S80600: new to eco solvent: minimal print or autoprinthead cleaning?

[Rayd8]

Hi All,
I'm really new to eco-solvent, smalltime printshop here, coming from hp latex but due to lot's of printquality issues and also the price of the inkcarts and other consumables becoming more and more expensive lead me to migrating away from HP, that's why i bought this S80600 used (new printheads installed all functioning with perfect nozzlechecks printing). The Epson wins for speed and colorgamut, i got a great deal buying this printer because the printshop was upgrading to the newer S90's. I'm technical, do a lot of my own repairs on the HP's. But eco-solvent is fairly new to me. So that's why i most likely will be asking you guru's some basic questions that i don't really seem to find a satisfying Googling-answer for. Since i still have several sets of ink for the HP's and it's for me slow season i will be only doing limited prints for now on the S80600; she's also temporarily at a different location due to logistics reasons, but i have full remote access to the rip via remote software. As i know eco solvent printheads tend to clog i was wondering what you guys would do with an idle S80600 printer?

1. i have configured the autohead maintenance (or what's it called again in the menu) for now to run each 48 hours, so i leave the printer on in standby so it can do this task, e.g. "day 1, 3, 5, 7, 9,...) . Is this enough to prevent the heads from clogging to your experience?
2. i was thinking of printing some small color squares (2x2inch, one for each colorchannel ) each week or so at minimum, e.g. "day 6", do you think this would be enough to keep the ink 'flowing'? If so, does there exist any of such a printfile/pdf?
3. i was also thinking of printing/doing a nozzle check each week, e.g. "day 3"

Thanks for any insights on what to do best in such situations or any other helpfull tips for such situations.
Greetings to all and have a jolly sunday,

Ray

 

[netsol]

one of my favorite topics
2 years ago, my wife had a serious health issue
hospitalized for quite a while, and still at this point, unable to walk unassisted

i have spent practically no time i the shop for the last 2 years. we print sporadically

EVERY DAY run 1 manual cleaning cycle. i print a 4inch color wheel on each printer.
THEN i use a syringe to manually wet the felt in the capping stations with cleaning solution (Mutoh VJ1617h running MP31 inks)
or isopropyl (Roland Sc545-ex running eco sol max)

wetting the capping station allows for the possibility of missing a day.

the HP designjet t1700dr seems perfectly happy with 1 cleaning a week, it is aqueous, though

 

[Rayd8]

one of my favorite topics
2 years ago, my wife had a serious health issue
hospitalized for quite a while, and still at this point, unable to walk unassisted

i have spent practically no time i the shop for the last 2 years. we print sporadically

EVERY DAY run 1 manual cleaning cycle. i print a 4inch color wheel on each printer.
THEN i use a syringe to manually wet the felt in the capping stations with cleaning solution (Mutoh VJ1617h running MP31 inks)
or isopropyl (Roland Sc545-ex running eco sol max)

wetting the capping station allows for the possibility of missing a day.

the HP designjet t1700dr seems perfectly happy with 1 cleaning a week, it is aqueous, though

Hi NetSol, Thanks so much for you info, i'll wait a bit till i see some feedback of Epson S80-series users, cause i saw an automatic headcleaning function in the menu's that i activated and i'm hoping this with a weekly colorwheel/colorpatches print will suffice. The capping station wetting is most likely also a very good idea, i guess the epson cleaning liquid should do for this or better to use isopropyl(which completely evaporates if i'm correct or is it more a 50/50 water/isoproppyl mix)?

 

[Rayd8]

I have one other info from a Roland Eco-Solvent user telling me that a daily headclean is a myth and shouldn't be needed even with ecosolvent, but i'm for now not taking to much chances and scheduled autoclean every 48 hours so at least that is running autopilot (so i only need to check that she is standby/online and that the carts aren't empty)

 

[netsol]

I think A LOT depends on what temp the office sits at (and what humidity ) during off hours.

if you are still climate controlled it is more forgiving.
a healthy cappingvstation with a perfect seal also helps.
do your inks ever PULL BACK leaving air bubbles or gaps in the ink lines?

I worry much more about my mutoh given the aggressive nature of MP31 inks & how quickly the inks evaporate.

 

[ikarasu]

Daily cleanings is a myth if you're using the printer every day, or every other day.

If you're going a week between prints.... You're going to want to do a daily cleaning.


We use our printer 8 hours a day, and not only will it do an auto cleaning every xx days.... It'll run cleanings sporadically before each print job.... So our printers are doing 2-3 cleanings a day.


