"Pink" pages from color printer

The only plausible one I can think of but it more usually affects inkjets is that the paper is some horrible grade that still has way too much alkali or acid on its fibres. The result is that the dye/pigment changes colour slightly as it dries or sets. Solid reactions are very much slower so it could be that is what was happening.

Try taking some decent quality A4 paper into the library and see if using that makes a difference. If I didn't know you lived in a desert my other guess would have been high humidity messing up the colours.

(again mostly affecting inkjets making them bleed)

My money would be on the paper it is printed onto followed by the wrong sort of toners in the printer (but that usually result in an immediately obvious colour cast right out of the printer).

I have generally found colour lasers to be incredibly stable. I have a Dell 1320C which was one of the first cheap to run decently close to photo real lasers. On the right media it can still give a pretty good output even by todays standards. Inkjet is better for photos and optical printing onto Fuji crystal mark archive is better still.

I wonder if the operative came across a pack of very old copier paper?

Maybe 55-60 years ago my dad brought home some paper from work which was for some or other document copying process. IIRC it would go pink on exposure to light - I imagine there was some chemical process to darken and fix this. We played with it for a while just putting objects on top to leave pink 'shadows', but had no way to fix it.

It might have been Dyeline paper, that rings a bell.

Maybe someone found some "photo paper" that was really not glossy inkjet paper but instead photographic printing paper that needs to be exposed on an enlarger and developed and fixed? If you don't put it in fixer I think it does something like that.

I think this is the most likely scenario.

But Don, why not just ask C to enjoy the nice pink colour.... :-) (recently I had ordered for myself a new pair of gloves on Aliexpress and guess what, instead of the expected black I got them purplish-pink ... Lucy would have enjoyed them tremendously. Ordered again, this time (today) they came black. May be it has been my mistake after all).

Am 08.02.22 um 10:16 schrieb Clive Arthur:

We played this with Tektronix / Polaroid film and Pechblende (Uranium ore).

Cheers, Gerhard.

Note that there should have been no pigment applied in these parts of the page (the other, identical, printer left them white as intended).

So, you're thinking that the exposure to the Magenta toner left enough of an "invisible" (to the fuser!) layer of toner that it eventually "bloomed"?

Note that the other printer -- located about 15 feet from the problem printer -- likely was stocked with the same paper (and toner cartridges) as the problem printer. Recall, this is a branch library so they don't have a variety of different paper/toner stocks on hand to mix up...

Had the discoloration been present "from the start", I could have imagined a light leak or other problem in the processing. The fact that it "grew" on the pages -- like watching an image appear on an old Polaroid -- is the puzzling part.

[While troubleshooting this, another patron used the printer to print some text documents -- despite being advised of the problem. As he finished, I asked him how they looked. He happened to have the most recent document in his hand and held it up for us to see: "Fine!" Then, thumbed through the rest of them and noticed that they were turning various shades of pink, based on time since processed. "Oh, well. I'm sending this stuff to the IRS so let them deal with it!" (I don't recall any prohibition against sending in tax documents on pink paper!)]

I had a pair of (solid ink) Phasers that loved. But, each time I fired one up, the house smelled of "burnt crayons". And, there is a significant startup cost (in ink) associated with this.

I had a color laser (also labeled a "Phaser") that didn't produce nearly the vibrant colors that the solid ink Phasers produced (output from them felt like glossy pages out of a magazine).

Plus, a couple of wide-body ink jets. But, ink would always dry up and risk clogging the heads (heads weren't replaced with the ink supply like on the HP units).

And, a little Sony thermal-dye-transfer "postcard printer" that I use to print photos. It's tiny so I can keep it in a desk drawer!

I decided that I could better spend the time *walking* to the local service bureau and having things printed there than messing around with maintaining my own (color) printers.

[I have a pair of B&W, low-temperature lasers that suffice for printing "disposable" stuff]

I queue up the stuff that needs to be "professionally" printed and handle it all in one visit -- every few months, or so. (I have just such a trip planned for this afternoon for some greeting cards I've made -- Valentine's Day and other assorted holidays/events)

I'm begining to wonder if they have loaded the photocopier with paper intended for a blueprint copier laced with ferocyanide. That's a bit pink but is from the outset. Printing a blank page should be definitive.

So there are two identical printers one does it and one doesn't?

That hints at chemistry of some sort going on in the still warm toner and paper interface. What exactly I don't know. It is even weirder if it can affect the areas of the paper that have no toner on.

How pink did it get? Could be the paper is reacting to going through the fuser and so printing a blank page would suffer the same fate.

I remember those. We were used to calibrate them for Western skin immediately before Western VIP visits when in Japan. The default settings otherwise made them look very drunk with bright pink faces.

