Mimaki CJV30-160 maintenance

[TheSFG]

Hey guys,

Moderately new to the forum and have been having small issues plaguing my usage with my Mimaki CJV30-160. since I began in the business I was using a versacamm. after going out on my own I got a pretty great deal on a Mimaki CJV and jumped on it. Overall the machine has been amazing in print quality and I have been very happy with it. Where it has fell short was on print/cut process and maintenance. We have since figured out print/cut but have been plagued most by maintenance.


What are the exact steps and products you use to maintain your machine? seems a lot more temperamental than the versacamms I was trained on but maybe it's just me.. I hope not

 

[ChrisMartin]

Type of Maintenance?

You may have to be more specific than that. Are you talking about cleaning maintenance, cutting maintenance, etc. Or just general everyday cleaning?

 

[TheSFG]

printing maint. I'll post some pictures soon

 

[Brink]

It was a bit of a learning curve on the print/cut. The manual is very broken English and hard to follow. Initially I was having trouble with the mark detect not find the crop marks with any consistency. I finally figured out that the crop marks need to be at least 3/4 of an inch from the document edge. (I'm talking about the digital document, not the print media) After I got that strait in my head, I've had no problems being able to print then cut. I did have an issue with that crappy plastic knife holder that shipped with it. It wouldn't allow the blade the swivel properly. I got me a nice aluminum knife holder made for a GCC Jaguar plotter. Problem solved... sorta. The sorta part is that the plastic holder that wouldn't let the blade turn had broken the tip off my knife. The knife looked fine when I looked with just my eyes or even with reading glasses. When I looked at it under a loop though, I could see the tip was broke off. New knife, cuts great.

Ink wise, I had originally ordered the machine with set up for C-M-Y-K-Lm-Lc-White-Silver. I though that with white and silver I could do things that the other shops could not do. While that would be true if I had white and silver jobs to do, the lack of jobs was a big waste of ink. Automated self cleanings wasted well over half of my white and silver within the first month. So I called my dealer and got it switched over to dual CMYK. It was amazing how much faster it would print after that.

I did have a head strike about a year later. The strike flipped the vinyl off the backing and turned the adhesive side towards the printhead. I didn't notice right away as I was in the next room. Obviously that clogged the printhead with adhesive. But after a few soak and clean cycles and $100 worth of wasted cleaning ink, the head was restored.

 

[Brink]

printing maint. I'll post some pictures soon

Soon is one of those subjective kinds of words that has a different meaning dependent upon perspective. For example soon means 50 years when talking about global warming but means only five minute when my child wants candy.