My MAXIFY 5350 is on refill ink

[stratman]

On text this inaccuracy will not show up. On solid colors it will show a band.

My experience. Crisp text but occasional defects in solid colos, though ONLY in the browns and blacks.

Today, the first article of the day that I printed included several X-Ray images, predominantly black, and showed the traditional banding we've all seen with alternate shades of black. This is different from the defects I posted in an earlier post. The banding began, or was noticeable, on the third printed page with the second X-Ray image. The page beforehand had an X-ray image, number 1, but it appeared OK without defect. Interestingly, X-Ray images number 2 & 3 are side by side on the paper and the 3rd image is significantly worse in banding than it's neighbor despite both images printed with the same print head passes. Subsequent X-Ray images showed significantly less banding or none at all. No, banding is not in the original article images. Text is crisp and black.

Maybe certain images microtrigger the defective response of the printer.

 

[Artur5]

After printing the torture test with the result shown below at left (see the noticeable ink starvation on the black and none at all in CMY), I scanned part of the printed image at 1200 dpi. (pictures middle and right) It’s a weird pattern. Coarse black dots at the darkest left side becoming progressively smaller, which gives the visual gradient to a middle grey.
See the horizontal blank lines between passes of the printhead. It seems that the vertical feeding of the paper is not very accurate. Also, the transition between yellow and black is not sharp, but with an intermediate reddish band and scattered cyan and magenta dots well inside the yellow part. Maybe it’s a combination of mechanical limitations when speed is a priority over accuracy but possibly the driver is playing a part too.
Anyway, I believe that this black banding/starving is not normal and has something to do with my refill system or third part ink. Air inside the bag ?. Excessive viscosity of the Inktec ink ?.

Although this is not a practical issue for me because my MB5150 does pure text 95% of the time, I guess that the only way to know what’s going on is to buy a new OEM black PGI-2500XL cart and see if there’s banding or not.

 

[The Hat]

Another test to try would be to tape the four carts together, with a piece of Sellotape from one side (Cart 1) to the other side (Cart 4), that would limit any vibration cause by speed, and the other would be to do a manual head alignment, not automatic..

This test costs nothing to do and will only take a few minutes..
P.S. Not all pigment inks preform the same and I’m not a fan of OCP pigment ink...

 

[stratman]

see the noticeable ink starvation on the black and none at all in CMY

I see faint horizontal banding in the Cyan. Maybe it is an artifact of scanning or image compression?

Also, the transition between yellow and black is not sharp, but with an intermediate reddish band and scattered cyan and magenta dots well inside the yellow part.

Magnifying your original image file I see this transition issue as well. Maybe it is accentuated in your print, but it is present in your original image.

 

[stratman]

OEM black PGI-2500XL cart and see if there’s banding or not.

We use the same printer. MB5150 = MB5120 The difference is purely regional distribution and cartridge chips hardcoded for each specific region's use only.

I am having banding issues with the the new, never refilled, OEM cartridge that came with the printer. I have also experienced a rare hair's breadth of ink starvation, etiology unknown and may not be related to ink flow at all but instead interplay of paper and transport mechanism.

Other differences between our printers...

You have a 3 year warranty versus my 1 year!

Your user manual probably may also have funny spellings of words like "colour" instead of "color".

 

[Artur5]

You’re right about the reddish transition between black and yellow being already in the original. Now that I looked close there’re overlapping strips in each transition. What it’s not in the original image are those scattered magenta and cyan dots in the yellow sector. I guess this is a driver/color management artifact and not the printer’s fault.
Yes, there’s banding in the cyan and the magenta, but very mild and regular along the width of the page, unlike the noticeable gradient from left to right and vice versa in the black, which is so typical of ink starving.

Don’t get me wrong, at this point I wouldn’t exchange the Maxify with any other printer. but this thing it’s bothering me. Either it’s a hardware failure of my unit or the problem lies in the ink/refilling procedure and I intend to find out.

 

[mikling]

When looking at B&W Xrays, you do realize that this is demanding on the printer on plain paper settings. It is easily a B&W photo and the slight changes in the Xray MEAN something to the viewer so keep that in mind. This printer is optimized for text and not really for B&W images which is very demanding on any printer, even photo printers. For things like Xrays, I would think that a machine like the MG/TS is more what is required. A true desktop machine also meant to occasional high quality prints.

If you are getting pixelation and neat blocks of pixelation, this comes down to the printer design limitations and/or driver.
What you might want to do is to change the media to photo paper and then print high quality and see if the pixelation disappears. The black channel is then removed from the output. Additionally,/alternatively change to matte photo paper and test the printing again and see if the pixelation disappears. That should clarify the situation.

 

[Redbrickman]

Your user manual probably may also have funny spellings of words like "colour" instead of "color"

Yes mine has that funny spelling, it seems we are at variance on some spellings that didn't quite make it across the big pond corectly

What I found hard to understand when first watching US created You Tube videos on making electronic projects is that they refer to "Soddering" and "Rosin cored Sodder". At first I was wondering what Sodder and Rosin was and then I realised that they actually meant Solder with an L and only one D, and Resin instead of Rosin

Of course when using that Soddering iron it's also best to set it on a well designed "Aluminum" stand when not in use. Could that actually refer to an alloy used in the aircraft inductry that we know as Alumin"I"um

Then there are less than subtle differences. Ask for a "Fanny" pack here in a store in UK and you may get a few weird looks From searches on line it appears your nation got parts of the anatomy mixed up and the consequences doesn't bear thinking about

 

[The Hat]

Yes mine has that funny spelling

@Redbrickman, I could read you post all day about the incorrect spelling, but @stratman is ok with it, because he keeps a thesaurus to hand when re-reading my posts..

As you say the written word didn’t travel well, but at least the Aussies had the good sense to make up all their own new words..

It’s all a bit of good Craic..

 

[stratman]

Seems you boys are the ones speaking/spelling it wrong.

An important reason why American English and British English sound different is rhotacism, the change of a particular sound in a language. In this case, that sound is “r.” The standard American accent—what Americans think of as having no accent—is rhotic, meaning that speakers pronounce their “r’s.” Received Pronunciation (aka typical British accents) is non-rhotic, so words like “card” are pronounced like “cahd.”

At first, English speakers in the colonies and England used a rhotic accent. But after the Revolutionary War, upper class and upper-middle class citizens in England began using non-rhotic speech as a way to show their social status. Eventually, this became standard for Received Pronunciation and spread throughout the country, affecting even the most popular British phrases. Americans kept their rhotic accent—for the most part. Port cities on the East Coast, especially in New England, had a lot of contact with the R-less Brits. So if you always wondered why Boston natives pahk theyah cahs to pahty hahd with a glass of cabahnet, thank rhotacism.

https://www.rd.com/culture/american-british-accents/

And, yes, I need a decoder ring to understand our fearless Moderator sometimes. He's like the feckin' Enigma Machine at times.