Need Help Mutoh 1204 needing printhead?

[dkk]

Have a Mutoh 1204, was purchased in 2010, but purchased by me in 2012. Have replaced maintenance station in the last 6 months, and because I'm an idiot we replaced the dampers 10 days ago. In my defense, our main supplier had them in the catalog with the words "should be changed yearly or as needed" so I assumed after 7 years I needed to change them.....
Dampers went on great, ink drained from all lines but was recovered using syringe to pull air out until we got ink.
No ink came out though on nozzle check or test print, Craig from solventink was outstanding and walked us through several troubleshooting tips and we eventually overnighted a new cap top from him. Cap top was on, and waste ink manually pulled through tubes under maintenance station eventually.

We got all colors except black back. Thought it was just air in the lines again and pulled dampers back off today and pulled air. We got some of the black back but not all of it. We also lost a yellow but I wasn't sweating it too much.

Called Craig again, (he's awesome and I absolutely trust him), but he suggested my print head was clogged and I'm probably going to have to replace it. Husband is planning to attempt to flush the head tomorrow but we have little hope as Craig said it doesn't usually work.....I'm attaching pictures and praying someone will have something else we can try. As I said, I trust Craig, I know he's on here and he's been great! I'm just really not wanting to make such a large purchase right now when we've already sunk so much into this machine already in the last 10 days...

early nozzle checks picture is how we started, ignore the ink splatters, it's a crap storm over here today
last nozzle check picture is what we ran before calling craig to see if we needed to keep doing cleanings or were wasting our time

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[GAC05]

I think Craig is correct, it looks like your black channel is toast.
I have a 8-9 year old 1304 and the black channel is the only one that clogged bad enough to require a head replacement.
I've done the soak on top of the maintenance station with a folded cloth - the remove head and soak on the bench, the swap the black chip onto a cleaning cart and print cleaning solution through the head - none recovered enough nozzles to justify the time wasted.
On the bright side you do get to know a good deal about your equipment. Gave me enough confidence to buy a new 1624 with the only tech support being me (and this list).

Good luck with your repair. Head change is not too hard - lots of help online. Most important note is to make sure the machine is unplugged - discharged and the person working on it takes precautions with static.

If you need the service guide I have a copy - send me an email address to hightail it to you.

wayne k
guam usa

 

[dkk]

I think Craig is correct, it looks like your black channel is toast.
I have a 8-9 year old 1304 and the black channel is the only one that clogged bad enough to require a head replacement.
I've done the soak on top of the maintenance station with a folded cloth - the remove head and soak on the bench, the swap the black chip onto a cleaning cart and print cleaning solution through the head - none recovered enough nozzles to justify the time wasted.
On the bright side you do get to know a good deal about your equipment. Gave me enough confidence to buy a new 1624 with the only tech support being me (and this list).

Good luck with your repair. Head change is not too hard - lots of help online. Most important note is to make sure the machine is unplugged - discharged and the person working on it takes precautions with static.

If you need the service guide I have a copy - send me an email address to hightail it to you.

wayne k
guam usa

As much as I hate to spend the $$, I really appreciate your reply! I would definitely benefit from a copy of the service guide and would very much appreciate a copy sent to dkdesigns312@gmail.com. Thank you so much!

 

[GAC05]

Should be on the way.

wayne k
guam usa

 

[dkk]

Should be on the way.

wayne k
guam usa

I received it! Thank you very much! I know it will definitely help us. Now tonight's question...husband flushed printhead and we felt there was improvement. I'm attaching a picture of our last nozzle check from a few moments ago. It's definitely better than last night, but am I getting false hope?

Has anyone ever recovered from a clogged printhead? or are we just wasting time and cleaning solution?

 

[GAC05]

Still looks pretty bad but is getting better. Maybe give it a few more tries before ordering that new head.

wayne k
guam usa

 

[premiercolour]

We were able to recover a print head on a 1204 as bad as what you posted. Perform factory function: head wash might will help a lot. Have you done so? You would need a lot of cleaning solution.

 

[JasonMeisnerSTS]

I would push flushing fluid through the head on each channel 3-5 times; If your nozzles don't come back to an acceptable level, time to change the printhead unfortunately but I have seen heads come back that are this bad or sores if done properly