JV33 Blue ink head

[hbb2008]

Yesterday, I started up the printer to do its regular Monday maintenance and I have been having trouble with the blue test prints. Since I was out of the office last week, I haven’t printed anything since 1/15/2016.

I have done ink fill ups, nozzle washes and replaced the damper and put cleaning fluid through the blue line to completely wash it out yesterday to try and get it to come back to normal and I haven’t had any luck. I thought maybe it could be air in the line, but today it still looks like that. The print head is still fairly new, it was installed last August. The test print was perfect before I came back into the office from being gone last week.

Temp is 72 degrees and Humidity is at 35%, But I would think all heads would have an issue if it was humidity problem, and the humidity has been in the 30s and this is the first I've had this issue.

 

[Morkel]

The fact that the nozzles are all firing, just out of alignment, says to me that the head is grubby. In those cleaning processes, did you do the one where you fill up the capping station with cleaning fluid & you tell it how many minutes to soak it for? I forgot what it's called, sorry, haven't had our JV33 for nearly 2 years, maybe it's the "nozzle wash" which you already said you did. If you haven't done that, maybe soak it for a good 10 minutes, then do a Pump Tube wash to clear any gunk out of the lines, and see if that helps.

 

[hbb2008]

Thanks Morkel,

It is a Nozzle wash you are referring too. I have done several at different time lengths. I just finished one for 50 minutes and it did not help at all. I'm going to keep trying different options. I am struggling to get the humidity up too. I have had some issues before with the Black, but never this bad. I would hate to have to keep replacing heads in this machine especially with a second one on the way. The good thing, is that I do not print with much blue very often so most of my prints come out ok. But when I do print with blue I get lines in the print from the deflections.

 

[Morkel]

Gee, that actually prints even worse than I expected. It really is putting the cyan down rough. We don't ever get problems with not enough humidity here, in fact we have to have air-con on 24/7 to keep temps down and keep the moisture out of the air. I'm certainly no tech, but I can't imagine why low humidity could cause this, especially on one channel. The whole purpose of sealed ink cartridges, lines, and capped heads is to make sure moisture & air don't get in to the mix, why a higher humidity could help doesn't make sense. Unless the moisture in the air helps prevent the heads from drying out, and the cyan has subsequently dried in and around the nozzles, causing them to deflect. But again, decent washes & flushes would clear that. Another thing then - when you do the Nozzle Wash, do you wait a bit to see if the flushing fluid stays in the cap? We had problems once where there was a slight leak, and by the time the heads were capped all of the fluid had leaked out and it never actually soaked the heads.

That sort of misalignment of nozzles I've only ever seen after bad head strikes. But I can tell it's not that because (1) it's limited only to the cyan, and (2), it's affected pretty much every nozzle, not just some in a strike area.

The only other thing I can think of is a bit out there. One of our managers used to be a Roland tech, he knows the workings of these things much better than I do. He's actually swapped printheads on our machine(s) himself, but I can't remember if it was only the Roland or if he did the Mimaki as well. Anyways, when the heads arrive they have this long numerical sequence that has to be input in to the printer, and it sounded to me like each head is manufactured and tested individually, and requires this unique sequence of numbers for it to be accurate. Almost like a firing order for an engine, so maybe it's the sequence that each nozzle fires electronically, or it may even be literally an offset for each nozzle so they align properly when fired. It's a long shot, but I'll try to remember to ask him tomorrow. If it is something like this, maybe the printer has glitched and "lost" this sequence, meaning there is no correcting and it just fires rough like an untuned engine.

I'll get back to you.

 

[hbb2008]

I checked to see if the flushing fluid stays in the cap, and it does. So it is soaking, just not working.

I agree with the humidity, optimal is 45-55%, I am at 35% consistently, if that was the issue, i would think I would see it in all or more than one color.

 

[Morkel]

Turns out my colleague is quite familiar with the JV33.

His questions were:

1) How old is the head? They use an Epson DX3 or DX5 head that are rated to 6 billion drops, over 10 billion drops he has seen it do exactly what yours has done, and it's impossible to get it back to how it was before. It just takes a bit of ink to separate and gunk to come through the head and it's gone. Epson has never been able to explain it, it's just a "thing".

2) During the week that you were not printing, was the machine turned on / standby mode, was it off at the switch but on at the power source (so still did an automatic clean once or twice a day), or was it off at the wall? If there was no cleaning done during that week, the same problem could occur by having ink dry up in the nozzles (which is why regular cleans are mandatory). Who knows why it was just the cyan, again, maybe a bit of ink separated.

Which makes me think, you said that you don't print with cyan that regularly. How old are the cyan cartridges? That might hold the key here.

