red prints plotter hp 130

[danielhaze]

Hi

I have a hp 130 plotter, it uses 6 cartridges, and from some time now it is printing the gray as red, I tested the headprints and the light cyan is clogged (50%). My question is if that printhead is totally responsible for the change of color? or it is because of the printhead among other things?

Thanks in advance

 

[PeterBJ]

Grey is often printed as a mixture of cyan, magenta and yellow and if they are present sometimes also light cyan and light magenta. If cyan and/or light cyan is missing or too week the grey is shifted towards red/pink. I once experienced an old HP DeskJet printer printing headlines in pink instead of grey from a PDF file. The printer used one tricolour and one black cartridge and cyan had run out. With another tricolour cartridge printing returned to normal.

I think the print head and/or cyan/light cyan cartridge is causing the problem. Could you upload a nozzle test print?

 

[danielhaze]

Hi thanks for answering.

the plotter has cyan and light cyan, so what intrigues me is if the printer is using pure cyan that I suppose should have a bigger effect in the image than the light cyan why do I get a result (red) so far than the expected (gray). It gets even more confusing when I tray to print lets say some phrases in word, then I get pure dark black letter as if the priter only was using the black cartridge, but if instead I paste an image in word and try to print it in grayscale the red comes back again.

 

[PeterBJ]

The default text colour in MS Word is black. If you haven't changed this it will be printed using only the black cartridge. Grey is mixed from more colours and if cyan is failing grey will be replaced by some kind of red.

Here is a service manual covering your printer and other models, and here is a parts list with diagrams for Designjets 120 and 130. Maybe you will find some useful info?

Could you upload a print of a print quality check, nozzle check or what HP call it? If possible post also a crop from a document showing the error.