How to leave JV3 for weekend and holiday...

[MikeyG]

Hi there!
I'm new to the JV3 and I'm shocked at how much ink is wasted! I emptied the waste bottle a couple of months ago, and it's already nearly full!
I lowered the frequency of the cycles when I emptied the bottle, but I'm shocked at how much ink has been wasted since then – it's nearly full again after two months!

I'm looking into switching my JV3 printer off at weekends, to try to save a bit of money on the ink that is chugged out of it during the cleaning cycles.
Plus I'm away on hols in a few weeks, so I'll need to know how to leave the machine then, too!

I've got the manual, and have read it carefully, but it's not entirely clear. I'd prefer to get instruction from someone who's running the machine themselves!

Thanks in advance!

 

[genericname]

If you forget to prep it for a weekend shutdown once or twice, you probably won't encounter any issues, but it's really inadvisable. All it takes is once.

If push comes to shove, you can fill the caps with cleaning solution, park the head, and shut down the machine at the main switch. While you shouldn't get any dry ink on the heads, this can lead to shorter life of the caps, and pump lines. Also, if your pump isn't in top notch shape, don't be surprised if you come back after a weekend, and find that one or two of the captops have drained, leaving a head exposed to the air.

Long and short of it: it's not worth it. If you're planning on making this a regular part of your routine, you bought the wrong printer.

 

[particleman]

Just leave it plugged in (back power switch ON) and I wouldn't mess with the cycle times either honestly. It is pumping ink to protect your $800+ print heads from drying out. These machines are designed to stay plugged in while ink is in the print heads.

 

[SightLine]

I'd have to agree. The machine need to stay powered up at all times. Not just an $800 print head at risk - four $800 print heads at risk. You could of course flush the machine for storage but you would use far more ink and flush going through that whole process. These machines are not intended for casual use, they are intended to be workhorses that are printing hours on end daily but are fine with every few days as well but they are going to burn a good bit of ink whenever they are idle. You can disable or even further extend the automatic cleaning cycles but that's not really a good idea at all.

 

[Auburnpeanut]

I'd have to agree. The machine need to stay powered up at all times. Not just an $800 print head at risk - four $800 print heads at risk. You could of course flush the machine for storage but you would use far more ink and flush going through that whole process. These machines are not intended for casual use, they are intended to be workhorses that are printing hours on end daily but are fine with every few days as well but they are going to burn a good bit of ink whenever they are idle. You can disable or even further extend the automatic cleaning cycles but that's not really a good idea at all.

Couldn't have said it better.

 

[Samurai_Screwdriver]

Solvent inks dry very quickly so in order to prevent them clogging in the Heads they have to be kept moving. The long and the short of it is; Either move your ink by spitting it onto banners and wraps which you can sell or the printer will move it for you by spitting it into the waste bucket.

That said, Mimaki makes a lot of money selling inks and they have sneakily ensured that the default settings on the printer are set to use as much as possible. In addition to the hard-wired cleaning that happens every 50 minutes there is an additional one called "SLEEPclean". This can be found under MAINTENANCE => SLEEPclean. This is basically equivalent to you manually initiating a NORMAL clean on the printer and the is set to every 8 hours which is pretty excessive. Change this to 24 hours and this will ensure that the printer runs one of these cleanings at least twice over a weekend. The change from 8 to 24 will save a significant amount of ink.

If you go away for more than a few days think about paying some one to come in at least once a week to manually clean the wiper, caps, edges of print heads; the automated cleanings don't work well once ink starts getting gummed up on these parts. Many of the sales on print heads I make are the result of the Heads crashing into parts of the Capping Station they are never supposed to come into contact with.

 

[MikeyG]

Thanks to everyone for the advise.
I've adjusted the SleepClean to 24Hrs as Samurai suggested, but otherwise I guess I'll just have to let the printer continue to chug ink into the bucket!
At least I've heard it from people who know!

Thanks again!