For that idea I had last post, about the number key for each print head, apparently it's a tuning code, and if the correct code has not been input, or no code has been entered, it may well fire like crap. However, if it was previously printing okay and has only just gone bad, this would not be a cause as there is no way for the machine to "lose" the code.

 

[hbb2008]

The print head was installed at the end of last august. So almost 6 months old. It makes me nervous to think I need to replace it again. Last year I had to have two replacements 6 months apart, and it was not a good time.

When I was out of the office, i did have the machine turned off at the wall. I see your point about this and it makes sense. I did the same thing over the 1.5 weeks I was out for Christmas and it ran fine until I was traveling last week, so about 2 weeks after Christmas is was good, until now.


Blue does take me the longest to go through, but not any more than 6 months, which is the life time of the ink. And it is a bulk system, so i refill the ink my self.

 

[paperstrategies]

cleaning

Well just from scimming through this, it could be that your wiper needs to be replaced. If you're doing these cleanings and the wiper is corroded or gunked up, it would actually be wiping ink back on to your head. The humidity factor that would affect your printing would come from the opposite of humidity, which is static. So the more humidity the less static and vice-versa. Have you physically looked at the bottom of the carriage? Maybe you're trying to fix a problem that isn't there.

When is the last time you calibrated your drop position? Also, are you using mimaki ink or compatibles? Compatible inks will eat through the lines and destroy the heads after a decent period of time. It's possible that this process would have been happening over time and since you don't use cyan alot, it would have been less noticeable.

 

[hbb2008]

I have ordered a replacement wiper, though my current is still in good shape. I am not using Mimaki inks and I am using Water based inks. I realize that this can be associated with the problem, however, I was hoping for some suggestions and tricks to resolve it or just to learn something new. I only have about 2 years experience with this printer.
I calibrated my drop position through the #adjust menu yesterday. The normal drop position calibration usually messes with my prints worse than #adjust. I use this printer through the AVA software and rip, so it is a little different than what I would think normal users use this machine for. This is unfortunate for me, since it is tough to get help since it is being used differently than the norm. But I still like to read posts on here and see others suggestions.

Thank you for your replies!

 

[paperstrategies]

Again, I'd absolutely check under the head. And just a shot in the dark, but maybe you could try slowing the scan speed down or try uni-directional and see if you can get some quality back.

 

[SightLine]

...........Compatible inks will eat through the lines and destroy the heads after a decent period of time. It's possible that this process would have been happening over time and since you don't use cyan alot, it would have been less noticeable.

I'd say to ignore that mythical statement as its too much of a blanket statement. There are certainly some really crappy aftermarket inks out there but the few very well known and reputable brands like Triangle and Bordeaux for example are very well proven inks and they do not eat away at your ink lines nor destroy your heads. We have been running Triangle full solvent inks in our JV33 from just about day 1 (about 5 years on this particular JV33) and have had no issues due to the inks.

That's also not to say that there might not be a bad batch of ink out either. That can happen with any inks including OEM inks. I know for a fact that it has happened with OEM inks before from both Mimaki and Roland. Very old inks will also eventually go bad as some of the compounds break down. In my experience though even 2 year old inks still tend to work fine. The head id number (head rank) from what I've gathered over the years does affect the voltages to the head and can make a slight difference in print quality but generally very very little. I've used plenty of heads over the years (both old DX4 heads in the JV3 we had years ago and a couple of DX5 heads in our JV33) with no head rank (just left the original head rank in the machine) and they worked just fine. Our last DX5 head gave us about 3 years of great service and I personally ripped it out of an Epson R1900 desktop printer and installed it into our JV33 and it did not have a head rank number our JV33 would accept. That entire time that same head also exclusively ran Triangle solvent bulk ink.

One thing on bulk ink systems though is I'd only recommend a fully sealed bag type system. Any open/refillable tanks setups do tend to introduce pressure issues into the ink system which can cause odd issues.

A few things could cause the issues OP is having though. Leaking capping top or pump starting to fail for one. I know it seems counterintuitive that the capping having a leak might only affect one channel but it very much can. Misaligned cap, dampers, head manifold (if has been reused from an old head) could be getting clogged up. Sticking ink valve at the back of the cartridge slots, or an air leak somewhere as well. Of course the head could just be dying an early death. A lot of little things to rule out but checking and ruling things out one at a time is really the only way to narrow the problem down. Humidity will not so much affect the actual printing/firing as it will the drying and how things look after the ink has hit the vinyl.

