FUji flatbed drops entire head at once

[DougWestwood]

Hey All!

Been having troubles with the FUJI flatbed here, streaking badly,
going in and out during prints. Today, the test print has one
entire yellow head printing much too lightly. Almost invisible.

Any experiences in this? Please post!
_ Doug
Vancouver

 

[artbot]

don't have that printer but do have those heads in my printer and occasionally an entire head will disappear. i usually just turn the printer off, come back ten minutes later and it's back. once it was gone for a half a day then suddenly came back. not sure what the reason is but it's happened a few times.

 

[DougWestwood]

Any temp issues?

don't have that printer but do have those heads in my printer and occasionally an entire head will disappear. i usually just turn the printer off, come back ten minutes later and it's back. once it was gone for a half a day then suddenly came back. not sure what the reason is but it's happened a few times.

Thanks Artbot, will try that. Did you notice any temperature issues during that process?
Ink here is now 54.4C, abut 10C hotter than normal.
- Doug

 

[DougWestwood]

Thanks Artbot, will try that. Did you notice any temperature issues during that process?
Ink here is now 54.4C, abut 10C hotter than normal.
- Doug

Hey All,

Fuji service says it's a print head failure. I haven't seen a print head fail like this before,
so I have some questions.

The temperature factor is being pinned on the assumed print head fail. That since the head is now junk,
it has stopped working and the ink is heating up too much.

Have seen heads fail with massive nozzle outages, and gunk build up inside the head and ink feeder tubes.
Never seen a non-problem head just automatically die.

Any further info or experience, please share.
-Doug

 

[artbot]

nothing suspicious on the heat. it just stops. tons of head cleaning doesn't bring back one single nozzle. then it's back and printing perfect. maybe it's some kind of data thing. i think i once did a data swap at the ribbons and the head still didn't print. maybe some kind of on board memory or something loads up and just crashes the head (totally making stuff up at this point).

 

[klmiller611]

Similar Occurance

This same kind of thing happens occasionally on my AGFA Anapurna Mv. One, or more heads just completely stop printing. I initially thought it might be some sort of a static issue as it seemed to happen a lot on coro or styrene, but it has also happened on gatorfoam or foam core.

My temperatures stay the same, but no amount of cleaning or jet testing seems to make a difference. I do the same thing that Artbot does, turn it off and let it sit 15-20 minutes and the problem is gone at that point.

I think it may be more related to a cable or data issue than the head itself.

I've also had situations when printing, I get a "Wait Data" error, the printer stops, sometime comes back and prints, sometimes not. I have to do a shut down and restart. It does not appear to be the size of file being sent, it is totally random, and not repeatable with the same file. I first ran into it with the machine less than a month old, naturally, on a Saturday, and with a 4x8 plexi piece at 95 percent complete. Had to trash that one and had to start again. I reported it to AGFA on Monday, and our service tech, who was actually good, said he did not know where to look for the error, so basically, nothing was done, and the problem still exists.

Ken

 

[DravidDavid]

Thanks Artbot, will try that. Did you notice any temperature issues during that process?
Ink here is now 54.4C, abut 10C hotter than normal.
- Doug

Intermittent head failure is not something I've experienced or heard of myself, but I can comment on the temperature increase.

Each head and reservoir warmer has a temperature gauge to measure the temperature of the ink. You are seeing an increase because one or more of the heads are telling the printer that the ink isn't warm enough. So the printer warms the ink even more over-all to allow the printhead with the lowest average to reach recommended operating temperature. However, this means that all the other printheads are operating with a higher temperature ink than normal, because the heads can't be warmed individually and your average temperature (across all the sensors) is increased. The average over-all temperature from the combined readouts of the sensors is what you see on the screen under the ink icon. Technicians can log in to your printer with their Oce dongle and find the read-out for each individual head.

It would be interesting to see if the culpret is the same head as the one that is dropping out. If your head has a sensor issue, it will only get worse and it's new printhead time.

Technicians can adjust the average from memory, but not on all machines.

We had a magenta head playing up. It took forever and a day to reach temperature and would often time-out with "Ink heat system problem". Magenta was always 10 or 15 degrees lower in temperature than all the other heads and to bring magenta up to temp was causing the rest to operate at 58+ degrees. Once the head was replaced, the temperature dropped to 46 degrees, which is normal operating temperature.

After a while you might start to see the likes of "Ink heat system problem" if the problem gets worse. The biggest tell you will end up experiencing this error is if you see the ink gradually get warmer each time you try to warm your printer up. If that's the case, you better start building a nest egg to drop on a new head when it finally kicks the bucket.

Good luck!

