Xerox Phaser 8500 Color Problems

[Dogfood1]

Hi, I may cross-post this to the design forum...

Anyway, I cannot get my Xerox 8500 to print red correctly. I've been through all the diagnostics, troubleshooting, web-surfing, phone-calling and general expletive filled tirades with no satisfaction.

Does anyone a) have one of these, and b) have any idea how to get colors (red specifically) to print properly?

It can't even print the Xerox 'Pantone' Red on the start-up and diagnostic sheets right, but the test strips all match. This is crazy.

Thanks for the help if can...

Dogfood1

 

[cjhutch]

I had this problem with a printer at work which is a Phaser 7600. I was able to fix it pretty easily. You first need to make sure you are leaving your printer on all the time and the Phasers are meant to be high volume printers and if you don't use it that much what happens is some of the ink starts to dry up and keeps it from printing true bright red. I'm guessing you are getting either orange or burnt orange when you are printing. So, go and print like 20 pages in a row that all have a high red content and see if it gets better. That's how I figured out the problem at my job.

 

[Dogfood1]

Ugh!

Yeah - it's totally burn orange, like Texas Longhorn orange. Ten pages lightened it up a little. At that rate, it will take a ream of paper (and some ink sticks) to get the red back. Why only red? If I disable sleep will that help?

I have this in my home office, maybe I should Craigslist it and get a laser....

Other ideas, solutions, recommendations and advice appreciated!

 

[cjhutch]

Hmm, excuse my misprint earlier but the printer we are using is actually a 7760. Anyways, we use ours to print signage and have all the colors calibrated. I'm not sure if the 8500 is as precise as the 7760, but I would imagine it shouldn't be that much different. Have you checked the print heads? I know when I did ours I printed about 20 sheets on thick card stock paper which requires a lot of ink coverage so I'm not sure what that would translate to for what you are printing. The only reason I knew it wasn't the print heads on ours was because it was only 2 months old and was used twice due to a networking issue. The software that comes built in with the Phaser 7760 is PhaserMatch 4.0, but even if the 8500 does not have that I'm sure it at least has TekColor to calibrate the colors. It's probably on the CD that came with the printer.

 

[Dogfood1]

Thanks for the additional suggestions. The software that came with mine doesn't have a color calibration tool, unfortunately. All other suggestions have not changed the color. Bummer - burned through a bunch of ink too.

Anyone want to buy a Phaser 8500? Works great - especially if you love Tomato Red...!

Thanks.

DF

 

[Dogfood1]

Thanks Xerox CS

Just to follow-up. I had a no-charge call with tier-2 Xerox tech support today. I explained the 'Red' situation and his reply? Are you ready?

"Yeah, that printer just doesn't do red well."

He went on to tell me that I'm never going to get a true-red out of it. Nothing can be done other than play with the sliders to tweak the color palate, but what I see in CMYK as 0/100/100/0 will never look that way printed.

Nice.

 

[mrgreen4242]

Just to follow-up. I had a no-charge call with tier-2 Xerox tech support today. I explained the 'Red' situation and his reply? Are you ready?

"Yeah, that printer just doesn't do red well."

He went on to tell me that I'm never going to get a true-red out of it. Nothing can be done other than play with the sliders to tweak the color palate, but what I see in CMYK as 0/100/100/0 will never look that way printed.

Nice.

That's crazy! We have an 8200 at my work and I like it quite a bit. We had a bit of trouble with it last month with 4 service calls in about 12 days for various mechanical issues, but they were all covered under warranty. We put 220,000 pages through it with almost no issues, and now that it's got about 10 major parts/systems replaced I expect another 100,000 out of it before we replace it.

My advice: buy an used* 8200 on eBay, they're getting pretty cheap and the ink isn't too bad when you buy generic.

*Hey grammar Nazi's: since the a/an rule is based on phonetics, and for some reason saying an used sounds weird to me - a used sounds correct - is there some exception to the a/an rule I'm not aware of that would make "a used" correct?

 

[IJ Reilly]

*Hey grammar Nazi's: since the a/an rule is based on phonetics, and for some reason saying an used sounds weird to me - a used sounds correct - is there some exception to the a/an rule I'm not aware of that would make "a used" correct?

Before a pronounced "h" or long "u" the indefinite article should be "a" -- so "a used" is correct.

BTW, it's "grammar Nazis," unless you really meant the possessive form, for some reason.