 

[Morkel]

Ah yes. 3rd party inks. They'll be the issue. There are some that work - our Roland SP540V was delivered with bulk Teckink from the supplier, never had a problem. We were coaxed in to converting to a bulk ink for the Mimaki, (different supplier), it almost killed me. We only agreed because they promised that they would match the Roland and Mimaki together. And of course the "we have heaps of guys running it and they love it". Utter ********. After some research I saw that people were selling de-gassing units for bulk ink systems, so I suspected it might be air in the lines. After speaking with the supplier we moved to a cartridge version of the same ink. Better, but still unreliable. It would randomly drop a colour, sometimes after 10 metres, sometimes 100mm. To get it back required an exact sequence of cleaning procedures that took 20 minutes and often required us drawing ink through with a syringe while someone else manually pushed in the solenoids to open them up. Black was the worst. Temperatures above 40 would exacerbate the problem. At one point we had to have one black and one yellow cartridge disconnected as the ink just would not come through those lines. We were given every excuse under the sun. Always a fault with the printer. We persevered for a year until they finally admitted that the other guys using the ink were all using it on different printers. No one had it working on a Mimaki. We told them to go jump, flushed it out and put genuine inks back in it and it never skipped a beat again, surprisingly there was no long term damage. The kicker was that they never actually were able to match the Roland and Mimaki...

Basically, you run non-genuine inks, you take the risk. We printed for 4 years with the original print heads, never an issue. The fact that you're getting 6 months, and are having a problem with one particular colour, straight away that sounds like the ink.

Would you consider going back to standard inks? Did it have the water-based inks in it when you bought it? What's the main reason, cost, smell, output purpose? If there is the opportunity to go genuine, and it is viable financially, that'd be my suggestion.

 

[hbb2008]

I also have a de-gassing unit for my bulk system. it has been working great! no problems with it. Before that i did have some issues with the yellow randomly dropping out.

Unfortunately i do not have an option to use mimaki or a different type of ink, since we are trying to reproduce our rotogravure production. We have to use the same pigments and inks our production uses. So yes the ink is probably the source of my issues, but we have printers around the world using the same system i am. Unless my contact in Germany is lying to me, it sounds like I am the only one having so many issues here in the USA and as far as I know, i am using it the same way others in our company are.

ahhh,oh well... I will push on, someday I will be clear of these issues.....I hope.

Thank you for every ones thoughts and suggestions. I really appreciate it and discussing it.

 

[TomZ]

Did you try doing a hard clean a couple times

 

[hbb2008]

Yes I have, I am still trying to solve this. Thursday I received a stronger cleaner from my ink supplier, i have tried this a few times, but not many, since I have had a customer in town all week. I think i should have more time to play with it next week.

 

[APCInk]

You said you are using water-based inks. I am assuming this is dye sublimation? How high of a head gap are you running? I am assuming you are printing on transfer paper? Did you physically change the head, capping station, and wiper station into the higher mode when you set it up for dye sublimation? If your running the higher head gap this can cause deflection and satelliting. Another thing to check is what type of ink the machine thinks it has. If you are running waterbased ink, but the machine thinks it has solvent ink this can also cause issues because the voltages are different for the different ink types.

Feel free to reach out to me to discuss.

Good luck!
Brian Hendricks
American Print Consultants
Business: 818-9-APCINK(27-2465)
Cell: 419-552-0194
Email: brian@apcink.com
Website:www.apcink.com

 

[APCInk]

Something else you can try is to swap cyan line and damper to another channel on the head. Do a hard cleaning or two and a test print. If the deflection follows the ink line and damper then you know its an ink issue. If it stays at that channel on the print head it means those nozzles have deteriorated or have residual blocking part of the nozzle causing your issue.

Brian Hendricks
American Print Consultants
Business: 818-9-APCINK(27-2465)
Cell: 419-552-0194
Email: brian@apcink.com
Website:www.apcink.com

 

[Art Tampa]

hi guys someone can help i have a CJV30 and going crazy on this one, prints fine but suddenly puts this blue lines on the middle of the print, we did change the cap, we clean the strip, we did the nozzle wash, head cleaning, any advised, i don't think the head is bad as it prints well , the prints are 28"x198" and it will do on the first 10" then is fine, and maybe on the 180" line will do it again, any help thank you.

 

[hbb2008]

CJV30

Do you have your settings set up to do a cleaning after a # of meters print? if so, perhaps the wiper is not cleaning the printer head and allowing some of the Blue to mix into the other channels? I used to have mine set up to clean after so many # of meters printed but then it caused issues with the paper would shift and I would have a stripe of different colored print. I turned that setting off and the issue when away. Maybe this is happening to you too? swap the wiper?

 

[Solventinkjet]

How does your nozzle check look in the morning before you've printed? I'm willing to bet you have cross contamination. Usually that's going to be a cap top/maintenance station issue but it could be internal damage to the head.