Roland XR-640 getting long in the tooth. Looking for suggestions

[kalcopy]

We have a Roland SolJet4 XR-640 that is about 12 years old. Up until recently it has been a work horse and we have put a lot of media through this machine.
We are starting to get fuzzy ink over spray around black printing. Tech recommend running a nozzle check, which we did and shows a lot of drop outs and deflection on the black channels. Specifically on Print head B. We have run a dozen or 2 print head cleanings of various power over the last few weeks with little to no improvement.

Tech is saying we might need to look at new print heads. Pulling a peck report we have shot counts around 6-10B on most channels. Tech is saying the print heads are rated for 6B per channel. We may need to look at replacing print heads.

If we do print head replacements he also recommends replacing the dampers as well. Also our scan motor is at 1.5 times life, and he has seen them go 2x life before but if we have him up here he recommends replacing the scan motor, belt and pulleys.

All in refurbishing the machine would be about $10k.

Other option is replacing the machine.
Tech recommends the TrueVIS XG-640 if we decide to replace it with another Roland machine. So far we have ran 2 Roland machines over the last 25 years and have been happy with both, but I have heard Roland DG changed hands a few years ago and is making changes towards cheaper machines. The older XR's seem to be solid work horse and parts still seem to be readily avaible.

I'm going to try soaking the print heads in solvent over night and see if that clears them up at all, but it sounds like I need to do something soon-ish.

Wondering what you would do:
Repair?
New Roland?
New other brand? - Hesitant to go this way as we have a lot of solvent print media, and a LOT of files designed with Roland spot colors.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[Roland Certified Tech]

6-10 billion shots is not really that high, but yes rated at 6 billion.
I have seen them go to 18-22 billion if you take care of them.
A service level fill test will show the overspray.
Run a black square in Density Control Only and you can see.
Once you have the overspray, may need a head or two. Very hard to tell which one on a XR as we cannot fire just one head.
The belt, pulleys and scan motor, I only replace as needed. Usually it is the scan motor first throwing scan motor errors or very noisy.
Rated at 1500 hrs. they usually fail around 2200-2400.
The teflon belt can last the life of the printer if your Roland tech is applying the Floil properly.
The pulleys can fail (replacing one tomorrow on different model) but very rare. I have only done like 5 in 15 years.
The XR is solid.
Prinheads are consumable items.
The XG so far as been a great new model, time will tell.
Always nice to have a second printer around if can muster the costs.
Hope this helps.

 

[MarkSnelling]

See if you can get your hands on a VG3640 before they are gone....You won't spend much more for this new unit than you would to keep your 12 year old printer alive.

 

[Boudica]

We've got an XR ....going on about 15 years and runs like a champ. It's now our secondary printer however... about 6 years ago or so, we replaced our old XJ with an Epson S80600 and love it. It's also a work horse, if we have to replace the XR someday, we'll probably get another Epson.

 

[Zach Starr]

Have a look at the Stratojet Hawk if you're open to brands. They generally give a competitive deal on the 64" printer