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Need Help Oce Arizona ink vacuum error.
- Thread starter Simprint
- Start date
Replace your lamps #1. Digiprint supplies has pretty good pricing. For the vacuum does your head drop ink? If so it is likely one of the small micron filters on top of your carriage needs replaced. Also make sure you don't have a bad ink pump. Check for drops in ink pump area.
Ricardo Cobar
New Member
Mine was not dropping ink but had ink starvation, then ink vacuum error (Arizona 550). Small micron filters in the meniscus system are the culprit
had the same problem on my 1280XT. was a leak in one of the lines running up to the printhead. fairly quick fix.
lamp error can be a fault in the shutter housing. canon has switched the design on the shutter bolts, as the old ones could come loose. We got 2 new shutters on warranty.
Was just to unplug the lamp, unplug the power to the shutters, replace the whole unit and reconnect.
lamp error can be a fault in the shutter housing. canon has switched the design on the shutter bolts, as the old ones could come loose. We got 2 new shutters on warranty.
Was just to unplug the lamp, unplug the power to the shutters, replace the whole unit and reconnect.
Hey all, sorry for being so late to the party on this thread.
On my Oce Arizona 480GT I get "Ink Vacuum System Error" every time I do the daily print head vacuuming. The white ink heads both drip ink after purging until I close the maintenance drawer - but then they stop dripping and there are zero issues while printing. I also noticed that the print head vacuum cleaner doesn't suck well from one nozzle, despite me having tried flushing it with UV flush and alcohol. At first I thought that the error I'm seeing was related to the print head cleaner vacuum, but now I'm wondering if the error could be due to the white ink continuously dripping after purging? The previous operator of this press that trained me told me that it's normal for the white ink to drip during maintenance due to the additional mercury in the ink... I have a hard time believing that since in the maintenance tutorial videos, no ink drips after purging from any of the print heads, but does anybody know if that's correct or have any advice for me? Thanks in advance everyone!
On my Oce Arizona 480GT I get "Ink Vacuum System Error" every time I do the daily print head vacuuming. The white ink heads both drip ink after purging until I close the maintenance drawer - but then they stop dripping and there are zero issues while printing. I also noticed that the print head vacuum cleaner doesn't suck well from one nozzle, despite me having tried flushing it with UV flush and alcohol. At first I thought that the error I'm seeing was related to the print head cleaner vacuum, but now I'm wondering if the error could be due to the white ink continuously dripping after purging? The previous operator of this press that trained me told me that it's normal for the white ink to drip during maintenance due to the additional mercury in the ink... I have a hard time believing that since in the maintenance tutorial videos, no ink drips after purging from any of the print heads, but does anybody know if that's correct or have any advice for me? Thanks in advance everyone!
Quick question - when for the last time the ink vacuum was calibrated? With the external gauge.
There are no physical gauges - would it be one of the measurements on the ink screen on the print station computer? From there it shows Meniscus vacuum as 19.1psi, purge pressure as 5.1in. H2O, and degas vacuum as 11.6psi. I don't think it's been calibrated in a long time, if ever. I just started at this company about 3 weeks ago, haha. Thanks for the response!
SignMeUpGraphics
Super Active Member
Wrong and wrong... sorry you've been fed incorrect information.
Have you ever replaced the white filter next the the valves at the top of the carriage? A blocked one of those will cause dripping.
Also, that meniscus value seems too high... possibly to mask the problem of dripping ink.
White ink has titanium dioxide in it, not mercury. That would be incredibly toxic.
According to the previous press operator, replacing the micron filters did not solve the problem, unfortunately. I can't confirm with my own experience that that's true though - I'm kinda taking what he's said with a grain of salt at this point haha.
Do you know where the meniscus value should be, approximately? It sits between 18.7 and 19.2 (at least when operating normally and/or printing - haven't checked while purging). The ink only ever drips during maintenance after purging until I close the maintenance drawer... I find that to be odd, though I'm not familiar with how the print head purge process works internally.
And about the mercury, yeah, I thought that would be odd that Canon would use mercury in their ink nowadays.
SignMeUpGraphics
Super Active Member
Just found this in the service manual:
Regarding meniscus, I don't have a manual for the 4xx series on hand. 3xx series it's around 12 and 5xx series is around 16. Maybe 19 is correct for the 4xx series, but I can't confirm.
Bulletin 1147 attached.
Regarding meniscus, I don't have a manual for the 4xx series on hand. 3xx series it's around 12 and 5xx series is around 16. Maybe 19 is correct for the 4xx series, but I can't confirm.
Bulletin 1147 attached.
Wow! This is all information that we don't even have at the company. I never thought there would be a straight-up service manual for it, kind of assumed that no such thing existed for some reason. I'll have to call up our contact at Canon to see if they would be able to send me a PDF of the service manual for our specific printer. That being said, I'll have to establish contact with someone at Canon/Oce first, haha.
