Nozzle Wash Help!

[Pacific Sign]

Hello Everyone!,

I am having a problem with my Nozzle Wash. I have a Mimaki JV3-160SP. When asked to fill the capping stations with liquid, the Black (Key) and Cyan heads do not hold the cleaning solution. The other ones do. I've included a picture to help visualize my problem.

I was also wondering if there is a way to clean the wiper station, there is a tremendous amount of buildup in this area.

Thanks your help!

 

[particleman]

As far as the capping station holding fluid this is a sign of the pump going bad. Not sure if you've changed one before, but mimaki considered them consumable parts. There are two pumps, 2 lines goto each. You may need two if the lines go into different pumps.

Ink build up, make sure you keep your wiper and heads clean, we do it daily. That is that much less ink that will run down there. You can access the wiper assembly from a panel on the back of the machine. Sometimes you will find ink build up on the gears and cause them not to mesh correctly.

 

[Pacific Sign]

Thanks Particleman! I haven't changed a pump before but I'm fairly confident I can do this myself. Would you by chance know where to get a hold of a service manual? maybe in PDF form?. As for the ink build up around the wiper...yeah, ive been less than diligent when it comes to cleaning. I've removed the back panel and not to my surprise there was ink all over the gears. Anyway, thanks for your help! very much appreciated!

 

[Pacific Sign]

Sorry for the humongous picture by the way, OOOPS!

 

[particleman]

Some people *raises hand* learn the hard way that cleaning does pay off in the long run What will happen eventually you'll get ink build up around the rubber rim of your caps and they will not seal, you will wonder why your heads suddenly are dropping out. Hopefully you'll figure out what happened before they set to long and dry out. So make sure no ink builds up on your capping station. We take the side cover off our printer and leave it off, slide the head over in the morning, clean the ink off the rim of each head on all 4 sides. If you do it daily it will be a very quick job, but letting it go makes it a real pain to get the ink off. If you allow the ink to build up what will happen when you're printing something like banner the heads become magnets for lent and fibers. Ink will either collect and drip on your prints or the lint will drag and smeer your ink. Again we have first hand knowledge of this, LOL.

Pump change is easy. You should really keep at least one on hand anyway, because when they actually go out and stop pumping you will have heads that will physically stop working. The pump actually pulls ink through the head, if it can't do this you will not get ink flowing out of the head.

1. Remove the back cover, below the panel where you accessed the wiper assembly. You will see the two pumps.
2. There is one screw holding the pump in place, unscrew it
3. There are two inline couplers on each line, you can disconnect the line at that point
4. Remove old, put in new you will have to cut the clear lines to length and fish them back down to the waste tube. This will be a little messy.