Need Help FB700 LC head not filling, not holding ink

[signman315]

Turned out to be the heads causing the problem! Both went bad att the same time.

Sounded like an air leak on the head(s) to me as I read through this thread. Turns out that was it. Not sure why the tech didn't start there and with the ink filters first! Could have easily moved those to another spot and diagnosed it right there. Head change on these things is like a couple hours at most, they made it so easy compared to the older models. Changing mother board and/or head board is like changing the engine in a car when you've got a headlight out! Check the bulb first then go onto other stuff! I'm sure you're happy it's over, glad you got it taken care of!!!

 

[greysquirrel]

is the filter on the end of the ink box primed? You should prime every filter before installing into a printer. If the filter is primed, confirm that the line in the box is not bent or pinched. Remove the User side cover, run an air purge and feel the pump from behind the ink box assy...is it working? it should vibrate. If those check out ok...any ink around your reservoirs or in the clear "last chance filter tubes"?

 

[FulSnygg]

Sounded like an air leak on the head(s) to me as I read through this thread. Turns out that was it. Not sure why the tech didn't start there and with the ink filters first! Could have easily moved those to another spot and diagnosed it right there. Head change on these things is like a couple hours at most, they made it so easy compared to the older models. Changing mother board and/or head board is like changing the engine in a car when you've got a headlight out! Check the bulb first then go onto other stuff! I'm sure you're happy it's over, glad you got it taken care of!!!

Yeah, we were not happy about this. It was quite easy to do the diagnosis, just swap heads and see if the problem followed the printhead (we now know). We ended up with a cost about $10 000, only one head included. We ordered and changed the second head ourselves.

Are you good with these HP printers? A new problem has developed and we’re not that enthusiastic about contacting that tech again…

 

[signman315]

Yeah, we were not happy about this. It was quite easy to do the diagnosis, just swap heads and see if the problem followed the printhead (we now know). We ended up with a cost about $10 000, only one head included. We ordered and changed the second head ourselves.

Are you good with these HP printers? A new problem has developed and we’re not that enthusiastic about contacting that tech again…

Yeah I love the printer itself but can't stand HP support. Their support is really bad...I have a few horror stories about them but I'll spare most of it in this conversation. Moral of the story is their techs are not as savvy as they should be considering the amount of money we pay for these things and their support.

I like to think I'm pretty good with them...been using the Scitex line for about 10 years or so. And ran a Colorspan before that which is a similar machine. I've changed/diagnosed all the most common issues, headboard, mother board, I/O board, heads, filters, manifold, data cable, ink lines, encoder strip, encoder reader, drive pulleys,....pretty much all of it except the drive motors and media belt. But the drive motors would be an easy fix/diagnostic, just haven't had that issue come up. I find diagnosing is perhaps harder than actually mechanically changing the part, as long as you take a good shot of bourbon before doing the work (keeps the shakes away, lol kidding, kidding). And I'm a believer in helping people with whatever talents I've been gifted so if you need something I'm happy to help. I'm by no means an official tech or anything but I have learned a lot keeping my own equipment in order.

I'm decent but a real guru is Mike at California Media Services. He's been my mentor on the Scitex line a few times and I can't speak highly enough about him. Last I spoke with him was a couple years ago and at the time he was the only one in the country still running the FB950, he had a whole bunch of them and I was buying parts from him instead of HP because HP dropped support on their own machine.

Just a side note....I've had some pretty terrible experiences with HP support. And on the worst of them I talked my way up the food chain until I got to an executive which in one case they screwed up so bad that they didn't charge me at all. It's a long story but we are talking about a $25,000+ mistake they made and I fought very hard but eventually the executive agreed to not charge for the whole thing. It was a big mess and I appreciated them owning up to their mistake, but had I not fought tooth and nail they would have charged me for it. Even though it should have been a $5000 routine maintenance that went haywire! So I'm not sure of your situation but be very firm with them and don't pay anything that you shouldn't have to, because they will charge you for it if you don't!

 

[FulSnygg]

Yeah I love the printer itself but can't stand HP support. Their support is really bad...I have a few horror stories about them but I'll spare most of it in this conversation. Moral of the story is their techs are not as savvy as they should be considering the amount of money we pay for these things and their support.

