Mimaki 150-130 Troubles

[Adam Vreeke]

We have been having some trouble with our 150-130 recently. It started off with some ink splatter going down on our media. This turned out to be a leak in one of the ink tubes. We replaced all the ink lines going from our bulk system to the heads and now we are experiencing nozzles going out. We have within the last 2 months replaced the dampeners and cap tops, we have tried all the cleaning methods but nothing seems to work.

The only thing I can think of is there is still ink in the line, but besides that I have no ideas. Anyone have anything they can think of on this one?

 

[Smoke_Jaguar]

Always check your capping station and its alignment, could be air getting into the head and not flushing due to a poor seal. New caps tend to mean new alignment needs to be performed. Since the dampers are new, shouldn't be an issue, but also might be a good idea to make sure air isn't getting into the lines due to a loose connection.

 

[Ogre]

Looks like the capping station does not seal and the vacuum pump pulls air. Next offender can be the vacuum pump but at this model the pump is very reliable as I know.
To test the capping sealing, disconnect the vacuum tube from the vacuum pump and connect it to a syringe. Put the printer in service mode, open all the ink valves and then pull with the syringe. If you pull easy, then you have a bad seal between the capping and the printhead. Normally you should pull only ink with no bubbles in it.
It happened to me a couple of times with cheap brand new parts that did not seal from the very beginning. If you can afford, I would recommend to buy original parts. So far I don't have any complaint about the capping bought from Digiprint Supplies. At the first sign of loosing nozzles I do replace the capping immediately. I tried capping bought from Aliexpress but none of them did seal properly.

 

[Adam Vreeke]

thanks for the help, we did try everything and had a tech come in to look at it. If appears that it evolved into a head issue and if the overnight soak didn't work, we will need a new head.

 

[GraphixGirl79]

We have been having some trouble with our 150-130 recently. It started off with some ink splatter going down on our media. This turned out to be a leak in one of the ink tubes. We replaced all the ink lines going from our bulk system to the heads and now we are experiencing nozzles going out. We have within the last 2 months replaced the dampeners and cap tops, we have tried all the cleaning methods but nothing seems to work.

The only thing I can think of is there is still ink in the line, but besides that I have no ideas. Anyone have anything they can think of on this one?

We had a similar problem with our JV33-130. I lost almost all of my channels. But after drawing ink manually through into the dampers, it would test print fine but then be starved again. It turned out it was the pump causing this issue. you could try looking at your capping station pump assembly? assuming it's similar to our old mimaki, but i am not familiar with your model. good luck!

 

[Neil]

thanks for the help, we did try everything and had a tech come in to look at it. If appears that it evolved into a head issue and if the overnight soak didn't work, we will need a new head.

It's not a head issue, because it's happening across all the channels.
It's plumbing related.
Whenever someone says something like "I changed the cap top, now I don't get any ink..." type thing, you can bet it's because they changed something.
You replaced your ink lines, dampers, cap top...
You now have insufficient pulling power to draw the ink into the head. It's either an air leak or a blocked pump tube.