Need Help Roland VS-300i Printhead troubles

[Zoogee World]

Hi folks,

I try to help everyone on here as much as I can and I consider myself pretty knowledgeable when it comes to Roland Printers. However, now I have a bit of a dilemma myself and am hoping for those with more knowledge then I, might have some insight for me. I think I know what the issue is, but I could be wrong and there is this nagging voice in my head saying it could be something else. Anyways, to make an already long story short, you'll see in the attached images that the printhead has issues with missing nozzles in the yellow and this whole issue started because we needed to replace the print head, so we ordered a new one and cables, dampers, cap top, the whole thing as recommended. I went ahead with the installation, turns out the new cables were defective and it fried the new head and blew some transistors on the main board. Got the main board repaired locally for much cheaper then a new one, put it back in and connected everything up, as far as I can tell everything is correct and I followed my service manual. Put in the old head and cables, did a test print, prints like it did prior, however, as you can see in the other photo, when I do an actual print all the colors spray over. This is where it has me wondering. Is it the old head that is just even more gone now then when I took it out or is there some kind of interference that is causing the spray. We will be buying a new head in the new year, as we are closing for the holidays and don't want it arriving then, but in the meantime, I wanted to try and make sure that it wasn't something else and I am in the same predicament when we install the new head. Oh and yes, head rank is proper, I changed it back when I put the old head in. Look forward to any insight, as it has me scratching my head as to why it looks worse then when I took out the old head.

 

[guillermo]

did you try hard cleanings? also, what I do is pull the ink from the hoses before the waste ink bottle, I close one hose with a black paper clip and pull the ink from the other hose, switch and do the same and then a cleaning and a test print... it has worked for me.

 

[Zoogee World]

did you try hard cleanings? also, what I do is pull the ink from the hoses before the waste ink bottle, I close one hose with a black paper clip and pull the ink from the other hose, switch and do the same and then a cleaning and a test print... it has worked for me.

Good morning,

Yes I did powerful cleaning and I did manually pull ink through. There isn't an issue with getting the ink to the head, the issue I am currently having his the overspray, not sure if the head is just even more dead then when I took it out to replace with the head that fried or if there is some sort of interference going on. I will be ordering a new head in January, however I wanted to see if this head was savable in the meantime to get us by.

 

[M D Gourley]

Have you tried printing out a 'Adjust Bi-Dir' (Detailed Settings) and a Feed Calibration Test print to see if all is well in that area.
Is Head Height on 'High' or 'Low' as I have found that a High Head height sometimes gets over spray on edges on my printer.

 

[Zoogee World]

Have you tried printing out a 'Adjust Bi-Dir' (Detailed Settings) and a Feed Calibration Test print to see if all is well in that area.
Is Head Height on 'High' or 'Low' as I have found that a High Head height sometimes gets over spray on edges on my printer.

Hi, thanks for your reply. I did do it and it printed a bit blurry as well, on both high and low, but I typically only print on low height, due to the better quality.

 

[spooledUP7]

Looks like a dirty encoder strip. Take a lint free cloth with 70% rubbing alcohol and carefully clean both sides of the encoder strip. Be very careful not to twist it or kink it.

 

[Zoogee World]

Looks like a dirty encoder strip. Take a lint free cloth with 70% rubbing alcohol and carefully clean both sides of the encoder strip. Be very careful not to twist it or kink it.

Thanks for that, yes I did try cleaning the encoder strip, unfortunately it didn't help.

 

[spooledUP7]

Thanks for that, yes I did try cleaning the encoder strip, unfortunately it didn't help.

Hmm, I had the very same issues and cleaning the encoder was the only thing that fixed it. I would say try cleaning it again, and try to clean the sensor that straddles the encoder strip. I think you can slip a lens paper cleaner between the strip and sensor. Anyway, sorry you are dealing with this. I know it's frustrating.

 

[Zoogee World]

Thanks. I did as you suggested and unfortunately, still a no go. I guess I will just wait until we get a new head and see how it works out and go from there.