I like to think I'm pretty good with them...been using the Scitex line for about 10 years or so. And ran a Colorspan before that which is a similar machine. I've changed/diagnosed all the most common issues, headboard, mother board, I/O board, heads, filters, manifold, data cable, ink lines, encoder strip, encoder reader, drive pulleys,....pretty much all of it except the drive motors and media belt. But the drive motors would be an easy fix/diagnostic, just haven't had that issue come up. I find diagnosing is perhaps harder than actually mechanically changing the part, as long as you take a good shot of bourbon before doing the work (keeps the shakes away, lol kidding, kidding). And I'm a believer in helping people with whatever talents I've been gifted so if you need something I'm happy to help. I'm by no means an official tech or anything but I have learned a lot keeping my own equipment in order.

I'm decent but a real guru is Mike at California Media Services. He's been my mentor on the Scitex line a few times and I can't speak highly enough about him. Last I spoke with him was a couple years ago and at the time he was the only one in the country still running the FB950, he had a whole bunch of them and I was buying parts from him instead of HP because HP dropped support on their own machine.

Just a side note....I've had some pretty terrible experiences with HP support. And on the worst of them I talked my way up the food chain until I got to an executive which in one case they screwed up so bad that they didn't charge me at all. It's a long story but we are talking about a $25,000+ mistake they made and I fought very hard but eventually the executive agreed to not charge for the whole thing. It was a big mess and I appreciated them owning up to their mistake, but had I not fought tooth and nail they would have charged me for it. Even though it should have been a $5000 routine maintenance that went haywire! So I'm not sure of your situation but be very firm with them and don't pay anything that you shouldn't have to, because they will charge you for it if you don't!

Then it's not just HP in Sweden that is difficult to get decent help from!

I agree with you on the difficulty with diagnosing, seems as if many different hardware issues result in the same problem, and after our last long tussle with HP we try to do things ourselves (but I prefer whisky). I've been maintaining our Roland solvent printers earlier and mostly find the HP easier and not as messy - if you only know what needs to be doing.

Now we have problems again, black and magenta heads overspraying and printing really badly. But it's not the heads this time, we have swapped position of the heads and the problem remains in the same head position (mostly on no. 2 and 6, but 1 doesn't look that great either. Nozzle test (prime bar) looks great. Other tests very unsatisfying. Any ideas?

Yeah I love the printer itself but can't stand HP support. Their support is really bad...I have a few horror stories about them but I'll spare most of it in this conversation. Moral of the story is their techs are not as savvy as they should be considering the amount of money we pay for these things and their support.

I like to think I'm pretty good with them...been using the Scitex line for about 10 years or so. And ran a Colorspan before that which is a similar machine. I've changed/diagnosed all the most common issues, headboard, mother board, I/O board, heads, filters, manifold, data cable, ink lines, encoder strip, encoder reader, drive pulleys,....pretty much all of it except the drive motors and media belt. But the drive motors would be an easy fix/diagnostic, just haven't had that issue come up. I find diagnosing is perhaps harder than actually mechanically changing the part, as long as you take a good shot of bourbon before doing the work (keeps the shakes away, lol kidding, kidding). And I'm a believer in helping people with whatever talents I've been gifted so if you need something I'm happy to help. I'm by no means an official tech or anything but I have learned a lot keeping my own equipment in order.

I'm decent but a real guru is Mike at California Media Services. He's been my mentor on the Scitex line a few times and I can't speak highly enough about him. Last I spoke with him was a couple years ago and at the time he was the only one in the country still running the FB950, he had a whole bunch of them and I was buying parts from him instead of HP because HP dropped support on their own machine.

Just a side note....I've had some pretty terrible experiences with HP support. And on the worst of them I talked my way up the food chain until I got to an executive which in one case they screwed up so bad that they didn't charge me at all. It's a long story but we are talking about a $25,000+ mistake they made and I fought very hard but eventually the executive agreed to not charge for the whole thing. It was a big mess and I appreciated them owning up to their mistake, but had I not fought tooth and nail they would have charged me for it. Even though it should have been a $5000 routine maintenance that went haywire! So I'm not sure of your situation but be very firm with them and don't pay anything that you shouldn't have to, because they will charge you for it if you don't!

Then it's not just HP in Sweden that is difficult to get decent help from!

I agree with you on the difficulty with diagnosing, seems as if many different hardware issues result in the same problem, and after our latest long tussle with HP we try to do things ourselves (but I prefer whisky). I've been maintaining our Roland solvent printers earlier and mostly find the HP easier and not as messy - if you only know what needs to be done.

Now we have problems again, black and magenta heads overspraying and printing really badly. But it's not the heads this time, we have swapped the heads and the problem remains in the same head position (mostly on no. 2 and 6, but 1 doesn't look that great either. Nozzle test (prime bar) looks great. Other tests very unsatisfying. Any ideas?

