Print colour problem - Ricoh SG3110DN

[willd]

Hi all,

We bought a Ricoh SG3110DN around 3 to 4 years ago, and bought with it a spare set of inks - all Sawgrass, as per the inks that came with it.

The printer had relatively little use - it took months to empty the first set of cartridges, so the "new" inks that we installed were already 12 months out of date when they went in...

Over a period of many months the prints have been excellent, no problems at all, until about six weeks ago, when some example mugs that we produced had a very poor reproduction of reds.

We've moved premises and have just tested the printer again, the reds are still terrible, and the overall prints are lacking some impact - they are a bit dull.

We are using the same equipment, consumables and settings as always, have carried out nozzle checks which are perfect, so are suspecting that it's the ink.

I also loaded the Sawgrass powerdriver software onto a fresh computer today, to check against the usual computer in case of corrupted files, but the result was identical.

Anyone else ever tried using ink at least two years out of date, and can confirm that they've had this problem?

We're intending to produce a lot more sublimated items henceforth, so this problem won't recur if it is age related...

Regards,

Will.

[Justin]

Some inks are fine when they're out of date but from what you've said I don't think yours are. If nothing else has been changed, software settings etc. it could well be the ink

[willd]

Some inks are fine when they're out of date but from what you've said I don't think yours are. If nothing else has been changed, software settings etc. it could well be the ink

Hi Justin, thanks for your reply.

We're considering purchasing an A3 Ricoh, and the existing inks are reporting to be very low, so I guess it's not the expensive loss that it would have been if they'd failed on installation (we'd half expected that they would).

Current A3 printer looks to be a bit of an outlay though!

Regards,

Will.

[willd]

Having checked when we purchesed the ink, it's not quite as old as I thought - when it first showed problems it was around 16 months past its date - thought it best to post an update in case anyone reading the thread thinks that they can trust ink that is older due to my earlier post...

We've now purchased an A3 system so the Ricoh is likely to be "recycled".

Regards,

Will.

[willd]

Probably the last update to this thread - the SG800 arrived earlier today, after setting it up we printed and pressed the same image that confirmed the problem last week. I've attached a somewhat poor photo (taken in a hurry on a phone, with poor lighting), which shows the difference between the two!

vB_ID:4299

mugs.jpg (94.79 KiB) Viewed 25 times

Regards,
Will.