Printing Problem

[jimmyheartcore]

Hey guys, here is what my Valuejet is printing like the past couple of days. Any ideas what could be causing weird streaks like this?

 

[J Hill Designs]

heat? (or lack thereof)

 

[jimmyheartcore]

Heaters are on - been printing with the same profile, settings, and material for the past few months. This just started yesterday, I am sure it is maintenance related, but can't figure it out. Did some cleanings, alignments, nozzle checks - everything looks fine. Can't get past these weird splotches printing though.

 

[J Hill Designs]

media contamination - have you tried new media or cleaning that one?

 

[jimmyheartcore]

Yeah I tried different rolls of the same material already, I just switched to that vinyl that is in the photo -- that is the most recent print. It is doing the same thing on various materials.

 

[jimmyheartcore]

I don't wipe the roll with alcohol, it has been my experience that it causes more problems than it does help. I generally feed the roll forward a couple of feet before I start printing anything, and the lines that are coming out are the same at the beginning of the roll or in the middle of the roll.

 

[coreyb]

Is it happening all the time? Our Valuejet was doing the same but it was thing but it was intermittent. We replaced the dampers, maintenance station and it seemed to clear up for a while, but eventually it came back we wound up replacing the head assembly about a month ago haven't seem the problem since.

 

[bluemedia_Ryan]

by looking at that photo, it seems to me that you have a bad calibration issue there is a yellow edge on the right side of the print as well as cyan and yellow edges in your text .... My money would be on an encoder issue or step calibration issue with your printer. I would try cleaning your encoder as well as running some quick calibrations on the machine first.

Does that streaking happen in everything .. raster images as well as vector art?

 

[jimmyheartcore]

by looking at that photo, it seems to me that you have a bad calibration issue there is a yellow edge on the right side of the print as well as cyan and yellow edges in your text .

I think the yellow and blue blurs you are seeing on the edges are the result of a crappy camera -- those aren't there in the actual print.

I did clean of the encoder strip though, a lot of dust on it but it doesn't seem to have done a lot. Printing with the print head in the low position fixes the problem a little, but not noticeably enough to call it "gone".

Talked to Fellers for a while about this today and did some trouble shooting. Looking more and more like we are going to have a tech come out and replace some parts.

Eeeehhhh.

 

[Compilla]

Talked to Fellers for a while about this today and did some trouble shooting. Looking more and more like we are going to have a tech come out and replace some parts.

Eeeehhhh.

Yeah.. Looks like you had a terrible head strike and messed up the head aligment....

My 2¢

 

[jimmyheartcore]

Don't mean to take away from your issue...but shouldn't the head generally be in the low position for vinyl?

Yeah, it does it in head low as well, but not as noticeably.

ALSO wasn't due to a head strike. There is now a brand new head on the machine and it is printing the same way.

 

[MachServTech]

Are you using any 3rd party ink? That could definitely cause this issue....also cleaning the printheads or dampers with 70% IPA can do this.