reviving print heads on UV flatbed

[Cranniga1]

Hello I am running an Arizona Oce 360 XT that has been giving me some issues with my test prints. I am getting clogged nozzles on both of my white heads routinely as well as one of my yellows. I know there are a ton of tricks for reviving solvent print heads, but haven't found anything on flat beds. I inherited this machine after 4 years of it being used and maintained by 3 other people, so I am not 100% on the maintenance quality of the past. I do know one of the white heads was changed last year, and the past 8 months I have been behind the wheel I have been very consistent in my cleaning of the machine. Any help on this would be appreciated.

 

[DerbyCitySignGuy]

Hello I am running an Arizona Oce 360 XT that has been giving me some issues with my test prints. I am getting clogged nozzles on both of my white heads routinely as well as one of my yellows. I know there are a ton of tricks for reviving solvent print heads, but haven't found anything on flat beds. I inherited this machine after 4 years of it being used and maintained by 3 other people, so I am not 100% on the maintenance quality of the past. I do know one of the white heads was changed last year, and the past 8 months I have been behind the wheel I have been very consistent in my cleaning of the machine. Any help on this would be appreciated.

Are the nozzles clogged or are they completely out?

There are a few general things you can try that should apply to just about any flatbed printer. Create a "capping station" and soak the heads in cleaning solution. Take a piece of Gatorfoam or some other rigid material, wrap in plastic wrap, then soak some lint free cloths poly wipes in cleaning solution and let the heads sit on that overnight. If it's a constant issue, you might want to do this any time you're down for an extended period of time, like over the weekends.

You can also try to manually flush the heads with cleaning solution. Get a syringe and connectors and just push it through the head. Just make sure you're real careful and you do it very slowly so you don't damage the head. Flushing from the subtank can also help.

I'm not super familiar with Oce printers, but you should be able to use any of these methods.

 

[Cranniga1]

Thanks, I did a soak with lint free cloths for about an hour it helped a little but but I think I may need to do it over night like you said. I am pretty sure they are clogged as opposed to out. I would post a picture but the yellow is so light on the test print I dont think it would be visible.

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

We have this same issue with our 360, and I believe the behaviour is "normal" and you just need to persist with it.
The white inks are very dense and contain metal particles I believe. The section of the heads that constantly block are the parts just below where the ink feed tube goes into the top of the head.
This causes the heavier particles to settle in that area and block that 1/3" of nozzles.

We alternate between both Océ flush and 99.9% isopropyl alcohol to clean our heads.
It can take 30 mins to get them firing properly again if the printer is left more than 1-2 days (although the white heads will still begin to clog much earlier than that).
We can print white all day long, then leave the machine alone for 30 mins and some white nozzles will begin to stop firing. A quick purge usually gets them back in line.

CMYK causes us no such issues, and will clean first time (99% of the time) and won't clog up even after days of non-printing.

 

[DerbyCitySignGuy]

All the inks contain metal to some degree, but white ink contains more than the others. I believe it's titanium dioxide that's used in most (all?) white inks. The drawback is that it causes lots of clogging in print heads, which is why most printers have recirculation systems for white.

If you're having a lot of problems, you can also gently agitate your white ink by hand every couple of hours. Your mileage may vary, but if you're not using white every day it can't hurt.

 

[Morkel]

We have a 480XT which is about 2 years old now. The white starts to block up after about 10 minutes (if the ink heater has turned itself off, time to re-clean) and the yellow is not much better. The white one is normal (though ours degrades quite fast), but the yellow one is because of the print head - it loses roughly it's middle third nozzles after about 15 - 20 minutes, and then most of the rest by half an hour. A regular purge & vacuum gets it back immediately, but it's just something we live with and not uncommon when they start to age. The reason we know it's not air in the lines or anything like that is because it used to be the Magenta doing it - we swapped the head with the yellow and then the yellow did it. It was a lot easier than pulling apart the entire ink line and looking for leaks etc, which in the end we wouldn't have found anyway! The only way to fix it is a new head.

One thing to mention. Before this we had the 350GT. It was an absolute no-no to apply flush anywhere on the heads (you had to clean it with a dry stick, regularly enough for the ink to not dry). Apparently the flush would easily seep up and destroy the electronics, so the nozzles wouldn't fire. We lost a couple of heads before Oce figured out what was going on, we weren't the only ones it happened to and thankfully it was all fixed under warranty. Now I KNOW the XT models have totally different heads, and I KNOW we've been told that you can flush these ones. But I'm still hesitant, especially to expose them for a full 24 hours.

Have you been shown how to do a long purge? I assume you know you can turn off the valves at the top to turn off any inks that you don't need to purge. If you leave the valves open, then close them the moment the ink starts coming out, it continues to purge until the entire reservoir is empty (probably about 1 minute). If you open the valve again it'll immediately stop, so you don't need to purge the full reservoir, but even doing this for 15-20 seconds pushes a LOT of ink through and can unblock stubborn nozzles quite well. If you wear gloves and don't mind making a mess, while it's purging is a good time to get a stick with flush on it and really wipe the underside of the heads good - the fact that it's continuing to purge means any flush gets, um, flushed away with the ink and definitely will not get in to any electronic areas. It's probably what I'd do before I go drowning the heads.