 

[artbot]

i've had to dial my printer in with some odd settings for custom inks. i went with taking temp at each head with an infrared thermometer to get specific temperature for an individual head during printing without having to go to the firmware each time.

this might be an option if your firmware doesn't give temp' for each head.

 

[DravidDavid]

i've had to dial my printer in with some odd settings for custom inks. i went with taking temp at each head with an infrared thermometer to get specific temperature for an individual head during printing without having to go to the firmware each time.

this might be an option if your firmware doesn't give temp' for each head.

The firmware will...Whether or not he has the dongle is another thing, haha.

I didn't think the exposed heads got particularly hot. I'd suggest that would be a pretty inaccurate reading compared to the sensor within the warming tank. Have you ever compared the external indication to the sensor's reading in the firmware?

 

[artbot]

yeah. the infrared thermometer is very accurate. i don't remember if the difference was plus or minus 1 or 1.5. but generally, you still have an equation to work with. i just point it at the ceramic heat plate and you've got your number.

 

[VISCOM]

This same kind of thing happens occasionally on my AGFA Anapurna Mv. One, or more heads just completely stop printing. I initially thought it might be some sort of a static issue as it seemed to happen a lot on coro or styrene, but it has also happened on gatorfoam or foam core.

My temperatures stay the same, but no amount of cleaning or jet testing seems to make a difference. I do the same thing that Artbot does, turn it off and let it sit 15-20 minutes and the problem is gone at that point.

I think it may be more related to a cable or data issue than the head itself.

I've also had situations when printing, I get a "Wait Data" error, the printer stops, sometime comes back and prints, sometimes not. I have to do a shut down and restart. It does not appear to be the size of file being sent, it is totally random, and not repeatable with the same file. I first ran into it with the machine less than a month old, naturally, on a Saturday, and with a 4x8 plexi piece at 95 percent complete. Had to trash that one and had to start again. I reported it to AGFA on Monday, and our service tech, who was actually good, said he did not know where to look for the error, so basically, nothing was done, and the problem still exists.

Ken

Ken, I have a AGFA M2 and get the Wait Data also... If your spooling file to the printer some time you will get this error.. On my PC I have it set up to do a Disk Clean every night around 2:00 am ... I still get them sometimes but much less then before

 

[DougWestwood]

ANSWER:

Yes, this type of print head can just automatically die, entirely, without any previous sign of trouble.
Fuji Dude was here last night, the non-printing head registered 140F. Waaay too hot. $5000 Yay.

 

[Montrealer]

We have an Acuity Advance and we put a mobile air conditioning unit right into the home carriage, i really hate this printer, i hate all fuji product, Spyder V and spyder 320 are real **** too...the only good thing Fuji ever produce its the Uvistar 2 roll to roll 197 inch...i try the onset s20 and now we just get the onset r40....s20 cost us thousant of $, real junk too like all fuji machine hours and hours in maintenance...

whatever to comeback on the acuity subjet, the problem we got with this machine its the pump espicially the wipe, on 2-3 white layer full production the pump never last...the roll option is real garbage too, the tension on it (Stepsize media advanced) its impossible to adjust, make black or white line on the roll like a Mimaki JV5...so we print all in sheet on the acuity...tape everything...produce 4 sheet per hour...Acuity is the worse thing that Inca ever produce....i would rather go with a Vutek 6 color...

 

[reserv0ird0g]

these heads can and do fail easily.

I once ran into a similar problem in the 11th hour of one of our big jobs on the Fuji. What I ended up doing was to swap a failing Cyan Head with a working Black Head and then I increased the UCR to compensate for the loss of the Black ink. It got me through a jam, but pissed off the service tech when he found out what I had done.

Never had so many problems with a printer like we had with our Fuji. Nice looking prints, but not a very dependable machine, and WAY TOO SLOW. I recently got the same printhead from fuji for $1619.20 this past October. I Liked the Inca Spyder 320 we had, but again same heads and still a little to slow. We upgraded to the Inca S20 7 years ago, and couldnt be happier. A million bucks is a hell of a lot of money to shell out for a printer, but this baby can spit out the prints fast enough to pay for itself in around 36 months. It helped expand our business so much so that we were able to add a Vutek Gs3200 to our lines and I absolutely love that baby, small footprint, fast, excellent print quality, and cheaper than Inca's S series.

 

[AlsEU]

Acuity is the worse thing that Inca ever produce....i would rather go with a Vutek 6 color...

Obviously you have no idea, who produced Acuity. Definitely NOT Inca.

 

[Nate1n22]

I've had a yellow head die on our Acuity Advance too. Came in and did a nozzle test and there was nothing there where the yellow should have been. Fuji said the head "shorted out"

 

[Nate1n22]

Actually had a magenta head go out today. Came in, did a nozzle check and it was gone. I do want to try and check the temperature of the head tomorrow.