Phaser 850 distorting or burning ink colors

[mark37857]

I've always had a problem with my 850 "burning" the ink and causing colors to distort. For instance, if I want to print a medium blue block on a page, it will come out purple unless I run about 200 sheets, then it starts turning blue in stripes, finally turning the whole block blue. Green colors are coming out brown until I run a bunch of copies. I don't have much color print volume and I leave the printer on all the time which may be the problem. Shutting it down wastes a ton of ink, but so does running hundreds of copies when you want true color. I use it for mainly black, so it hasn't been that much of a headache, but I'd like to get some ideas on how to fix it. When it was under warranty, Tektronix techs even accused me of "carving up a wrong color stick" so it would fit in a slot. That's why they said it had distorted colors. Then one finally told me it "burns" the ink and distorts colors, but never suggest a fix. Any ideas would be appreciated!

 

[TechnicianOne]

Are u using 850 ink? I read another post here somewhere, where it cost 1 thousand dollars or more to fix a problem which involves using the wrong ink model.

Are u re-using the ink in the maintenance tray?

Did you run the streak and color test?

It seems that the red is blending into all the colors. Thats why you get those different colors.

 

[mark37857]

I am using 850 ink direct from Tektronix, and never reuse any ink of any kind. I've run every test there is to run. Seems to me that this was a malfunction of the machine, which of course they wouldn't fix under warranty because they said I had the wrong ink in the wrong slot because I "made it fit." That really frosted me, because if they think I'm that stupid...

 

[marty5261]

If the printer sits idle for periods of time or you print using minimal colors then the ink will tend to "cook" causing distorted colors. Typically cyan will do it first but the others will also. You can purge the cooked ink by creating solid fill pages of the affected color and run then til the colors become more what they should be, usually it can take up to 100 pages to get it back to normal. The tech who told you that you used wrong ink was inaccurate, if he was a tek/xerox tech he should have known this immediately as we all recieved notice of this happening, if he was a 3rd party tech then he may not have known what was happening. Xerox has solid fill pages on their site to download to purge the head of the cooked color. I reccommend that if you are not going to use the printer all the time then shut it down to avoid the problem.

 

[mark37857]

Thanks Marty. That's the answer I've gotten from several techs at Tektronix, but I guess that's not really what I want to hear! I do print a lot of black, but not a lot of color. I guess shutting it down every day is the answer.

 

[melhof]

How fast do your collors change?
I don't know if it is posible to compare, but i have my 840 always on. The ink doesn't change collors that i can notice of eaven when i don't print for 3 weeks. But for the rest i print collors quite much.
Mybe somebody with more technical experience on this part can correct me, but i can think of that your printhead might be to hot. This can be because the temperature sensor is loose. Mybe you can check the sensor(s). But as i said i did never have any problems of this kind with my printhead.

 

[marty5261]

Due to the formulation changes of the ink with each printer models the 850 was/is more prone to the cooked ink problem than the 840. Usually it takes awhile to occurr but if the ink is never purged then the situation never really clears up. Seems as the models got newer the ink tends to cook faster than the previous models, the 8400 only takes a few weeks for the ink to cook and the colors to become distorted.