'Water Shield' Print Problem On HP D5160

My HP D5160 is used exclusively for printable DVDs. The Taiyo Yuden media prints very well but I just recently bought the highly touted and expensive TY "Water Shield" variety and my D5160 leaves several somewhat obvious marks where, apparently, rollers are used for guiding or moving the media through the mechanism.

Has anyone else seen this problem?

Yes there is several posts on the forum of the same thing happening with the marks showing up
after printing the TY water shields just take a look around the forum and you will find the posts.
It is not just a HP printer problem some are seeing the marks using Epson printer and other printers
as well.

Thanks for the reply. Perhaps my search skills are not what they should be. I did search for 'Water Shield' and only found discussions about how wonderful they were. Perhaps you could post your search query for me.

I also sent email to HP support and since the D5160 specs don't specifically say they support 'Water Shield' media they are not going to do anything.

Quote:
"HP Photosmart D5160 Printer supports only 'Standard' InkJet printable media. The 'Water Shield' InkJet printable media may not be compatible with your printer or the thickness varies in comparision with the 'Standard' InkJet printable media , as a result the surface marks had occured."

What the........

Additionally, they claim the "CD/DVD printing duty cycle is 5 CDs or DVDs per month."

Meanwhile, I have 94 of these Water Shield disks still left.

That is mostly the main problem with the TY water shields they are thicker than a ordinary printable DVD
here is some links to the other posts and I'm almost sure there is more than this posted in here but these
are the ones I've found so far.

http://club.cdfreaks.com/f123/mbi-gl...roblem-262125/

http://club.cdfreaks.com/f123/epson-...-yuden-258748/

http://club.cdfreaks.com/f123/proble...sy-cdr-243614/

http://club.cdfreaks.com/f123/best-i...hields-223451/

http://club.cdfreaks.com/f123/taiyo-...e-dvds-194763/

The Canon printers do not generally have this problem. Bottom line is that there *shouldn't* be any rollers in contact with the disc surface at any time. But because the printer makers are too cheap to correctly handle discs, we see this issue. If you place a Watershield disc in your tray and look closely, you'll prolly see that it sticks up just a hair above the surface of the tray, where other discs do not. It's also a fairly soft surface until it's printed and dried. The HP printers have more problems with this than the others, and there's nothing to be done about it other than replace the printer.

I appreciate the links. The email contact at HP assured me that my concern about disk marring and my implication that I might buy Canon in the future "had been sent to the appropriate department".

It still remains disconcerting that the entire HP Dxxxx series is rated at 5 CD/DVDs per month. I have always had the best luck with HP but they need to get on the ball and support glossy media and a greater duty cycle.

I would suspect that this duty rating might be tied somehow to a predicted ink usage or cost projection. In any case, the truly horrible software and drivers that HP forces on its customers is reason enough to stay away, marginal hardware is just one more reason.

I have a theory that a printer tends to last one year for every $100 spent. I consider anything beyond that a bonus. It is likely that HP knows the capabilities of their hardware and printing over 90 disks may cause failure in a mechanism that was mainly designed to print on paper. Does anyone know the 'duty cycle' of Canon media printers?

Perhaps is it unrealistic to expect anything other than a dedicated media printer to do this job with excellence?

I am fairly happy with HP drivers and find they are reasonably good considering the development cost. The included software has some very good features and works relatively trouble free but had certain limitations that caused me to to purchase Acoustica and SureThing. NONE of the three does everything well that I want them to, so I consider this software category relatively immature at this time.

I use an Epson R220 and refillable carts and it does a great job on DVDs as well as insert/covers
and photos. I'm not sure what the duty cycle is on it but I've printed 100's and 100's of DVDs as
well as 100's and 100's of covers/inserts and 100's of photos and no trouble with it yet. If and when
it decides to up and die on me I have another brand new R220 in the box waiting to take its place if
and when it dies on me then I'll just get me a RX680 AIO to replace it with.

