Topic: HP Designjet 500 giving errors?

[craigr]

If any of you use the HP Designjet 500 for your plotting, do you have trouble with it giving errors?

Several of us had the blasted thing giving errors yesterday with different files throughout the day. We had one guy that plotted 15 or so without problems, but it went downhill after that.

I had one very small dwg that I tried for a couple of hours to print, then suddenly it printed like there was nothing wrong. Then someone else printed to it and it errored out again.

Each time it errors you have to cycle power per the message on the screen. - Of course the plotter is on the other side of the bldg.

craigr

[M-dub]

What are the errors you're talking about?  Error codes, etc.

[craigr]

No error code #s. It just says to cycle power and call HP Support if the error persists.

Of course it has plotted okay for me today.

craigr

[JCTER]

I've never seen errors like that on ours.

The company we share the building with had bought one second-hand from another engineer firm we all work with.

I don't know terribly much about the plotter except that it's slow as heck.  We only use it when we don't have time to send off to the repro company down the street, or we only need a few sheets.

The only errors I've seen were regarding ink, head alignment, paper alignment, all those basic mechanical things.  Never any file problems.  :\

[craigr]

Thanks

[Dinosaur]

One persistant problem with ours sounds similar - the following procedure works most of the time although may take 2 or 3 attempts ...
When it throws the error and the plotter powers down, the carriage is left a few inches from the far right hand position which in turn causes the fail on the next power up.  Per HP - turn off plotter and unplug the power cord.  Open the top and manually move the carriage to the far right position behind the control panel.

[M-dub]

We've had a similar problem with our 800 before, but I can't quite remember what "fixed" it.

Turn the plotter off, unplug all cables, go for a coffee, then plug all cables securely back in and turn it back on.

Go from there and see what happens.

[M-dub]

One persistant problem with ours sounds similar - the following procedure works most of the time although may take 2 or 3 attempts ...
When it throws the error and the plotter powers down, the carriage is left a few inches fro the far right hand position which in turn causes the fail on the next power up.  Per HP - turn off plotter and unplug the power cord.  Open the top and manually move the carriage to the far right position behind the control panel.

We had that problem too, but we ended up having to call our service guy in to fix it.  We had to replace the carriage assembly.

[Dinosaur]

Service guy tried, but couldn't fix ours.  I found this fix on line.