MrSalumi
New Member
It seems fitting that the day before Halloween I would be bringing something back from the dead. Here is the story and how it all unraveled. Spoiler alert!! There’s good news at the end.
So a few weeks back I had a head strike on my Roland SJ540 that jammed up some banner material and was on my A bank of heads (black for me). Soon after I began noticing very erratic prints especially in black. My test prints we good, then bad, then good again. Finally they looked horrible and after a bidirectional recalibration I could only get a solid black line if I printed uni-directionally and at a speed of 500 or less.
Needless to say something was wrong. After asking around and showing my test print to some different people I realized that I had some VERY bad deflection going on in my black head. I tried cleaning it using the head cleaning cycle on the machine both on medium and powerful modes. Nothing changed.
SO I called my dealer and asked what retail on a new head was.. OUCH!! Over a grand! Now get this… My dealer suggested that I try something that a customer had just told him about the week prior. He said to run cleaning solution through the head and actually print cleaning solution on to crappy media to get the crystals in the head shaking properly while they are being cleaned. It seemed a bit wonky but what the He((? I had nothing to lose right?
So today I decided that I would give it a go. Since I am running a Triangle Bulk ink system and only printing in CMKY that left two reservoirs and ink cartridges available. So I filled one reservoir with flush and switched the black cartridges to the new flush cartridges. After printing some solid black I noticed that I was losing pressure for whatever reason and got total dropout at one point. I pulled the dampers and sucked fluid through them using a syringe until I got clearish flush all the way to the damper. Times two of course.
I printed in total about 10 square feet of flush on some scrap banner that I had laying around. It was awful smelling and pretty messy on the material but I could see tiny specks of what looked like ink clots spraying out. Not a lot of them but in total probably 15-20 of them.
I reversed the entire process back to my black ink and M0THERFU(KER it worked!!!
Look at these before and after photos. They tell the story themselves!! I am so happy and thankful that I don’t have to buy another head and can get back to making money!!!
I thought I would share so if anyone else could benefit from trying this for themselves.
Cheers,
Sal
So a few weeks back I had a head strike on my Roland SJ540 that jammed up some banner material and was on my A bank of heads (black for me). Soon after I began noticing very erratic prints especially in black. My test prints we good, then bad, then good again. Finally they looked horrible and after a bidirectional recalibration I could only get a solid black line if I printed uni-directionally and at a speed of 500 or less.
Needless to say something was wrong. After asking around and showing my test print to some different people I realized that I had some VERY bad deflection going on in my black head. I tried cleaning it using the head cleaning cycle on the machine both on medium and powerful modes. Nothing changed.
SO I called my dealer and asked what retail on a new head was.. OUCH!! Over a grand! Now get this… My dealer suggested that I try something that a customer had just told him about the week prior. He said to run cleaning solution through the head and actually print cleaning solution on to crappy media to get the crystals in the head shaking properly while they are being cleaned. It seemed a bit wonky but what the He((? I had nothing to lose right?
So today I decided that I would give it a go. Since I am running a Triangle Bulk ink system and only printing in CMKY that left two reservoirs and ink cartridges available. So I filled one reservoir with flush and switched the black cartridges to the new flush cartridges. After printing some solid black I noticed that I was losing pressure for whatever reason and got total dropout at one point. I pulled the dampers and sucked fluid through them using a syringe until I got clearish flush all the way to the damper. Times two of course.
I printed in total about 10 square feet of flush on some scrap banner that I had laying around. It was awful smelling and pretty messy on the material but I could see tiny specks of what looked like ink clots spraying out. Not a lot of them but in total probably 15-20 of them.
I reversed the entire process back to my black ink and M0THERFU(KER it worked!!!
Look at these before and after photos. They tell the story themselves!! I am so happy and thankful that I don’t have to buy another head and can get back to making money!!!
I thought I would share so if anyone else could benefit from trying this for themselves.
Cheers,
Sal
