We've got an EPSON P8000 that we bought 3 years ago or so. Had a fella from Fuji come in and fingerprint the proofer to a particular press using Fiery. We've begun to notice that the proofs are coming out much duller than they used to. We have a 9800 that the guy went ahead and calibrated too. It still prints much closer to what it did 3yrs ago than the P8000. He had walked me through the calibration process but that was 3 years ago and I can't remember anything from 3 days ago so I'm pretty useless in solving this. I'm wondering if this might be a an issue with the printer itself and not the rip. Hoping some of you may have had something similar occur. TIA. 

Been a long time since I used an Epson, we had a 7600. I had to do a linearisation every month to maintain its accuracy.

We used a Lin Eye 0ne (?) densitometer and there was an on board program to do this.

I have no recollection of how it was done.

 I'm surprised that you got this amount of time out of it without much changing, I found new ink cartridges, paper stock type, summer/winter etc had an influence on what the final proof looked like.

yes, if you have changed the inks or the paper, it really needs to be re-calibrated.
there was a time (years ago) they changed the formula for the yellow ink and it screwed up the calibration for a lot of printers using those inks.
Was the P8000 calibrated with the same paper you are running on now? With an epson printer, this is extremely important.
Also, check to make sure the inks are not expired, that affects the color more than you think.

I just pee'd in your ink, have fun troubleshooting!

 

Quote from: bornrd on July 19, 2022, 01:58:00 AMI just pee'd in your ink, have fun troubleshooting!

 

This would make as much sense to me as anything else!

Quote from: David on July 18, 2022, 03:52:48 PMyes, if you have changed the inks or the paper, it really needs to be re-calibrated.
there was a time (years ago) they changed the formula for the yellow ink and it screwed up the calibration for a lot of printers using those inks.
Was the P8000 calibrated with the same paper you are running on now? With an epson printer, this is extremely important.
Also, check to make sure the inks are not expired, that affects the color more than you think.

Yeah. We haven't changed anything ink/paper wise. Although, the consistency of the paper we get from Fuji seems to be nonexistent. The semigloss we use on this particular proofer not so much but the silk matte is very noticeable at times. Goes to super thin at times compared to the roll before. I did check the inks and it looks like most are actually expired (assuming the top date is the exp date on the box). This proofer doesn't get as much action since we don't do a large amount of process color work. Although, I printed direct to the proofer bypassing the RIP and it was noticeably brighter. Thinking I may have to relearn/research using our Xrite to recalibrate it. 

Thanks for the replies. 

They do drift over time. We check ours pretty often but we have an inline spectro and each proof is checked for accuracy and has a verification right on the proof.

With our Epson SC P6000 the ink situation is quite predictable. We just had to change all the inks because I noticed it drifting out and Fiery could not optimize the profile any more. Delta E on the cyan was up to 7. They usually have about a 1 year expiration date on the inks, but with Epson, you can continue to use them past that date. I believe with HP they just stop working. We usually get about 6 months out of the inks where the verification test passes. Then, rather quickly it starts to go out. It takes a while for the old ink to flush out of the system. We don't do enough proofs to ever use up all the inks these days, even in a year and a half.