I just had to change out a PK ink cart in th emiddle of a 20x60" print. The good news is that the new firmware allowed me to change the cartridge and keep on printing. The print is on HP Pro Satin with full GE coverage.

The bad news is that there is a 1/2" wide transition zone across the 24" paper in the direction of the head movement. I'm not sure if this is a function of the fact that it may have been as much as 15 minutes before I caught the "out of ink" warning, or the fact that the printer simply cannot continue printing without this transition zone. The print has a lot of dark areas and it almost looks like the band is matte black ink without GE. It is obviously no where close to the mix of colors before and after the transition zone and has a matte finish instead of glossy.

I even checked the PK cartridge before the print and it listed 17% full, about 3% less than the 20% listed before printing same print a few minutes before. I made the foolish assumption that the print would use about 3% or so of the PK ink and there was no way it would run out in the middle of this 5 foot print.

Oh well. I'm waiting to see if anyone else has been successful with this new firmware functionality. Unfortunately, I was elected to be the first.

Jim

Thanks for the report, Jim. I'm hoping we'll all run into this eventually and report our experiences as well.

Swapped out a grey & yellow cartridge during printing, all went well.

Peter,

Did you catch the "out of Ink" error right away? Also, what paper were you printing on. gloss or matte?

Jim

I wonder if you don't catch the ink out, within a time out if the job won't be cancelled and or ejected. HP should document what they do in this regard.

I wonder if you were printing matt or glossy ( with gloss enhancer) ???

because I have noticed that even the slightest stop while printing with gloss enhancer on is visible on the print ...

same as above

I haven't needed to do an ink swap yet on the Z3100, but I have had this happen once on my Epson 4000. I think I left the swap for too long and had the transition band. All other times it's been fine. So fingers crossed, early days...