Problem printing dark blues

InkjetMall Customer Support Printer Maintenance & Cartridges
1

I have been having a problem with printing for a year now. It started out as a slight shifting of the darker blues toward red. All other colors where printing out fine including very light blues. The problem kept getting worse over time. The darker blues became redder and redder and purples also started to get too red. I cleaned everything, changed the batteries on the carts, and re-profiled my monitor (which I do regularly), ran cleaning cycles, and I do a nozzle check before every batch of printing. Nothing I did seemed to make any difference. To get decent prints, I have to compensate for the color shifting in Lightroom by increasing the saturation on blue and shifting the blue hue toward cyan and the purple hue toward blue. This works out quite well, now that I have it figured out, and I am able to get acceptable prints. But clearly something is not right, and I don’t like having to make adjustments in Lightroom that make my images look wrong on the screen to get them to come out of the printer looking correct.

At some point it occurred to me that I should check the expiration dates on the inks. All of them except the Cyan expired sometime between Dec. 2015 and May 2016, but the problem started before any of the inks had expired. And the Cyan is the freshest of the inks which is the color I seem to be having the problem with. I don’t know what to do at this point. I thought about getting an OEM cyan cart to see if that would help, but decided to ask for advice first.

Thanks in advance.

2

Dear Jen. Sorry for the late reply.

Can you tell me what LOT# you have on your Cyan and Light Cyan carts?

Thanks
Walker

3

I am assuming you mean the lot numbers on the ink bottles. I don’t see lot numbers on the carts. The Cyan is 131120. The Light Cyan is 130115.

4

Ok. Both of these cyans are old. They need to be shaken vigorously before filling the cartridge.

Walker

5

I always shake the carts before filling them–not exactly vigorously–but I have been shaking them all along. I also take the carts out of the printer and agitate them a bit before each batch of printing.

6

hmm. Are you agitating the bottles before fills? This could be effected by settled Magenta or pigment getting into the cartridge during a fill.

-Walker

7

Sorry. I meant I shake the bottles before filling the carts–always.