I'll preface this by saying I'm the IT guy for a small sign company and I HATE printers. Any kind of printers, be it small desktop units or large format printers. That being said, we have a FJ-50 that's been giving us issues lately.
It started out not fully firing the yellow ink, I called our local Roland tech to see what they recommended and it turns out Roland doesn't support the FJ-50 anymore, figures. Luckily, we've been a customer with them so long, they'll still help me out. They suggested replacing the heads, which we got from them at a discounted price, seeing as they were the last ones they'll get, and instructions on how to put them in. That went fairly smoothly. Meaning, I didn't end up with extra screws like I normally do when taking something apart. The problem now is the whole right bank isn't firing (orange, green, yellow). It looks like the tubes aren't primed. I have run through the "prime" function, and I've done a "powerful" clean.
I talked to the gal that normally uses this printer and she said that every once in a while she'll get a "head may be dry" message, but that goes away after a power cycle. I also got the message, but a power cycle took care of it.
Like I said before, I hate printers. Though, from the recent experience I've had with the FJ-50, I think I have at least a decent idea of how this thing works. From what I've gathered, the capping station sucks the ink through the heads to prime the tubes. With this knowledge, if correct, I would guess that if the right bank isn't priming, something is wrong with the capping station.
Things I've done so far:
- Hooked up a "waste" tube that was disconnected and spurting ink all over the inside of the machine. Nothing got on the electronics, just on the bottom. It looks like ink dried in there when we purged the ink at one point the pressure blew the line loose. I cleaned it out and confirmed no blockages.
- Cleaned all the ink/dried ink and verified none got on anything important
- Replaced heads
- Run through almost all of the cleaning stuff in the router.
The printer has been here longer than I have and we don't have the "cleaning" rods for it anymore, so I'm not sure how to go about cleaning it other than what the machine can do itself.
Any thoughts?
It started out not fully firing the yellow ink, I called our local Roland tech to see what they recommended and it turns out Roland doesn't support the FJ-50 anymore, figures. Luckily, we've been a customer with them so long, they'll still help me out. They suggested replacing the heads, which we got from them at a discounted price, seeing as they were the last ones they'll get, and instructions on how to put them in. That went fairly smoothly. Meaning, I didn't end up with extra screws like I normally do when taking something apart. The problem now is the whole right bank isn't firing (orange, green, yellow). It looks like the tubes aren't primed. I have run through the "prime" function, and I've done a "powerful" clean.
I talked to the gal that normally uses this printer and she said that every once in a while she'll get a "head may be dry" message, but that goes away after a power cycle. I also got the message, but a power cycle took care of it.
Like I said before, I hate printers. Though, from the recent experience I've had with the FJ-50, I think I have at least a decent idea of how this thing works. From what I've gathered, the capping station sucks the ink through the heads to prime the tubes. With this knowledge, if correct, I would guess that if the right bank isn't priming, something is wrong with the capping station.
Things I've done so far:
- Hooked up a "waste" tube that was disconnected and spurting ink all over the inside of the machine. Nothing got on the electronics, just on the bottom. It looks like ink dried in there when we purged the ink at one point the pressure blew the line loose. I cleaned it out and confirmed no blockages.
- Cleaned all the ink/dried ink and verified none got on anything important
- Replaced heads
- Run through almost all of the cleaning stuff in the router.
The printer has been here longer than I have and we don't have the "cleaning" rods for it anymore, so I'm not sure how to go about cleaning it other than what the machine can do itself.
Any thoughts?
