HP Designjet Printer Error Codes

I found a good reference for HP Designjet Printer error codes. This helped me out with a problem involving my HP Z3100.

http://www.designjetparts.com/blog/index.php?blog=2&cat=16

HP Z3100 and Z3200 Does not print well on film

The HP Designjet Z3100 and the HP Designjet Z3200 series do not seem to calibrate well on any type of film material. This does not seem to matter if it is white film or transparent film, it does not seem to register well with the HP's spectrophotometer.

Great New Paper - HP Everyday Photo Paper

HP's newest economical paper -- HP Everyday Pigment Ink Gloss & HP Everyday Pigment Ink Satin -- is great for photos, posters, proofing, and much more. Priced at 20 cents a square foot (24"x100' roll is $40, 36"x100' is $60), it greatly reduces the cost of using genuine HP paper. Combined with great image quality and HP's notorious manufacturing standards, this paper is hard to beat. It was designed for use on pigment Designjet printers, but we have used it in Canon and Epson pigment inkjet printers with great results as well.

HP Everyday Roll Paper Overview:

• Great total ink absorption, producing vivid colors
• Very quick dry time
• Only designed for pigment inks
• Great price and even greater value
• Suitable for photographic use or everyday wide format printing
• 235 g/m²

HP Everyday Satin	24" x 100'	Q8920A	$39.99
HP Everyday Satin	36" x 100'	Q8921A	$59.99
HP Everyday Glossy	24" x 100'	Q8916A	$39.99
HP Everyday Glossy	36" x 100'	Q8917A	$59.99

HP Designjet Z3200 - New HP Z series printer

Hewlett Packard (HP) recently announced the release of its new HP Z3200 photo printer. Available in 24" and 44", it is set to replace the current HP Designjet Z3100 series. The Z3200's notable improvements over the Z3100 include:

HP Z3200 Improvements:

• Newly formulated Red ink (called Chromatic Red) --hopefully eliminating the Orange color problem on some Z3100's
• Improved Pantone Matching
  
• Updated internal software by ErgoSoft and Betterlight.com
  
• StudioPrint RIP software is included from ErgoSoft
• Eliminated pizza wheel issues of the initial Designjet Z3100

HP Z3200 Similarities to HP Z3100:

• Speed: not any faster
• ICC Profiles: same internal spectrophotometer
• Inks: 11 colors still the same
• Same outer look

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HP Designjet Z3100 - 44" Model

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HP Designjet Z3200 - 44" Model

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There was a collaboration between HP and Nikon to create an end to end color management solution. The printer includes ErgoSoft's RIP - StudioPrint. There are additional features that work with Nikon D3 series cameras to manage your colors from the initial photographing to the printing process.

HP's PurchasEdge - Rewards Program for DesignJet Z3100, Z2100, Z6100 from Hewlett Packard

If you own an HP Designjet Z3100, HP Designjet Z6100, or HP Designjet Z2100 you should enroll in HP's PurchasEdge (Purchase Edge) program. The owners of these printers then earn rewards from HP every time they purchase genuine HP ink, HP paper, or HP toner. You accumulate points based upon how much money you spend and you earn free HP hardware, from scanners to digital cameras to printers. For every $4 you spend, you earn one PurchasEdge point. If you print enough, you can accumulate enough points to get another wide format printer for free.The program is HP's way of rewarding people using authentic HP paper, ink, and media. To qaulify, you must spend at least $500 a year on HP supplies from any of their participating authorized dealers. This does not have to be a wide format printer (DesignJet series), it can be any HP printer, such as the 13" B9180 or B8850. You enroll on the PurchasEdge website, www.purchasedge.com, and then inform your dealer of your PurchasEdge ID (PID). They take care of the rest by automatically submitting your points. You can then check on the PurchasEdge website to see how many points you have earned and what free products you can order, using the login you create when you first sign up.

PurchasEdge Homepage:
www.purchasedge.com

HP PurchasEdge FAQ:
http://www.hp.com/sbso/partner/purchasedge/learnmore/faqs.html

HP's list of Qualifying Supplies:
http://www.hp.com/sbso/partner/purchasedge/learnmore/qualifyingskus.html

Nice interactive menu of how many PurchasEdge points Supplies are worth:
http://www.itsupplies.com
(click HP Ink and Media on blue left Column, a direct link does not work)

New Firmware for HP Z2100 and HP Z3100 (Finally)

HP has released (April / May 2008) a new version of firmware (Version 6) for both the HP Designjet Z2100 and the HP Designjet Z3100. This is the first significant update I have seen for the Z2100, it is definitely worth the upgrade. The firmware can be downloaded from HP's website.