The Dell can do photoreal well enough for small runs if used with exactly the right paper to match its toner texture. I find the HP colourchoice 120gsm ideal for promotional materials.

My trusty Canon i6500 A3 has survived nearly 2 years of barely being used and still printed OK recently when I needed it. Admittedly it did need a deep cleaning cycle before all the jets were working.

I have a Samsung 2550 duplex for bulk mono and the Dell for colour.

Exhibition quality printing Fuji crystal mark paper is the bees knees I have stuff printed for a centenary in 2006 that still hasn't faded and has been on display in diffuse ever since. By comparison laser tone that has been in direct sunlight for a couple of years now is showing some degradation of the magenta and especially yellow. Absorbing blue photons is a tough call for any organic pigment. Inkjet fails even faster I can see signs of fade on inkjet posters up for just a couple of months.

Again, it's a branch library, not a print shop, etc. The only paper they are likely to have on hand is paper that the main library has supplied. The main library similarly has "vanilla" printing needs.

So, THEY would have had to acquired it "by accident" and passed it along.

*And*, the local branch would have had to have installed it in ONLY that one printer/copier. (possible if something like a single ream)

I am hoping to stop by, today, to order a couple of technical documents through their inter-library borrowing procedure. (doing so in person tends to have better results than using their web interface). I will inquire as to whether or not the problem has been fixed and, if so, how. Depending on who is "on staff", today, they may let me tinker with it (e.g., take some paper from the good printer and run through the bad one; and paper from the bad to run through the good)

[Of course, *asking* them what was wrong will likely be met with an incomprehensible explanation -- whatever they captured from the servicing technician's explanation of the problem]

Yes. Within feet of each other, working off the same image files from the server.

The printers also allow printing direct from a thumb drive. The guy that I mentioned who printed his tax documents used that interface with the same "pink" results.

My curiosity is also piqued to note if a similar "process" might be at work in the future; imagine the pink "developing" after hours or

*days! THAT would truly be frustrating!

Well, technically, there can be tiny amounts of toner everywhere. Just never enough to rise to the point of being visible. So, something else was responsible for "developing" it.

Only the "exposed" side was discolored. It was a diffuse pink (instead of a bold/solid pink). But, very noticeable. If I left the sheets on a table, you would notice the discoloration from across the room.

I had built custom ICM profiles for my printers, scanner and monitors to best approximate the "real" colors I was printing. Yet another aspect of printing color that wasted a lot of time! Now, I use the published profiles from the service bureau and tweek as necessary.

I'm not trying to publish as much as making sure that when things *are* published, there are no surprises (amateur hour)

If I truly want photo real, I have photos printed. But, that is seldom the case. Even SWMBOs photos (the point of this exercise) are just intended to show the progression of a design and not be perfect representations. (there is more interest in consistency from print to print than in faithful color reproduction). She crops them to a smaller size and "pastes" (poor choice of word) them into a book where she can annotate and chronicle her work.

The library only charges a dime per page (service bureau is closer to 70c) and it is typically more convenient to access -- this visit being an exception!

I used to have a LaserJet 4MP+ w/duplexer for high volume monochrome printing. But, I so rarely print more than a sheet (or ten) that it wasn't worth the space it took up. The phasers also had duplexers -- and were considerably larger than the LJ!

(while I miss having that capability on hand, I don't miss the *responsibility* for keeping it "available"!)

My goal is more temporary: "how will this look when I send it to the printer for reproduction, binding and distribution?"

Having said that, I *do* keep the "pre-proofs" that I create -- in a sealed box away from light and heat. But, that's really just a sense of "false valuation" as I no longer *need* them; just hesitant to discard something that took effort to prepare.

Ask them if you can take a clean sheet away and then try ironing it and if that doesn't work torture it a bit with a heat shrink wrap gun.

ISTR you could sometimes get badly washed paper going a sort of pale lemon yellow when heated if there was too much trace acid like lemon or onion juice to make the wood pulp fibres discolour.

One of the easier natural invisible inks much safer than cobalt chloride which is now very much discouraged as a probable carcinogen.

I've not heard of one that turns paper magenta on heat exposure but it is just possible.

I happened to have one from my first "encounter" -- I had removed several sheets from the "tray" and manually fed through the sheet feeder option to see if there was something in the paper path that might apply (the paper tray being a foot or more below the actual printer)

I inquired as to the printer's status:

"Oh, it's fixed!"

"Yes, but what was the PROBLEM?"

"I don't know" (lack of curiosity is underwhelming!)

"Did they *do* anything to the printer? Or, just change the paper?"

"Oh, yes, they did something to the printer! It had this problem once before"

(and you STILL weren't sufficiently curious to inquire as to the CAUSE????!)

Given that most tech is indistinguishable from magic for most of the population, perhaps they dare not enquire too deeply for fear the witches will counter-attack...

