Broken JV3-250SP

[Fabritech]

I have a JV3-250SP that we were about to put up for sale when it suddenly crashed. We had removed the heads for a good cleaning, and after we re-inserted them, the machine would no longer print. It will go through all the motions, but will just not put out any ink. We have tried changing out the slider board, and we checked the cable that runs from the main board to the slider board. One other anomaly is the machine gives us an "Error 30" when we try to run the head alignment patterns (from the #Adjust Menu in Maintenance Mode.) We are starting to suspect a main board failure.

1) Can this failure be caused by anything else, and is there anything else that we can check?

2) How much is this machine worth in running condition? It is 4 years old, has relatively few hours on it, and is in good condition (other than this problem.) I have the original shipping crate.

3) How much is this machine worth in it's current condition?

Any help would be appreciated.
Thank You.

 

[Letterbox Mike]

I'm not for sure but I think about the only remaining culprit is the mainboard, especially if you;ve replaced the slider board, which is what I would have thought. Have you replaced the ribbon cables to the heads? However, you said you removed the heads to clean them... Did you get any cleaning solution somewhere in the electronics in the head and subsequently fry all 4 heads? If you have a new head and new ribbon cables, you might consider throwing one in just to see if that head prints.

As far as value, it's hard to say for sure, but I'd guess somewhere around $15k-18k in good working condition, assuming the heads are firing perfectly and no nozzles are missing. In unoperable condition, not knowing the problem makes it hard to give a value. I don't remember the price for a main board, but I know it's not inexpensive. If it's all 4 heads that are bad, you could easily be looking at $5-6k for parts and labor from a certified tech. If you wanted to sell it as-is and let someone else gamble and figure out the problem, I wouldn't expect much more than $5-7k and that's probably pushing it, there's not a huge market for the big JV3 (althought we could sure use one sometimes).

 

[ChicagoGraphics]

The main board for the JV3 cost new is $4500.00 that was a year ½ ago, so it might be more or less now. If I were you I would get a tech to fix it.
Why you selling it?

 

[Fabritech]

We are replacing it with a Roland AJ-1000. We have never been fully happy with the JV3-250. Since we bought the thing about 3-4 years ago, it has had intermittent problems printing large full-coverage banner runs (8'x40', etc.) It will print fine for awhile, then all of a sudden start starving for ink. We have had numerous techs look at it & change out parts to no avail. Mimaki now blames it on the bulk ink system that we installed on it when it was new, and they want us to switch back to the tiny 220cc OEM cartridges to see if that solves the problem. Although the problem is rare, occurring maybe a couple times a year, it has been a thorn in our side since it was new. It is also a fairly slow machine when printing in 6-color mode. It was a combination of all that and getting a great deal on the Roland that made us make the switch.

 

[mimakitech24]

we have never had full success with bulk ink systems...

make sure you are putting all of the heads back into the original place, as they have head ids on them...also, was the machine off completly when you were working on/around the heads/boards?