Mutoh valuejet 1324x ink dropout? (please help)

[ZKlapak]

Hello signs101 guru's, im having very odd problems with my mutoh valuejet 1324x. i was having 1 in streaks of pink/magenta at the start of my prints and pretty bad banding (pic with the pink and banding) i ended up switching out the dampers and maintenance station. the problem persisted, especially with reds. it looked as though someone ran a comb through the print leaving about 1/32" or 1/16" light streaks every 1/16" or so. we caved and bought a new head and it printed what we needed for a day (although with the head height raised it gave a lot of "fuzz" around the edges and in between colors). the parts were all OE and installed by a mutoh tech. his response to the fuzz was to lower the head which we have mentioned we should not really have to do as this machine used to print on this media flawless with the head raised. But we lowered the head and it printed great until the end of that day. where we began to notice a hard shift in color after a couple inches, every color was lighter. we soaked the head overnight and in the morning it printed normal again. by evening the same problem occured. we ran a nozzle check and all looked good with head moving right to left but on the return spray we were missing a LOT of lines. we soaked the head again and this morning we printed fine, until the head barely caught an edge of media and rolled a tiny bit of vinyl. it did not even register as a head strike with the machine. no error or anything. immediately after it began doing the thing again where it prints for an inch or so and then all colors lighten (its hard to see because its extremely sublte but even the black). we JUST ran another nozzle check and everything was good except magenta, then another where blue started dropping out along with magenta, then another with more blue gone. i see no ink pooling on the head while printing, MS is new and wiper is clean, dampers are new, although the line that goes to the "A" spot has a very mildly crooked clip, i sincerely doubt its related. No air in the lines that ive seen. weve cleaned encoder strip and disc multiple times. tried different rips and profiles/weave/wave/fuzz patterns. tried printing from a seperate computer running a newer version of flexi. cleaned and grased raceways. cleaned as much dust and debris as i could get to and sprayed with duster. the only things i can think of is motherboard, cracked carriage (we had an incident a while back where the head was returned somewhat forcefully to the maintenence station..) or if the tech didnt run solvent/cleaner through the new dampers when installing the head, which came with new dampers so we replaced the 3 week old dampers we had just put in. I'm at my wits end. its been weeks and we depend on this mutoh for our income and we have sunk a pretty penny in to getting in tip top shape. the tech told us essentially its a new machine minus lines wires and motherboard. please help. sincerely a desperate man.

 

[danno]

We had similar issues here. Our cause was the new ink Mutoh had introduced. We have since flushed all lines, changed all dampers, the print head and the capping station. We then switched to Sun inks. We haven't had any issues since then.

 

[ZKlapak]

We had similar issues here. Our cause was the new ink Mutoh had introduced. We have since flushed all lines, changed all dampers, the print head and the capping station. We then switched to Sun inks. We haven't had any issues since then.

Thank you! i might try a head soak and pulling some ink through the lines to get the old ink out and give sun inks a try. i should have mentioned we were using STS inks, which came recommended from one tech and another said they might cause issues. hopefully its not a new head situation again as this one is 3 days old and they arent the cheapest.