 

[signman315]

Man that's a tough one! My first guess would be a bad head but if the problem doesn't move with the head then that's not it. My next guess would be media thickness sensor giving a bad reading and it's raising the head height more than it should, resulting in overspray. If it's a head height issue you would see it across all heads, but if you're material is buckling/warping during printing it could give you the result you are getting and only express itself seeming on certain heads. Be sure your material is perfectly flat and not buckling. Overspray generally relates to head height off media. Another long shot would be the voltage to the problem heads...which is a setting in the service menu which is hidden (I can help you access it if you're not familiar). But since you had an HP tech working on things it's possible that tech changed the voltage on those specific heads in order to get those heads working correctly, which could have been a mistake the tech made while trying to diagnose your previous problem. The setting I'm talking about allows you to add/subtract voltage to specific heads, so as a head gets old and isn't jetting as strongly as it used it then you can add a little voltage and get a little more life out of the head. But if your previous tech added a bunch of voltage to those heads and didn't change it back then those heads could be spraying too strongly and giving you overspray. I'm running some prints on my FB550 right now or I'd give you the menu locations (can't remember off the top of my head) and the code to access the service menu....the code is as follows: up up up up, up down up down, up up down down, up up up down

 

[signman315]

Another thought could be air in the ink lines...fill the problem heads with air 3 times, and the fill them with ink 3 times (these can be done via maintenance/purge menu). And see if that helps.

 

[signman315]

go to tools/service printer/device tests/pod test....and type in the up/down code I gave you and that will access the service menu. Don't change things here unless you know what you're doing....once you've typed in that code go to tools/service printer/set head voltage adjustments....from there you can see if there have been any adjustments made. It will list each color with info for each. They should all match...for example all of mine are set to "Low 14.90V, Percent 110, offset 0.00V, High 28.00V" if you want to increase/decrease then change the percent accordingly only making small adjustments like 5% or so to see if there's any difference. But even if you don't change anything at least you can see if they are all the same and if the HP tech messed with it at all. When you are done restart the printer to close access to the hidden service menu. Hope it helps!

 

[FulSnygg]

Man that's a tough one! My first guess would be a bad head but if the problem doesn't move with the head then that's not it. My next guess would be media thickness sensor giving a bad reading and it's raising the head height more than it should, resulting in overspray. If it's a head height issue you would see it across all heads, but if you're material is buckling/warping during printing it could give you the result you are getting and only express itself seeming on certain heads. Be sure your material is perfectly flat and not buckling. Overspray generally relates to head height off media. Another long shot would be the voltage to the problem heads...which is a setting in the service menu which is hidden (I can help you access it if you're not familiar). But since you had an HP tech working on things it's possible that tech changed the voltage on those specific heads in order to get those heads working correctly, which could have been a mistake the tech made while trying to diagnose your previous problem. The setting I'm talking about allows you to add/subtract voltage to specific heads, so as a head gets old and isn't jetting as strongly as it used it then you can add a little voltage and get a little more life out of the head. But if your previous tech added a bunch of voltage to those heads and didn't change it back then those heads could be spraying too strongly and giving you overspray. I'm running some prints on my FB550 right now or I'd give you the menu locations (can't remember off the top of my head) and the code to access the service menu....the code is as follows: up up up up, up down up down, up up down down, up up up down

Thanks! We already access the service menu and we have the manual as well. Will try the purge-thing! You help is much appreciated. Have no idea if they changed the voltage, the problem last time didn't affect the magenta and black heads.
We did the height sensor-test in the service menu and that came out fine. Height sensor have also been cleaned. We have tried different materials to rule out problems with static and wrinkling etc but it’s all the same.

 

[FulSnygg]

Another thought could be air in the ink lines...fill the problem heads with air 3 times, and the fill them with ink 3 times (these can be done via maintenance/purge menu). And see if that helps.

Didn't work almost got worse?

 

[ikarasu]

Id go with the purge thing.

If it was just magenta I'd say it's your ink. On these forums, and the tech we use has told us hp has been replacing magenta Ink left and right due to bad batches.

We had the same thing... Prime bars looked the same, only magenta was misting and having issues. We bought new ink... Purged the lines 3/4 times and it fixed.... Turns out the ink was bad.

Do you shake your ink? It could be that your lines are filled with unshaked / unmixed pigment and it's causing the mist.... I'd shake all your boxes... Empty and fill 2-3 times on both blacks/cans and see if that fixes the issue.

