Muddy background with glossy paper?

[Joy]

When I print onto plain paper, I have a clean background, and the same flyer printed onto glossy paper has a slighly muddy background. On the plain paper the white is bright because it's left unprinted, on glossy it's getting a very light grey printed on.

Is it because of stray toner in my printer adhering to glossy more than plain paper? Or some other reason?

The printer is a Phaser 7300DT. I read the troubleshooting and followed the cleaning procedure they gave for muddy backgrounds. I do think it helped OR that since I've printed more, it's clearing up a little.

 

[plotter]

try setting up the printer as card, it slows down the machine and sometimes put more heat to the paper, image may become cleaner, its worth a try

 

[Joy]

Ok, thanks, will try.

 

[plotter]

it may also be the security of the machine, they all have it which is a slight yellow scatter, you may not see it clearly on plain paper, but it does show more on gloss anyway

 

[xfactor printing]

I have not seen stray toner or a bad cleaning blade effect gloss stock more than copy paper on a machine I've worked with (but I haven't had a 7300). I have seen the tonality be more harsh (not as smooth from white to the first level of light gray) on gloss or heavy stock with the slower pass through the fuser.

Can you scan a small area showing exactly what you're seeing.

 

[Joy]

I think it wouldn't show up properly in a scan or photo. What I'm seeing is sort of like the difference between recycled paper and regular paper, but not so pronounced. Where the recycled paper has the little fibers and pattern to it. It's a light grey and many people wouldn't even notice when they looked, but it does cut the brightness, which could be bad. The print doesn't "pop" because of the contrast being lower.

 

[xfactor printing]

Does this muddy background go from edge to edge of the paper beyond the normal printable image area?

 

[Joy]

Yes. Though my print goes near all the edges (maybe .3" margin). I think it's worse on thicker glossy paper versus thinner. I'm not sure however. Also, on this one thicker piece I printed first, there's three tiny areas where the greyish pattern stops so there's a tiny bit of (what looks to be) unprinted paper. Which is why I noticed the pattern in the first place. They are odd shaped but vertical, sort of like big grains of rice.

 

[xfactor printing]

Can you detect any color hue at all to the background scatter? Is it pure black toner that is causing the background or is it a muddy mix of all the colors?

This type of background for me has been either a drum issue (if one color only or pure black) or a transfer belt cleaning blade if it actually contains some of all the colors made into a muddy "blackish" mix. If it's the cleaning blade it will also sometimes clean up after you run a number of copies depending on what you're printing and what you've printed. I don't understand why the paper would make a difference though so I might be off the mark on this one.

 

[Joy]

I think it's a mix. Overall it looks blueish grey but some areas seem a little more reddish than others. And my printer is low on yellow toner, so maybe there would be more yellow normally, or yellow didn't get scattered about as much when the printer was moved last time?

Thanks for your input.

 

[Joy]

I was looking at the specs inside the printer tray. Maybe the scattered toner problem is because I'm choosing Glossy Paper and shouldn't be? Next to the Glossy Paper line it says 81-110lb, and I was using glossy that was 34 lb or 56 lb. Even though it's Glossy, I should probably choose Special and choose what matches the thickness? And only use the Glossy setting when it's 81-110?

 

[easiprint]

Is the Phaser 7300 the one that is based on an OKI engine? If so, how old are your drums? I've not had a Phaser 7300, but have had a few OKI's and the backgrounding you describe was a problem with these once the drums got past half their life. New drums fixed the problem until the reached about 50% again. I know drums are expensive. but just a though?

 

[Joy]

I googled and it's based on OKI like you said. That's probably it.