HP LaserJet 4700 DTN Print Quality Issues on new machine

[GrantR]

Hi,

We just took delivery of a new 4700 DTN to replace our ageing 3700DN. It is mostly used to print powerpoint slides as handouts.
My first slide is a solid "royal blue" background covering the whole page with the company name in 24 point text in white in the centre of the blue page.

When I print it out I have the following issues:

The first 40mm of blue background prints fine, the remainder of the page has a bit of banding and graininess to it.

The colour reproduction appears wrong. The original slide is a deep royal blue (R:0 G:0 B:255) but the output appears almost greyish blue, not the vibrant colour we were expecting.

There is a ghost image of the white company name text which starts at 40mm
after the original white text.

We reported this to HP and they pronounced the printer DOA so today we got sent a replacement. The new machine has exactly the same issues!

Again we called HP and again they've given us an RMA number to get the printer replaced.

Could this be a bad batch or is it something we're doing wrong? The same PPT slide prints fine on our 3700DN machine, correct colour, little or no banding, and no ghost images.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Grant

[MichaelTech]

Toners do not take mis-handling well. Shipping, stocking, can damage them.
HP's willingness to do a third swap is odd. Inspect the carton carefully. If any damage of any kind, refuse it.
I am highly authorized on their products, and have not seen one yet I can't fix. This could be a H/V problem, or a bad firmware chip.

[GrantR]

It certainly seems to print all the test pages OK, it's just when we print a large coloured background that we seem to get the issues, and it is the same regardless of the colour of the background, first 40mm is OK then it starts to band and ghost images show up 40mm after the original text is printed.

The fact that these measurements are similar leads me to think that it's a mechanical rather than software issue, but for it to happen on two different brand new machines in the same week is puzzling me.

[cs_steve]

This sounds a lot like a driver issue... I would try experimenting with different drivers, downloaded directly from HP.com rather than using built-in Windows drivers...
always had the best luck with PCL5e drivers...

[redcow]

When you say the test pages are OK, is that the PQ Troubleshooting pages. That prints full pages of each colour.
Have you changed the ITB?

Your machine should be under warranty. Have HP fix it or use the RMA again.

[GrantR]

Yes, the PQ Troubleshooting pages are OK. We've tried all manner of drivers, all from HP and still no joy.

What is an ITB?

We've arranged for the machine to be RMA'd and we're looking for something else. Anyone got any recommendations for something in the USD1500-3000 range that'll happily print solid colour without banding, 20+ Pages Per Minute, with a duty cycle of around 7000 colour pages per month at 20% CMYK coverage? Never had issues with HP before but this is getting to be a pain.

P.S What I did find a bit strange was that when we unboxed both "new" printers, the toner cartridges were already installed. Normally I would have expected them to have been in sealed bags to be installed by the end user?

[cs_steve]

ITB is Image Transfer Belt, this is a consumable that must be replaced within a certain maintenance cycle...however, assuming your printer is truly NEW, this would not be an issue because your ITB should be new...

I did notice that the Dots Per Inch on this printer is only 600DPI...which is fine for almost every application, but there is a slight chance this 600DPI limitation might be making a difference if your PowerPoint graphics are super high-resolution...?

Since your test pages print out fine, and I assume all prints from other software programs come out fine EXCEPT your PowerPoint pages which have the color banding, that means there is some logical/data processing/software issue, not really a hardware issue that's going to be solved by swapping for yet another 4700...logically it could be: corrupted or incorrect driver, failing formatter (but 2 in a row?!)...

BTW...You are sure you're dealing directly with HP, not with another company? Shipping toners inside printers is typically NOT a good idea--too many spill issues...however, perhaps HP has a safe way of doing it...It just surprises me that they would ship that way.

[redcow]

HP doesn't ship printers with toner already installed.
Sure does sound like an application gone bad.

[MichaelTech]

Yeah, they do. It's called SCIP, for Ship Consumables In Printer.
Now when first started up, there are small cam's that are supposed to be turned, allowing the toners alienation shafts to turn. Sometimes these cams do not lock into their correct position, and have to be manually turned, or removed. they will catch on the metal frame where the toner cam shaft turns.
This could be the real trouble with your units. HP has addressed this, and they ship this printer on a pallate for better handling protection. Your unit may have been handled by other providers, thus may have sustained damage in shipping. HP is becoming more and more careless, and unsupportive.

[GrantR]

Thanks to all for suggestions.

The printers both arrived on pallettes and the second one has gone back this morning. I'm now looking for another printer, but in the meantime have returned to my 3700dtn.

This one started to have a cyan fade left to right, called HP and despite the unit being long out of warranty I mentioned that I'd seen that there was a maintenance note on this issue. They sent an engineer out today and replaced the laser/scanner free of charge so all is now well.

Regards

Grant