1204-Refurbed-Can't lay down a nozzle check!

[r2prints]

Hey guys! First post. This forum has been a great help with refurbishing this used 1204 I bought last month. Hoping one of the Mutoh gurus can point me in the right direction.

So, I bought the machine used, head dried up. Seller said I could probably recover the head with an ultrasonic cleaning. Decided not to waste time so I bought a new *GENERIC* DX5 head out of an Epson R1900. For haha's, I flushed it by pulling solution through each channel, no problem there.

I changed the manifold to a solvent based one, running the decoder card, new head cables, new dampers/o-rings, replaced whole maintenance station(3rd party), new ink cartridges, pulled ink with a syringe to 1/2 fill the dampers.

Upon turning it on, I was getting the "cover open" message, finally got that to go away after I noticed the fingers needed to be pressed down, haha! After that, there was a PF encoder error. Guessing the PF board and disc were shot due to the seller shipping it to me with ink in the lines and a bunch of waste ink flowing to the left side and covering everything. Cleaned that all up, replaced the parts that I got from SolventInkjet.com (awesome seller!) After those were replaced, I got to start it completely up, and perform a nozzle check. I get about 3 dashes of cyan and if I'm lucky, 1 or 2 dashes of black. Other than that, NOTHING.

I was reading on here that it could be a capping issue. I am getting cyan and yellow ink on the cap sponge. What is really weird though, is when I performed the first cleaning, I had a small little sign of black, just no magenta. Since then, no black.

So I pulled off the waste lines, blocked one side, and syringed the other. Nothing but air leak. I pinpointed it to the head actually seating on the cap top. All of the lines are connected/clear (everything is new)

The head is PERFECTLY parallel to the platen. I am guessing it is skewed or possibly tilted toward the rear of the head. My first question would be, how can I get this to perfectly seal? What adjustments are there? Other than the high/low head height and the control arm on the right of the carriage that sets tilt? I read that you can press up on the cap from the bottom to get it to seal, but there is no room to fit a finger to press up or anything. Did I possibly get a dud of a cap top since it is third party? Or could this possibly be an electrical issue?

Any help is appreciated. I will be thrilled to see more than 5 dashes on a nozzle check! Thank you!

 

[RG]

Good work so far! Sounds like you approached this project exactly the way I would have done it. Have you run any cleaning cycles? If not, do some with the right side cover off and look at the tubes coming out of the bottom of the pump and see in any ink is flowing. You might even have to do a little charge. In addition to the dampers having to be half full, the chambers in the head have to be filled, too. There are no real adjustments you can make to the maintenance station. When I put in a new one, I push it as far left as I can before I tighten down the 4 screws that hold it in place.

 

[r2prints]

Good work so far! Sounds like you approached this project exactly the way I would have done it. Have you run any cleaning cycles? If not, do some with the right side cover off and look at the tubes coming out of the bottom of the pump and see in any ink is flowing. You might even have to do a little charge. In addition to the dampers having to be half full, the chambers in the head have to be filled, too. There are no real adjustments you can make to the maintenance station. When I put in a new one, I push it as far left as I can before I tighten down the 4 screws that hold it in place.

Thanks! I did do a cleaning cycle and an ink charge. While doing those, I can see ink flow down the waste tubes. Is it supposed to be a steady flow, or a "spitting" type of flow? When I did a "normal" ink charge, it was flowing nicely, but when I do just a cleaning, it will "spit". When I look at the cap sponge, all I see is remnants of cyan and yellow. When I soaked the head, I did get traces of black and magenta in the cleaning fluid. It is almost like the head just will not fire which leads me to believe it could be the fuse. I have the mainboard out now, and waiting to test with a meter.

I also get a E074 ERR Y Current sometimes when the head carriage starts moving. I am wondering if the CR encoder/strip were also tainted during the shipping process which then shorted out the F2 fuse I keep reading about?

Thank you for the advice on the maintenance station! I kind of just placed it in and installed it haha!

 

[RG]

Were you able to do a nozzle check test on the head before you took it out of the R1900 desktop printer? There is only one head fuse, so that's not your problem.

 

[r2prints]

Were you able to do a nozzle check test on the head before you took it out of the R1900 desktop printer? There is only one head fuse, so that's not your problem.

Just checked the fuse, you're right, not that! I did not get to test the printer, but was assured it was from a BRAND NEW R2000 (my mistake) and tested or else my money back guaranteed. The seller even advised on using it in a solvent machine with the use of the new manifold and decoder card. I was able to pull fluid through each channel before installation, and the other night when removed the head to soak it again.

I am hoping it is something as simple as misalignment on the capping station, but I'm sure that is not always the case

 

[RG]

Maybe tonight one of the Mutoh techs will jump in here and figure this thing out. One more thing, did you put a solvent resistant rubber gasket between the manifold and printhead?

