Samsung CLP-680 Laser Printer - Colour Misaligned

[steamship]

About 90% of things I print are B&W so not sure when this issue surfaced. Anything printed in colour has the yellow colour offset to the others by around 5-6mm. Looking at the demo page printed (the butterfly image), the 'Color Xpression' logo in the corner of the page (three offset boxes, one green, one red and one blue), it looks like it is only the yellow cartridge that is offset. I'm running Windows 10 and it doesn't matter what application I print from (Word, Excel or even Paint). Also tried an older Windows 7 laptop.

The printer is using genuine Samsung toner cartridges and I'm using the very latest drivers downloaded from the HP site (who now support Samsung printers). Have tried various suggestions I've seen for other laser printers like removing cartridges, powering on, wait for error message, power off, insert cartridges, power on, go to Image Manager and run Auto Color Reg., but no success.

The printer has printed less than 3,000 pages and the toner cartridges are at 49% for the black and 69% for the colours, and I've only printed 254 pages in colour.

 

[The Hat]

Most likely your colours will need a new realignment, in the printer properties there should be a way to recalibrate the colours, like with a head alignment, if that doesn’t work then there are ways to manually retune the timing with some tools.. A service manual would be a good place to start..

 

[stratman]

Welcome to the forum, steamship.

Googling your issue came up with one novel resolution:

"change from the Samsung Driver to the PCL driver"

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardw...ung-clp-620nd-colour-laser-print-quality.html

You need to be a member of that forum to see the OP's images of his problem and to download the Service Manual someone posted.

Also, one answer gives the procedure for entering a "secret" menu system where you can find manual alignment settings.

 

[stratman]

A Service Manual is easily found with Google using the following search terms - "samsung clp 680 service manual"

 

[steamship]

Most likely your colours will need a new realignment, in the printer properties there should be a way to recalibrate the colours, like with a head alignment, if that doesn’t work then there are ways to manually retune the timing with some tools.. A service manual would be a good place to start..

Thanks, but have tried the Auto Colour Registration several times to no effect, as well as updating all my Windows drivers. One thing I did think about whilst doing test prints is that it must be a hardware issue and not a software issue because I'm doing the test prints from the printer itself.

Welcome to the forum, steamship.

Googling your issue came up with one novel resolution:

"change from the Samsung Driver to the PCL driver"

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardw...ung-clp-620nd-colour-laser-print-quality.html

You need to be a member of that forum to see the OP's images of his problem and to download the Service Manual someone posted.

Also, one answer gives the procedure for entering a "secret" menu system where you can find manual alignment settings.

You wouldn't believe it, but the second response given by Oaktech I've had printed previously and has been sitting on my printer ever since, having tried it several times to no avail.

A Service Manual is easily found with Google using the following search terms - "samsung clp 680 service manual"

After I made my original post I decided to see if I could track down a service manual and eventually found one on a Russian site. I've been through the entire PDF and every menu option in the Tech menu but there is nothing on being able to manually adjust the offsets. I've even tried printing the Auto Colour Registration (ACR) pages before and after running the ACR routine, but the results are pretty much the same. I tried attaching the PDF here but it says it's too big unfortunately.

What I did notice on the ACR printout, which is 2 pages long with 10 page results (assuming the last 10 pages printed) is what I see as the potential problem. I've attached a portion of the printout. The interesting number is the number 6 in the Y-offset line as the others are around the 100 mark, and the 6 represents the Yellow cartridge.

There is an option to reset the NVM (Non-Volatile Memory) to factory settings which I'm thinking of trying, and also possibly trying to locate and install an older version of the firmware.

 

[stratman]

Let us know what happens. Good luck.