HP Expression 11000XL-Light Colored-Lines During Scan

A local library was throwing away their HP Expression 11000XL flatbed scanner and allowed me to take it. They said they are getting very light colored lines down the middle of the scan. I hooked it up to my Mac and bought Vuescan software.

I am attaching a sample scan. Of course, I am adding a lot of contrast to show the colored lines, which are light enough to be barely be seen on a normal scan.

I'd love to be able to fix this scanner and use it for my negative scanning etc.

Does anyone have a suggestion how to go about doing that?

Has anyone seen an issue like this before?

Thank you1

Emile Diaz

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demicle said:

A local library was throwing away their HP Expression 11000XL flatbed scanner and allowed me to take it.

Click to expand...

Wow! That's awfully kind of them.

There are two causes for the lines I can think of:
1: Dirt in the optical path somewhere. I'd start by obviously cleaning the scanner platen, but since the problem also seems to pop up with reflective scans, I guess you'll actually have to clean the optics. This requires partial disassembly of the scanner.
2: An actual defect in (or associated with) the scanning element pixel array. Given the color of the lines (yellow and red, apparently), I'm afraid this is more likely to be the cause. In this case, there's nothing you can do except try to remove the image defects in post-processing.

Is it possible to upload some more examples of the defect? Preferably using the highest scanning resolution. If it's indeed a pixel array defect, I'd expect it to show up as neat 1-pixel width lines.