Help, help! xc-540 Head - Man Down

[Salmoneye]

I am very new to this. A few days ago my printer stopped printing magenta. one half would not fire at all and the other side of the head fired 20%. I did a cleaning cycle with no change. Thought I was out of in so I installed new ink, cleaning cycle and exact same. I did a cleaning with swabs etc, no change. I ran an agresive cycle that uses a bunch of ink and a few more bits are firing and the side of the head that had nothing now has one little strip. How can I fix this? Soak it? How? Should I scrub the nozzles with a swab?
Any and all help appreciated.

 

[veloxgraphics]

Sounds like you have a bad cap top. If the cap top isnt sealing correctly it cant pull enough vaccum to perform the aggressive head cleaning. You will likely need a new cap top (About $35-40) and a good head soaking to get things rolling again.

 

[JoshLoring]

If its still not working after all that then NetFryer is right...
unfortunately.
I bought my XC before they made that part a combustible part so my caps are warrantied =)

 

[Salmoneye]

I scrubbed the actual nozzle surface with a swab and cleaner several times, put cleaner on the cap and ran many medium cleans and I am good to go. I am ordering a new cap for thursday though because I think it will just happen again. Thank you guys.

 

[J Hill Designs]

scrubbed the nozzle surface? I've been afraid to do that...

 

[veloxgraphics]

be extremely careful touching the printhead... the nozzles are piezo electric and very sensitive to physical force. When i got my machine the test prints looked just like yours... i took the print heads out, set them in a glass dish that had about 1/8" of solvent in it, and ensured that nothing but the metal of the printhead touched the solvent.

After a couple hours i put the heads back in the printer and printed separate solid blocks of 100% Cyan 100% Magenta 100% Yellow and 100% Black... there was a marked improvement just from the head soaking and this mass solid color printing forced even more of the junk out.

I then put in new captops and wipers, then performed a powerful cleaning. All nozzled fired and the head printed good as new.

There are also services that do ultrasonic printhead cleaning for around $300... i cant attest to their effectiveness... since i've never tried them, but they are around.

If you're leery of taking your printheads out... there's walkthroughs on here for doing headsoaks while they are still in the machine.

Hope some of this helps.

 

[veloxgraphics]

If its still not working after all that then NetFryer is right...
unfortunately.
I bought my XC before they made that part a combustible part so my caps are warrantied =)

Ahh... i wonder if mine is a combustible part... i dont really want fire in my machine!