Struggling for Consistent Colour Across 5 identical HP Latex 315 Printers - Advice Greatly Appreciated

Hi Guys Hope you can give a little advice please. We should know more about printing that we do, but are pretty one dimensional, printing just canvas, across 5 Latex 315 machines And have done for years

Our issue is that we really struggle to get consistent colours across the 5 machines. In fact maybe not even close ! We sort of get away with it by adjusting master images, and using certain printers for certain jobs, but to say the least, this is tiresome

Allowing for head degradation, as with all thermal head printers, we still seem to see the same pattern across the machines. This is most noticeable when printing weak neutral colours like beige, and certain greys

Printer 4, seems as good as it gets, when printing our neutrals, and is pretty consistent to produce decent neutral beige colours

However ... Printer 2 leans a little towards a brownish Tint on light neutrals Printer 3 leans towards a slightly pink tint on light neutrals Printer 5 leans towards green a little tint on the light neutrals

We use exactly the same media across all 5 machines, and to be honest, i know nothing about profiling

My main technical colleague and right hand man, passed away 18 month ago, and i have been winging my way through printing since then. Up till last year, i had never changed a head and had to youtube how to swap out a cartridge, as it had been years since i touched any large forma machines

I'm not sure how profiles are set up. We use Onyx as a RIP

I'd love some advice on what to do , to try and get consistency ,or closer to it , across my 5 HP Latex 315's

Our media wont be changing any time soon, so it will be the same media used on each Printer

I've lost count of the number of head cleans, test prints, nozzle checks i have done, but the pattern of colour shifts seems to live on, regardless. I am not seeing i dont see general colour improvements when i change heads, but irrespective of this, i still see different machines leaning towards different tints, when printing the same image on the same canvas media

Do i need to profile this media individually to each machine ? Apologies for any naieve questions, but all the printing and technical part of the business , was with my friend who passed away

Just keen to see what options i have, to get better consistency across these 5 machines, and only using the same media on all of them.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions, pointers, or words of wisdom !

Look forward to hearing from some of you guys who know a lot more than myself

Hi @CyprusJack,

To ensure consistent and accurate prints across your printers, it's crucial to begin with color calibration. In the HP Latex 300 User Guide, you can find the steps to follow. Please go through the following workflow to produce consistent colors between printers.

*Before proceeding, make sure all printers are up to date by performing printhead alignment (jump to section Printhead alignment status plot and substrate advance (section Substrate-advance check plot).

Navigate to the "Color Calibration for the 315 or 335 printers" section to perform this essential step, guaranteeing a baseline for color accuracy. It must be performed on all 5 printers and from a cloned substrate, as for generic substrate cannot be color-calibrated. Go to the next section "Color consistency between different printers (365, 375)" and go through the steps (even though the printer model is different, it should apply).

For further information, take a look at this article: https://lkc.hp.com/blog/simple-guide-color-accuracy-and-consistency-hp-latex-printers.

I hope this is helpful.