Need Help Chinese Ricoh Gen5 UV 2513 flatbed printer - Cyan problems!

[Ptzulu]

Hi there!

So, we bought a UV Flatbed printer (not going to name company for now) from China, with 3 Ricoh Gen 5 Heads (CM, YK, W) and it kind work good for most substrates. Paper, acrylic, no problem.
The problem is PVC foam boards, and that's what we mainly use it for! Cyan color starts to fail, or creates strange "clouds" of ink, like electrostatic... The machine does have an electrostatic "remover" (or wtv it's called) and if we turn it on, cyan ink starts to fail. Strangely, it's always Cyan, not any other color!

Photos are attached.

Few things we tried: purging head, new printhead, new control board for head, cleaning/purging cyan ink circuit, new cyan ink, and probably more that I don't remember...

Any idea/help someone can give me?

Original seller keeps saying - head problem/negative pressure adjustment..

Thank you for your time!!!

 

[D3D]

I feel pretty strongly that it is static related given your description and the pics. I know humidity can play a big role, do you have a humidifier? How about blowing it off with an anti-static gun? The most difficult thing would be to install an after market anti-static bar on the machine itself,

 

[marunr]

I agree it's most likely static. Do you wipe the boards down with alcohol? I have more trouble with PVC than other materials. I would also agree with the humidifier. If I can get the humidity level above 45% I usually can get rid of the problem.

 

[Ptzulu]

Hi there

So, humidity wise, we work at 49-52 (we have an HVAC System ( I think this is the name) and air conditioning to maintain temperatures are 22° and humidity ate 49-52. We also print on digital printer (Xerox style, but a Konica Minolta) and it's very picky about humidity.

Machine has anti static bar,(photo attached) but I cant make it behave properly, and when I turn it on, static does disappear, but, printhead starts to fail....

Is there a magic solution? With the other printer we also have anti static bar (we can't control it like this, is just stay on thing) and all is good..

It really pisses me off don't understand this machine ahah

 

[Troy Lesher]

Agreed with both above posts, As a manufacturer we went through several different brand of de-ionization bars during our alpha and beta process, most don't work very well. Some dont even work at all.
First in your area, a humidifying system to keep your humidity at or above 60%, Static has a hard time living in humidity, plus it helps with surface tension for your inks so helps with less nozzle drop, Secondly Static is dynamic, most de-ionization are manual set and that is a problem because if you do not know the charge, all you can do is guess and adjust. We build our printers with Keyence products, Like our Printers, built in the US, They Measure and apply as needed either negative or positive Ions, neutralizing the substrate, which is the goal. if your printer cannot be retrofitted, then Keyence also sells stand alone static blowers you can mount to blow directly onto your printers bed area .
in the interim, a good Alchohol wipedown will help a lot, just time consuming.