DesignJet 500 Repair Newark
What an absolute treat of a call out recently. A south-easterly trip, of around 100 miles to Newark in Nottinghamshire to repair a golden oldie of a plotter – A DesignJet 500 24”.
These are such good machines. However, they are old technology and HP no longer support them.
Customers ask me all the time “Should they get rid of their DesignJet 500”? My usual response is, “If its still doing the job you bought it for then keep using it”. I then explain that “The new generation machines are awesome and so much faster from Click to Drop than these are, but If your happy with - it keep it”.
I will always caution them on the pitfalls of the older machines, like problems with the drivers for Windows 10 and above. That, HP have stopped producing inks and printheads. Also, they can struggle printing PDF’s which the new machines don’t. – They usually report a 61:01 error - “Error Processing Job”.
Despite this the customer decided to have the machine repaired. It was reporting an 86:01 error – Possible Parer Jam.
This is a total “red herring” and is usually caused by high friction on the Scan Axis (Y-Axis, carriage movement). Ninety nine percent of the time a replacement carriage belt is required.
Customer agreed to the cost of having the belt replaced and the machine fully serviced.
Although this is a common issue with all DesignJet’s, replacing the carriage belt is a major repair. The pen carriage must be removed, and the machine should be fully cleaned of “belt-debris” and aerosol contamination.
Once all this had been carried out, it was a simple task of reassembling the plotter. The service to the machine was carried out during the disassemble and reassemble process.
Once the DesignJet 500 86:01 error had been alleviated and the machine rebooted, it was time to align the printheads and calibrate the colour. Technically the HP Plotter was now fully working, although one more stage had to be completed before the DesignJet could be signed off to the customer – FirmWare Upgrade.
HP have now stopped supporting these machines so it’s important to ensure they are at the final FirmWare revision released by Hewlett Packard. This was the last penultimate step to be actioned before signing the machine over to the customer.
Finally, before sign-off the DesignJet was fully tested and cleaned, then given back to a very happy customer.
Its important that these machines are keep in a functional state. Most customers are happy to upgrade their machines to a newer model. However, some view them as an “old friend”. A yearly service would help to keep them in good working order. This is certainly something we can do – simply Contact Us for details.
At Hutchins IT Limited we intend to give our customers, old and new, what they want. To that end, we have a good supply of DesignJet 500 and DesignJet 800 parts, particularly carriage belts, to ensure we can meet these demands.
One thing we can’t supply is inks and printheads. These are consumables and must be sourced by the customer.
Hutchins IT Limited (formerly DesignJet Solutions Limited) have a huge knowledge of DesignJet Repairs. We are Small enough to provide bespoke personal care, but large enough to cope with any DesignJet repair services you may require.