There's a test that will print a color bar for each head you select. One helpful thing for me was printing cmyk head one for the test... And cmyk head 2 for the next test. If both heads are misting for the same color you know it's likely an ink issue as both heads failing at the same time is rare.

I forget the exact steps to get to it... But I'll take a look tomorrow when I'm at work if you can't figure it out.

 

[FulSnygg]

Today we got confirmation from our HP service partner that HP are having problems with not only magenta ink, but also black. We are ordering new cartridges to see if that might do the trick.

So very disappointed and frustrated over the fact that there has been no information about this. Shouldn’t be that difficult to contact all buyers of ink to inform that there might be a problem with some batches.

 

[ikarasu]

Today we got confirmation from our HP service partner that HP are having problems with not only magenta ink, but also black. We are ordering new cartridges to see if that might do the trick.

So very disappointed and frustrated over the fact that there has been no information about this. Shouldn’t be that difficult to contact all buyers of ink to inform that there might be a problem with some batches.

Any updates? I'm interested in knowing if it's another case of bad ink or something else.

 

[FulSnygg]

Any updates? I'm interested in knowing if it's another case of bad ink or something else.

Yep, both black and magenta was bad, now everything works perfect. There’s been at least two other cases in Sweden.

 

[flyplainsdrifta]

crossing my fingies on this one. having the exact same issue. 4x empty/fill right now. hoping this works. i cant afford to be down like this. its killing me.

 

[ikarasu]

crossing my fingies on this one. having the exact same issue. 4x empty/fill right now. hoping this works. i cant afford to be down like this. its killing me.

Hopefully you put a new thing of ink in before doing the empty/fills! as the whole ink cart is garbage.

Generally after 2-3 cleanings we noticed a huge, huge improvement.

I wish HP let their vendors know - One vendor told us the other is an idiot, that if there was an ink problem they'd know about it, and to let their tech come take a look at it - well... He was sure surprised when I sent him photos of the results of the ink.

S101 is a decently sized community, but when 4-5 people have had the same issue with this ink and actually posted about it in the past few months, it must be a pretty big problem.

Let us know how it goes / what colors were causing the issue!

 

[czbhu]

I had the same problem. It started with the black and then Magenta and light magenta. The service confirmed that the ink was bad. We changed the ink and the prints became better but I think the black and light magenta heads are gone. I asked the HP to repair them in warranty a couple weeks ago. I am still waiting of their answer.
Now the UV lamp current is dropping errors.

 

[stillmobinya]

I'm having the same problem with my black ink not filling now... I was having the same print issues where I would have to recover the black jets for like and hour and black would still print terrible. Changed the head and that didn't fix it so I just tried the ink pump because the black heads aren't filling at all and that didn't fix the problem. Is it a o ring? Is there air in a line? I need help. Thanks

 

[flyplainsdrifta]

Hopefully you put a new thing of ink in before doing the empty/fills! as the whole ink cart is garbage.

Generally after 2-3 cleanings we noticed a huge, huge improvement.

I wish HP let their vendors know - One vendor told us the other is an idiot, that if there was an ink problem they'd know about it, and to let their tech come take a look at it - well... He was sure surprised when I sent him photos of the results of the ink.

S101 is a decently sized community, but when 4-5 people have had the same issue with this ink and actually posted about it in the past few months, it must be a pretty big problem.

Let us know how it goes / what colors were causing the issue!

sorry for the late response. jeeze im the worst. i agree on letting the vendors know. they shouldve been pulling all the potentially bad ones. any damage on the machines should be the responsibility of hp. i had bad black, magenta, and a possibly bad cyan. 2 rounds of bad black and magenta. it was like every other bag for a good 6 weeks. both my 700 and 750 had the issues. most were replaced except one that i had pulled and done the e/f routine before i had gotten pics of prime bars. all good now. but man. hp knew. they couldve stopped this back in august. didnt tell a single vendor. such bull.

 

[flyplainsdrifta]

I'm having the same problem with my black ink not filling now... I was having the same print issues where I would have to recover the black jets for like and hour and black would still print terrible. Changed the head and that didn't fix it so I just tried the ink pump because the black heads aren't filling at all and that didn't fix the problem. Is it a o ring? Is there air in a line? I need help. Thanks

thermistor would be my guess. could be an oring. check ink bags too. ive had a hose come off the nozzle and suck air for an hour or two before we realized what had happened.