 

[dylanpil]

I know this is an old feed, but has anyone tried using an ultra sonic cleaner for oce 360 gt or other print heads?

 

[Smoke_Jaguar]

Damn, 8 year necromancy on this one.

As for ultrasonic, on newer more sensitive heads, tends to be a bad idea. Best bet is soak/flush methods in my experience. Toshiba heads like the CA4 are pretty robust overall, so you can hit them with some ultrasonic, but best bet is clearing out the lines with a good UV flush, and letting it soak on a wet paper towel for a bit. You can also set the head in a 2-3mm deep pool of flush in a container and pull the cleaner through the nozzles into the syringe to reverse flush it. This will keep you from trying to force a clog through the nozzles.

Had some heads take a good day or two of doing this over and over. Do a waterfall check by pumping flush through the head with a syringe to see which nozzles are clear. If there is flow, but nozzles aren't firing, might be an electrical fault or bad nozzles. Messed with a decent number of CE4 heads on the Mimaki UJF-6042MKII printers, very similar units, albeit they're in pairs.

 

[dylanpil]

Smoke_Jaguar
thanks for the update!! Its difficult to find all the right info.
I recently got an oce arizona 360 gt, but it has been standing around for a year not printing and trying to get it up and running, and trying not to waste to much money on it as im not entirely sure it will get back on its feet.
The ink recently expired, but I managed to make a .bat file to trick the date so i could try get it back up and running with the expired inks and do head cleans ....
I found that the thermistors seemed to give a funny reading for tempreture 99900000000002000000 (something similiar to that long value) so went into the registry and turned off some of the thermistors in the heads, which got me able to have a temperature reading which would allow me to be able to get the heads to heat up so i could do initial head cleans.
I now am having an error on 3 of the inks "error: Ink fill timeout "
I havn't invested in any new filters yet, but i'm under the impression there may be a block in the line or somewhere as i've tried to bleed the white filter but can't get any ink to flow out of it. the degas pump seems to be working but occasionally i get a "ink degas system error", which i'm assuming a block in a line as i have taken off a tube and felt that the pump has suction. I did take the filter off and empty the contents, ran a little IPA through it to thin out some of the ink in the filter and pushed air through it to clean out any ink in the filter, but still couldn't get to bleed the white ink filter. The degas vacuum goes to 11 psi, and the meniscus vacuum get to 12.7 psi.
Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Smoke_Jaguar]

Sounds like you have a lot of errors to chase down. Do your best to flush the heads, or at the very least, soak them at the capping station. After that, knock out each error in turn and make sure to avoid getting sunlight or UV light into anywhere with ink, especially the heads. Cured ink is really rough to clean out, usually trashes the head. If possible, look into flushing lines, subtanks/dampers and any other part of the ink system you can get to. There is a good chance there might be solidified ink inside the lines. If you cannot easily run a wire through the lines (make sure both ends are disconnected), replace the line. If you have white ink in the printer, expect to have to replace some parts, and get that flushed soon. Not super familiar with Oce/Arizona printers, but lots of similarities with the Mimaki stuff I do work on. Do what you can to get a service/tech manual if you do not have one yet.

 

[dylanpil]

Smoke_Jaguar
I'll do my best to find a service manual, thats really good advice! I'm trying to track down a sds key so i can see more of what is going on as i have limited access due to canon closed this part unless you have a service key. But using the log files and going through registry is how i have been trying to decifer the issues.
The white has definately seperated in the lines, but as I am having issues with the "error: Ink fill timeout" i'm not currently sure i can do a flush. I'll give it a go and see how i go!

 

[Smoke_Jaguar]

Lots of syringe time in your future. Best of luck.

 

[AlsEU]

I know this is an old feed, but has anyone tried using an ultra sonic cleaner for oce 360 gt or other print heads?

A few years ago I did an ultrasonic cleaning of the heads taken from the Fujifilm Acuity (the same model as Oce 360GT). 5 heads were cleaned, each with at least 5 missing nozzles. All nozzles were recovered. All these heads worked after the cleaning for a year (they all collapsed within one month). The problem is, that the liquid used in the ultrasonic cleaner may be too aggressive for the gaskets in the heads, so you have to be very careful and dip the heads in the liquid as shallowly as possible. There is always a risk that after the cleaning nozzle status will be worse, so ultrasonic cleaning for ToshibaTec heads should be treated as the last chance procedure, they don't like this kind of treatment.

 

[AlsEU]

I know this is an old feed, but has anyone tried using an ultra sonic cleaner for oce 360 gt or other print heads?

A few years ago I did an ultrasonic cleaning of the heads taken from the Fujifilm Acuity (the same model as Oce 360GT). 5 heads were cleaned, each with at least 5 missing nozzles. All nozzles were recovered. All these heads worked after the cleaning for a year (they all collapsed within one month). The problem is, that the liquid used in the ultrasonic cleaner may be too aggressive for the gaskets in the heads, so you have to be very careful and dip the heads in the liquid as shallowly as possible. There is always a risk that after the cleaning nozzle status will be worse, so ultrasonic cleaning for ToshibaTec heads should be treated as the last chance procedure, they don't like this kind of treatment.