the image onto before. At least you should then be able to rule out all of those 3 things.Secondly, make sure you’re using genuine inks. I tried using a ‘guaranteed’ replacement ink for my printer and had issues with colour. First my reds, then blues. I switched back to nothing but genuine and it’s made a marked difference.
And last, the print heads. I found that even though some of my PH’s were still well within warranty and had only fired 2-300ml, they had issues. If you have a set of spares, try swapping out whichever ones appear to be causing the problems (in your case it looks like the black/yellow).
The problem is, and I found this out myself, you now can’t tell what works unless it actually fixes the issue. And what I mean by this is, you could try a brand new profile with the same results, but you still wouldn’t know if it was the profile or one of the other issues.
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