An update on our Latex 360 printer

Back in November I posted about the blurry print issue on our Latex 360, if you haven’t read it it: Knock yourself out. Turns out the faulty ink level sensor wasn’t the end of the errors.

All seemed well initially after the Optimizer ink level sensor was replaced, but the feeling of triumph lasted only until the following week, when the fine text started blurring out again. For a while File System Scan would correct the issue though it started to become less effective. Luckily our service contract kicked in. Armed with the knowledge that a file system scan tended to help things HP opted to replace the hard drive.

The tech came out the next day and installed the hard drive and things seemed better. Test prints were clearer than they had been, though looking through a loupe they didn’t look exactly the same as samples from a year ago. I asked the tech about it and possible causes, but apparently the Latex techs are more “Parts Replacers” than diagnosticians. I find the Scitex techs (the real HP Scitex techs) tend to know more about the inner workings of the machines. We decide it’s good enough to run.

Of course, about 15 minutes after the tech left, and while printing a job, the print started blurring again.  I pulled out my old bag of tricks and ran a File System Scan. It didn’t work. Not really sure what else to do I ended up disabling the OMAS for my media profile. It printed perfectly. If you read the previous post about this you’ll remember that when I disabled the OMAS previously it didn’t change the print characteristics even though it appeared cracked and I had reservations about it.

Armed with this new new found knowledge HP said they would replace the OMAS. I wasn’t there for that but seems pretty straight forward, replace/calibrate. It’s been printing perfectly since.

That is to say PRINTING perfectly.

Yesterday we had a new code popping up repeatedly: 25.6:10, which is the yellow ink level sensor isn’t reading properly. When the Optimizer ink level sensor acted up I had a 79:04 which was a Generic Firmware Error. I looked in the service manual and the suggestions were to reseat the cartridge (no effect), check the contacts (clean), try a different cartridge (we didn’t have one, this yellow was replaced the previous afternoon), if they all fail replace the sensor.

So I call HP, and apparently he was reading the service manual also and we went down each item as previously stated. It came down to cartridge or sensor. He was fairly certain it was the cartridge since it started after this cartridge was installed, but he couldn’t send one out until it was confirmed this cartridge was faulty. So we put a new new yellow cartridge on order. About an hour later the code 25.6:10 changed to a “Faulty Ink Cartridge” code. Now it was officially faulty, showing 0 mL when full, and they were able to ship out a new cartridge under warranty.

That arrived today, and the printer recognized the cartridge and we’re able to print, but it wasn’t long until the 25.6:10 started popping up again. And it doesn’t just pop up, it repeatedly pops up, so you’ll click ok and it doesn’t look like it did anything. It’s just that there are multiple errors.

Back on the phone with HP and they’re sending the tech out to replace the yellow ink level sensor. Hopefully we’ll be good to go for a while after that.