When I have some spare time, I'll have to inspect for leaks. We don't have a vacuum gauge so I'll see if there's one that we can order. We're slammed with work currently so I don't have any down time on the press, but that just means I'll have time to wait for a gauge to come in to be able to test the vacuum lines. I'm going to also check to see if there's a manual adjustment for the vacuum pressure - I won't mess wiht it until I'm confident in what I'm doing, but I'll check to see if the vacuum strength has been boosted to mask that issue or something.
Thank you SO MUCH for your help, I'm feeling much more confident already. I work onmy own cars, fix my own things in my house when something breaks, etc., so I'd love to have a deeper knowledge of this press to be better prepared for if things break or have issues like this. It would be a great bargaining point to know how to fix this thing better in terms of pay, too, when my review comes around haha. Thanks again mate, cheers.
I know that there's no physical gauge - it's part of the service engineer's equipment, not the printer part. It's a gauge installed in the carriage in the vacuum tubing to verify both the meniscus vacuum level and match the meniscus vacuum pressure displayed in the Interface Ink Window to the actual vacuum gauge reading. For 4xx printers, the optimal meniscus vacuum is 19" H2O with 0.5" H2O rise and fall during the normal operation. During the calibration, the printer turns the meniscus vacuum pump on and off repeatedly, which creates changes in the vacuum level. Changes should be within the 0.5" range and within 10 seconds time frame (the first step of the calibration sets a 1" H2O range, which is narrowed at the next step to 0.5"). Unfortunately, an SDS key and the knowledge (or service manual) are required to perform this procedure.
Gotcha, thanks for the info - It does seem as though the vacuum pressure stays within that +/- 0.5" range, but I assume calibrating it is actually going to calibrate the readout, meaning that there's the potential that the readout is incorrect on my screen - does it sound like I'm understanding properly or am I way off about that haha?
19" on your screen doesn't mean that there is 19" in the vacuum system. I saw many times correct values visible on the screen while the real value (read on the gauge simultaneously) was more than 1" lower or higher. Also, this 10 seconds time frame has to be calibrated, otherwise strange things may happen in the system. And you can't calibrate it in any other way than by using the external gauge.
Ah I understand what you're saying, cool. I'll have to get my hands on that gauge, we don't have one here so I'll contact Canon/Oce to see if they're able to send us one. Thanks again for the clarification! Hoping to have this puppy running in tip-top shape by the time I'm done with it.
We've recently gone through a whole slew of white ink issues on our 360, including this. Over the past few months we've replaced almost every part between the white ink bag coupler through to the white ink print heads. This symptom never went away fully until we replaced our heads. That being said, miscalibrated meniscus could do it, a clogged meniscus filter could do it... hard to say for sure. One of our technicians did tell us that this symptom isn't "bad," but I wasn't happy to hear that. I've been running this machine for 4 years and it had never happened before, so what do we gotta do to make it stop, yknow? Anyway, considering the symptom never went away until the white printheads got replaced, it seems likely that for us we had a worn out print head.
I would suggest you start off by replacing your meniscus filter for your white ink channel. When you do so, see if you can detect any white ink in the old filter. It's especially hard to see on the white channel but usually around the nipple you can see traces of it.
Are you agitating your white ink and bleeding your filter every day? I only recently learned this is a now recommended best-practice by Canon / OCE. It shouldn't have much to do with this issue, but wanted to bring it to your attention.
As an aside-- your situation sounds similar to mine. Generally handy, comfortable getting inside machines, and found yourself running an Arizona suddenly. I'm certainly no expert, but I've learned a lot from various technicians over the past 4 years. Happy to be a sounding board anytime you need.
I would suggest you start off by replacing your meniscus filter for your white ink channel. When you do so, see if you can detect any white ink in the old filter. It's especially hard to see on the white channel but usually around the nipple you can see traces of it.
Are you agitating your white ink and bleeding your filter every day? I only recently learned this is a now recommended best-practice by Canon / OCE. It shouldn't have much to do with this issue, but wanted to bring it to your attention.
As an aside-- your situation sounds similar to mine. Generally handy, comfortable getting inside machines, and found yourself running an Arizona suddenly. I'm certainly no expert, but I've learned a lot from various technicians over the past 4 years. Happy to be a sounding board anytime you need.
Agitating the white ink pouch daily? Yes, but WITHOUT disconnecting it from the quick connector - it's enough to mix the ink inside the pouch when it's connected. Quick connectors used in the printer are not mentioned to be used so many times, so the printer will remind the operator to disconnect the pouch and mix the ink once per month roughly.
YouWantItWhen?!!
New Member
If you are being told to bleed your ink filter every day then you have air entering your lines constantly, have you asked your tech why you need to do this and why it is happening?
The vacuum error is a sign of high rate of air pump requests. So somewhere meniscus or degass vacuum is dropping frequently, meaning there is a leak somewhere.
Air pressure pumps are located near ink pumps. Tubes are going from pumps to pressure sensor on system control pca and to accumulator (the blue cistern) and from there to carriage.
Which of air pump is running frequently? You can clamp each section with a pince and check if the pump is stopping.
Regarding the lamp system it depends on machine type. Old units have different lamp housing from IntegrationTechnologies, newer units have Océ-own housing.