 

[r2prints]

Maybe tonight one of the Mutoh techs will jump in here and figure this thing out. One more thing, did you put a solvent resistant rubber gasket between the manifold and printhead?

I was under the presumption that the DX5 heads did not use a gasket between head and manifold. That could very well be the case! Thank you for your help so far! I am hoping one of the techs will jump in. This is my first printer and I am anxious to see it spit ink.

 

[r2prints]

*Update- I put the main board back in. Took RG's advice and pushed the maintenance station as far to the left as I could and then tightened it back down. I am now getting a lot more cyan and now yellow nozzles during a nozzle test. Still nothing from black or magenta. Is this caused by a bad/uneven capping seal. It seems like I am pulling more ink in a steady stream through the waste tubes, but again, only cyan and yellow show up on the cap sponge. Any input is greatly appreciated!

 

[catldavis]

I can't offer much help but I can offer a thank you for the information. I have everything you have referenced - a 1204 (plus a 1304), new dampers, head out of an Epson water based, decoder, new maintenance station, etc. I can't wait to find the time to get working on them and try to get them printing. Very good information!!

 

[r2prints]

I can't offer much help but I can offer a thank you for the information. I have everything you have referenced - a 1204 (plus a 1304), new dampers, head out of an Epson water based, decoder, new maintenance station, etc. I can't wait to find the time to get working on them and try to get them printing. Very good information!!

No problem! The initial install of the head/decoder was easier than anticipated. Just pay attention to which head cable goes "Up" and which one goes "Down" I read some people on here frying the head/mainboard due to flopping the two.

 

[RG]

Glad there is improvement! I don't think you need a decoder card if your head came from an Epson R1900 printer. Look at the attached pix I snatched from a website. That should be an unlocked head. It wasn't until much later that Epson realized that people were taking their DX5 heads out of desktop printers and putting them in large format printers. Once they realized this, they "locked" subsequent DX5 heads in their desktop printers so that they could keep charging much, much more for large format printer heads. A friend of mine bought a used 1200 printer and put a R1900 head in it (with no decoder card) and it has been working fine for more than a year. The problem with the older model desktop heads is that they usually set around for years, unused, until someone tries to get a few bucks for the printer instead of throwing them away. So, the old, unused head may be usable, maybe not.

When you pushed cleaning fluid through the head before installing it, did you see the fluid flowing out of all of the nozzles? Or, at least most of them? This is tricky because if you push the fluid too hard you can ruin the head. Are there any air bubbles in the ink lines anywhere? Some more head soaking shouldn't hurt and might help.

 

[r2prints]

Glad there is improvement! I don't think you need a decoder card if your head came from an Epson R1900 printer. Look at the attached pix I snatched from a website. That should be an unlocked head. It wasn't until much later that Epson realized that people were taking their DX5 heads out of desktop printers and putting them in large format printers. Once they realized this, they "locked" subsequent DX5 heads in their desktop printers so that they could keep charging much, much more for large format printer heads. A friend of mine bought a used 1200 printer and put a R1900 head in it (with no decoder card) and it has been working fine for more than a year. The problem with the older model desktop heads is that they usually set around for years, unused, until someone tries to get a few bucks for the printer instead of throwing them away. So, the old, unused head may be usable, maybe not.

When you pushed cleaning fluid through the head before installing it, did you see the fluid flowing out of all of the nozzles? Or, at least most of them? This is tricky because if you push the fluid too hard you can ruin the head. Are there any air bubbles in the ink lines anywhere? Some more head soaking shouldn't hurt and might help.

Undortunately, the head I got has the further spaced locks and it was sold to me as "locked". I did not get any head related errors after installing it so hopefully the decode card and head are communicating properly.

I tried to avoid pushing fluid, but when I did, it would bubble and dribble from the nozzles. It was hard to see if it was bubbling from all nozzles. When I pulled solution through, it seemed like I got the same results from each channel which made me believe all nozzles were clear.

I swapped the cap top with the old one last night, no difference in the nozzle check. Still have a lot of cyan and yellow but no magenta and black. To me it looks like the middle channels coincidentally are pulling, but the channels on the ends of the head are not.

 

[Rayd8]

HI R2prints,

I was wondering if you got your ink problem solved? I have exactly the same issue going on right now. new manifold, other printhead (with decoder card), new dampers/o-rings and still no decent nozzle check printing even if i can flush cleaning fluid fairly good through each ink channel when i remove the printhead and flush each ink channel with a syringe.
Also i filled each damper (pulling with syringe after placing the newer ones so there should be ink going through to the head) with ink.
I hope you can shead some light on my/your problem.

Grtz,

Ray