Pro-100 Grey Colorcast

aboulfad

Getting Fingers Dirty
Joined
Aug 2, 2020
Messages
19
Reaction score
12
Points
38
Location
QC
Printer Model
Canon Pro-100
Hello,

I am having this color cast (right pic) with greys on my Pro-100. I tried to read the RGB values of the photo of my print, and it may be that G is less than the equal R,B. I am using PCSE inks with OEM carts and supplied yellow cart. Recently I was having other issues, in order to eliminate that I inadvertently crossed C/PC & M/PM, i flushed all four and refilled with PCSE. (The PM cart wouldn't fully saturate the bottom sponge but decided to use it as I await order, probably has some water still in it)

Nozzle check, alignment test, cleaning all ok, less than 300 prints, 2yr old Pro-100.

Any ideas what could cause a grey pattern that is not neutral and any suggestion to isolate the problem? Previous to this round, PCSE provided excellent greys (left pic). Thank you!

APC_0154.jpg

APC_0136lex-WB-DCP.jpeg



image001.jpg
 
Last edited:

The Hat

Printer VIP
Platinum Printer Member
Joined
Jan 18, 2010
Messages
15,618
Reaction score
8,691
Points
453
Location
Residing in Wicklow Ireland
Printer Model
Canon/3D, CR-10, CR-10S, KP-3
Any ideas what could cause a grey pattern that is not neutral and any suggestion to isolate the problem? Previous to this round, PCSE provided excellent greys (left pic). Thank you!
Going on what you’ve posted here it seems to me like you’re in so much of a hurry to get your carts refilled as quick as possible, hence the mistake with the Photo colours.

You need to look at your complete refilling procedures and see where your making mistakes and stop taking shortcuts, refilling these CLl-42 carts is very simple, but you need to follow the known guidelines and use Patients as your companion.

I don’t know exactly why your colours are a little bit off but what I can tell, is your refilling your carts to overfull (Not good) and please remember that 99% of all print issues are caused by improper refilling techniques.

This is not meant to be criticism of your methods, merely a helpful tip to you to take things slower and try to enjoy the refilling procedure, it’s not a race that you can win when rushing things and where it will show up later on your print output.

P.S. if your PM cart wont saturated properly, that is caused by over drying the sponge and not from been too wet.. !
 

aboulfad

Getting Fingers Dirty
Joined
Aug 2, 2020
Messages
19
Reaction score
12
Points
38
Location
QC
Printer Model
Canon Pro-100
@The Hat , thank you, I welcome any advice. I wasn’t rushing, maybe nervous the first time I refilled which caused mistakes?

When I flushed and refilled, I did take my time (6d in total). I did the process three times for the M cart as I couldn’t understand why the bottom sponge wouldn’t saturate. Reading another thread here showed that the member drove air in to help the ink migrate better.

I can’t say it was bone dry as it was 13.8g and compared with the other 3 carts that I refilled at 13.65g which were ok. The top sponge saturated bcoz the ink quickly absorbed and migrated towards the top. I will redo the procedure but wanted to join and learn here in case I was repeating the same error in my flushing/refilling procedure.
 

aboulfad

Getting Fingers Dirty
Joined
Aug 2, 2020
Messages
19
Reaction score
12
Points
38
Location
QC
Printer Model
Canon Pro-100
fyi and to keep my progress tracked here. PC suspects I may have mixed grays during refill, so my next action is to flush GY, LGY and re-check. I am filming the refill to eliminate doubts post refill but wont do this just yet as I just topped all my carts. In the end I would have flushed all OEM carts except BK & Y (from PC).

Learnings/observations:

1- It seems even when B&W printing, Pro-100 still uses other colours than GY/LGY/BK carts
2- Grey in CMYK is presented by equal amounts of M,Y.
3- Printing a B&W image using B&W printer setting using PC ICC yields good neutral results for both patterns and photos. (Last pic attached)
4- I printed the same photo of the 3 ladies in color & B&W, in person the colours are stunning!

(3) may indicate that I did not switch any of the Grays ? My analysis of the grayscale pattern strips not using B&W setting yields some different shifts, some more towards Cyan and some other towards magenta/red.

Attached are a comparison of the 51grey steps: left is the original tif img, middle is B&W settings print, right is color print setting from Pro-100, adjusted as much as I can to match WB/exposure/.... In the screenshots, upper right hand, color sampler shows CMYK for a point in each img which I summarized in the tables below.


Table 1: M/Y under
Step 22: Cyan castCMYK
Original4436361
B&W Print4636382
Color Print4929281


Table 2: M over, Y under
Step 33: Magenta castCMYK
Original62545327
B&W Print66545428
Color Print68644628


Step 22.pngStep 33.pngAPC_0208.png
 

aboulfad

Getting Fingers Dirty
Joined
Aug 2, 2020
Messages
19
Reaction score
12
Points
38
Location
QC
Printer Model
Canon Pro-100
I am speechless, after months, 100 test pattern prints, many flushes, refills and ink wasted it all boiled down to one darn silly setting: Print quality setting. see photo...

It is easy to reproduce my issue by printing any grayscale test pattern using Standard and High print quality. :he

print_quality.png
 
Top