Years ago (pre-web and thus pre-wikipedia) a colleague mentioned in conversation that he had bought a clock with a chain fusee. Being a clock nerd I responded "ingenious mechanism". But he had no idea what it was, just a buzz-phrase...

<snip>

And now, thanks to the web and Wikipedia, and probably along with most readers here, I join the ranks of those who know what it is.

Yep :-)

I'm more interested in "presentation means" than in mechanisms.

E.g., I have a clock that displays the time on an LED display that represents braille cells (the joke, of course, being that the typical person who would understand braille wouldn't be able to see the emitted light!)

I have a dial telephone that announces the time when you lift the receiver. And, "rings" when the alarm time arrives.

I've drawn up a design for a sundial that has 24 equally spaced hourly indications.

And, I'm stretching my imagination to come up with a suitable "Rube Goldberg" display/mechanism for a yard sculpture (water driven, from an "infinite well")

I've yet to sort out how to levitate bowling balls to display the current hour/minute. :< (if not genuine bowling balls, the display is without value)

Ah, then you might be more interested than me in advertisements I keep seeing for these products:

I built my first mechanical clock in the 1950s and this electronic (but with no digital circuitry) one in 1960s:

I try to make "unique" pieces -- i.e., quantity 1 -- often as gifts. Purchasing something that you could likely find in someone else's home/office doesn't cut it.

I like it if you can't figure out that you are "in the presence of" a timepiece. Even moreso if you can't figure out how to tell time by it!

(e.g., my sundial tells time at night, too!)

Lately, I am trying to make the *mechanism* "invisible". E.g., the kinematic (Rube Goldberg) clock is driven by water power. The *timekeeping* is accomplished by a servo controlling the speed of the pump -- with the loop having an incredible lag (so, the control is challenging, in addition to the mechanism design/fabrication).

Display mechanisms are hard enough (for me); tackling a *timekeeping* mechanism mechanically would just be a huge effort. Kudos! I'm clueless about how to design the sundial mechanism so it will survive "the elements" and still function, as intended!

My first (electronic) clock (~1977) was a simple hack on a COTS NatSemi "clock chip": demultiplexing the outputs to drive rings of 60 and 12 LEDs, respectively, for minutes and hour display (seconds was presented on the same ring as minutes to save on LEDs).

A friend urged me to sell it -- completely missing the point that it was intended as a (unique) gift... for my future in-laws. Some years later, he bought me a commercial version of a similar design -- no doubt to drive home the fact that *I* could have been manufacturing these.

<shrug>

Once you consider putting a processor into the box, you get all sorts of "display" possibilities (the timekeeping is trivial, disciplined to the AC mains over the long term; newer designs use PTP for "ludicrous" synchronization -- to paraphrase Mel Brooks).

I have Worlds-of-Wonder animatronic "toys" that speak the time (when asked), moving their mouth/eyes in sync with the uttered speech,

(they synchronize their mechanisms to *whatever* they are tasked with speaking)

the braille display, talking telephone/alarm clock (also keeps track of holidays and adjusts its messaging accordingly -- speech being a relatively cheap "display" mechanism that isn't constrained by size or shape), plus a bunch of oddball displays that are hard to characterize, etc.

I'd like to use *glass* more in my displays (e.g., a mirror-faced version of that first clock design) but am learning that it is *really* hard to work with! Of course, that's part of the appeal (imagine drilling a ring of tightly spaced holes in a mirrored-glass face without cracking the glass!)

It's fun to consider different ways of indicating the time that are easy to read (cuz you don't want to have to STUDY a display to sort out what it is indicating -- you just GLANCE at a typical clock!) and yet cryptic or aesthetically "appealing" in other ways.

I'm redesigning the WoW "displays" so I can also incorporate CCTV cameras (instead of having cameras that are annoyingly visible in a room) and replacing the battery power (and connectivity) with PoE. After that, I'm hoping to fit the electronics packages in Furby's (cuz they are

*so* much smaller and require considerably less power to animate) ["Vision" gives me a more precise way of identifying the positions of occupants in a room]

It was a common "exercise", in school, to build counters out of "logic" made from discrete transistors, etc. A multidecade counter would often resemble a large "waffle" -- layer upon layer of perf-board populated with discretes. Almost more

*mechanical* wonders than anything else (getting them to stay together as an assembly that could be "handled")

Well I can see that, I think I did that myself at some point (not sure if I built the counter or just read how it worked).

I remember trying to make a reversible counter with 7400-s and it sort of worked (I was literally learning to walk); I wanted to synchronize an 8mm projector with a tape recorder, the counter was supposed to buffer the lag this or that way. IIRC by the time when I discovered the fact that the switches from both sensors must be debounced I had already been into other things... It was some learning exercise though.