Make sure you download the latest drivers as well to interact with the printers correctly after you have updated the firmware. Download the drivers here - HP Designjet Drivers.

HP Z3100 - more paper loading tips (part two of incorrect load trick)

Another use for my Designjet Z3100 Tips and Tricks post the other day.

Part One - Post on HP Z3100 Paper Loading Trick (avoid the error message)

The most hated HP Designjet Z3100 error message I see is the “Rewind the roll until the front edge is visible” message. Seriously, this is the most frustrating message I could get after I just spent time feeding paper into the back of the printer and dealing with the auto paper detection (and if you have it against a wall like our set up, you have to slide it back up against the wall). If it is ever telling you to do this, the work around or paper loading trick will work here. Lift the paper release, pull the paper forward to match the blue dotted lines, and set the paper lever down. Now press the Red X button a few times until you see “Lift Lever” on the screen. Press the X a few more times until you get back to the home menu screen and at the top it displays “Paper loaded incorrectly. Remove paper”. If you can’t get back to the home screen, try pressing the menu button and that should work (depends on what version of the firmware you have).

Now continue on with the rest of my tip (Paper Menu // Paper Load) and you should be good to go. If you missed it, read Part One - Post on HP Z3100 Paper Loading Trick (avoid the error message)

Strive for Perfect Printing!
-Michael

HP Z3100 "Paper loaded incorrectly: remove paper" work around and fix

I just spent 10 minutes trying to autoload the paper, I have no intentions of removing it. If you have this issue with your designjet Z3100 or Z2100, there is an easy fix to this. This also works if you would like to manually load the paper by lifting the paper release lever and bringing the paper to the blue dotted lines in front. Once the paper is aligned, lower the paper release handle. The dreaded error "paper loaded incorrectly: remove paper" will pop up. Ignore this, Press X instead. Once the menu pops up again, choose Paper >> Paper load. It should read the paper back in and you should be able to continue as normal, avoiding the hassle of starting the auto load over again. This has saved me a great deal of time since I figured this out. There are many other practical uses for this, such as if the front of the paper is slightly damaged and won't auto feed through the printer normally or if the cut isn't perfect along the front edge.

Happy Printing.

*Update: Part Two of Incorrect Paper Load Trick has more useful info on this.

HP Designjet Z3100 Printer vs Epson Stylus Pro 9880 Printer

Some quick pro's and con's as well as a comparison between the two digital wide format printers. This is not meant to be a complete list, simply some lesser known points I feel would be helpful if you were considering buying either of these. These would also apply to the Epson Stylus 7880 vs the HP Z3100 24" printers.

Epson Stylus 9880 Printer

The Epson 9880 printer is not much harder to operate than a desktop printer. It can simply be plugged in to a computer with a USB cable and up and running in minutes. The driver is very straightforward as well.

The Epson 9880 printer can print true 4 side borderless using the double cut feature in the driver on both glossy and matte material.

This Epson printer is still superior in the colors purple, brown, green, and in terms of photorealistic prints. One disadvantage of the Epson 9880 is that you can not have both Photo and Matte black inks at the same time. A work around to this Matte and Photo black issue for the Epson 9880 is using Phatte Black ink and the Imageprint RIP.

The Professional edition of the Epson 9880 / 7880 / 4880 printer is mainly targeted towards Graphic Designers with added Pantone, SWOP, and Postscript abilities.

HP DesignJet Z3100 Printer

The HP Z3100 printer is better at certain colors than the Epson 9880 printer, especially Reds and Blues. Having the additional black and gray inks allow for true neutral black and

The Z3100 printer can only print ** 44" ** borderless on glossy or luster material. This is not a well publicized fact but can be very important for certain applications.

Designed with basically a computer inside, the Z3100 printer is more complicated to install, network, and connect to your computer. A higher level of technical knowledge is required to operate the Z3100.

The Z3100's build it spectrophotometer can be a big advantage if you are using a lot of third party medias and need a simple way to make good profiles. Maybe not the highest quality profiles possible, but at least as good as the canned profiles the Z3100 comes installed with. By far the biggest advantage of the spectrophotometer embedded in the device is that you can return to the factory specs.

The Z3100 printer's semipermanent printheads also extend the useful life of the device, as often with Epson wide format printers when the printhead becomes unusable the device should be scrapped as it is often worth less than the cost to fix it.

--Michael