Doing research on Epson and Canon printers with CD/DVD print capability I found a fair number of people have trouble with the ink cartridges. I have used HP Tri-color carts and have had excellent life span from them. HP typically warns of empty carts enough in advance to go on printing for several weeks before the ink actually runs dry. I have heard horror stories about the little micro-chips in Epson/Canon carts giving false alarms as empty and refusing to allow printing.

Your experience?

That is why I use the refillable auto reset chips to avoid any false alarms and if I ever get
around to doing it I will hook up my CIS system with the auto reset chips on it. Yeah I
did get a false alarm once back with my old and wore out R200 and that is why I went to
the refillable auto chip carts and no more false alarms for me.

May not have to replace the printer. Seems possible ink may be at least part of the problem. Researched the HP98 black cartridge this printer uses and discovered it's pigment ink. Pigment ink does great text, but I found it doesn't work on watershields. Doesn't soak through the top layer as quick(or completely) as dye ink. Doesn't dry as quick. Would leave the watershield surface wet and cause roller marks. Color cartridge uses dye ink, not a problem. Options for the adventurous are converting to dye by refilling or getting a CISS for the printer with dye black ink(looked around, saw several). May be hope if you're stuck with one of these and miss your watershields. Agree with CDan, if you can return it, do so.

Rollers that contact the disk in any way is simply poor printer design and unacceptable. A good design would see traction applied to the tray only.
Printable blanks from either TY or Verbatim should be considered industry standard and disk printers should be designed around them.

HP’s Imaging and Printing Group is about 5 min from my location. I hope their ears are burning

My D5160 is over a year old so I can't return it. I don't think I have exceeded the HP spec "duty cycle" [60 disks a year] but have come close. It does print well enough on conventional inkjet hub printable media and therefore I have little to complain about. What seems strange to me is the obvious design oversight regarding the glossy surface. This media seems to have been available for several years and HP overlooked support for it.

Perhaps a few "fans" could pay our local HP printer design group and give them a reality check!? Anybody for a meet up?

Another possible design flaw, although this printer was designed primarily for printing on paper. So the question arises, "Why don't you sell a version of this printer designed specifically for disk media?" Seems like a no-brainer to me.

<rant>A considerable group of people on this forum are using a number of work-arounds to get proper service from their printers and ink. My speculation is that the age of ever cheaper printers is (or ought to be) over. The time is ripe for building a printer that will last five years or more before being an addition to our landfills. And PLEASE, do the right thing with ink. 5 mm of ink in NOT worth $25 !!!! Don't try to make up the cost of cheap printers with the cost ink. </end rant>

Too true. Let's see if we can add a little heartburn to those burning ears. Sounds like roller design just begs for trouble. But to incorporate disc printing in a model that uses black pigment ink? Are their ink development and hardware design teams not on speaking terms? Definitely should not be on the shopping list of anyone looking for a good disc printer. But just mentioned the dye option for anyone already stuck with one. Switching to dye black is likely to improve print quality on any printable disc. And noticed there seems to be two price levels in refilled HP 98 carts. $14.00-19.00 range and $8.00-10.00 range. Cheaper ones likely to be dye. If you can find a seller willing to admit they're using dye, probably worth a try.

Canon got around the pigment ink problem in previous printers by simply not using black on discs and photos. They used the 3 colors to make a quasi-black on discs and photos. Better models have both dye and pigment black. Currently, none of the cheaper single-black models will do disc printing.

Pigment ink is equally unsuitable for glossy photo papers too, unless the surface is designed for pigment. So any printer that has only pigment black is at a disadvantage from the start unless the Canon approach is used.

Pigment black can't be beat for text and graphics on matte paper, but even so many printers (Epson) don't use it. It's cheaper to have only one or the other. The Epson dye-black is very good though, and pigment black is hardly missed.

Good point . Wonder if anyone wants to volunteer and try the dye-black route to see if HP went the quasi-black route or if pigment black is part of the problem? Anyone out there bought one of the cheaper refilled carts and seen a difference in photo/disc quality?