Leaving it over the weekend with no prints but using it every other day... Then it'll do all its own maintenance and run its own cleanings.

Inks cheap, heads are not..... Personally if I weren't using it daily I'd set it to run A cleaning everyday, then every 2-3 days I'd run a small 100% c 100% y 100%m, etc, assuming I can remote into it.


I had a Epson s40 solvent in my garage.... Printed every 3-4 days on it, despite using it 1/10 as much as my work printer, the heads died way faster. Could be luck of the draw... But main reason I switched to Epson resin in my home.

 

[netsol]

i am of mixed feelings on this
certainly a printer that is kept busy EVERY DAY is much less troublesome

and certainly the more agressive inks are more trouble.

WHY are so many printers programmed to stop in the middle of a print to do a cleaning if
it "is time"?

as i have said air bubbles allow the ink to "clump" (kind of like how blood coagulates)

when these tiny particles bunch together it is much easier for one to end up causing piezo's to not open or stay open

this is also why it is so important to agitate certain inks (white ink, anyone?)

there is certainly an advantage to one of the new epsons (better design) and the newer chemistries

i am certainly leaning to the over cleaning side on all this, but, it's like what a friend ron ananian says about oil changes.

"once you open the hood, the oil change is the cheapest thing you can do. IF YOU DON'T DO IT ENOUOGH you are not going to like the other things you end up having to do"

a bit of overcleaning fits in the budget better than the occasional $3000. print head change

 

[tulsagraphics]

I've had my S80 for a year. I gang most of my jobs together and only print 1 or 2 days/week. Probably 2 to 4 hours of printing on light weeks. 10-15 hours on busier weeks. I've never done anything beyond the machine prompted "head maintenance" cleanings. My auto cleaning cycle is whatever is set at the factory.

That's it. Nozzle checks have always been perfect. The S80 doesn't require a ton of maintenance -- at least in my experience.

 

[Rayd8]

I've had my S80 for a year. I gang most of my jobs together and only print 1 or 2 days/week. Probably 2 to 4 hours of printing on light weeks. 10-15 hours on busier weeks. I've never done anything beyond the machine prompted "head maintenance" cleanings. My auto cleaning cycle is whatever is set at the factory.

That's it. Nozzle checks have always been perfect. The S80 doesn't require a ton of maintenance -- at least in my experience.

Hi Tulsagraphics, Thanks for your info and insights. Your volume would be more or less the same as i would reach. Do you know which auto cleaning cycle your S80 has configured?

 

[tulsagraphics]

Hi Tulsagraphics, Thanks for your info and insights. Your volume would be more or less the same as i would reach. Do you know which auto cleaning cycle your S80 has configured?

I just checked. The auto-clean has been turned off ever since I bought it (18 months ago). Maybe the install tech turned it off? Unless maybe a firmware upgrade reset it at some point. No idea. So apparently even on weeks of very low print volume (2 to 4 hours of printing), that's still enough to keep the nozzles wet because my nozzle tests have always been perfect.
I went ahead and changed it to "every 24 hours" though. And I changed the cleaning mode to "medium" instead of "strong". No need to get crazy with it.

 

[Solventinkjet]

WHY are so many printers programmed to stop in the middle of a print to do a cleaning if
it "is time"?

Most of the printers we work on allow you to turn that off. I think the main reason for it is to clean the bottom of the head on long runs so there's no ink build up which could degrade the print quality the longer the print is. But I think it's more of a vestigial organ on modern printers honestly. Some printers spit into the cap top instead of a spitting sponge as well so during printing you might hear the pump running but it's not actually cleaning and just draining the ink from the head spitting.

When it comes to auto cleanings, I like how Mimaki does it. You can turn them on and set a time if you want or not turn it on at all. They have a function called, "Refresh" that is always on but all it does it fire the nozzles into the cap top once in a while. The main reason for cleanings is to keep the ink from curing in the nozzles so firing them keeps fresh ink in the nozzles and prevents curing without having to run a cleaning cycle which just sucks ink through to the waste tank.

 

[unclebun]

I use an S80600, which replaced an S70670 in November 2023. I set the machine up myself, though a tech came at the earliest possible scheduled date about 2 weeks later to go over it. I left the automatic cleaning on the setting it came from Japan with, which was OFF. The machine still does some automated head work every once in a while, it still recirculates ink through the lines periodically. I have never had it lose a nozzle from sitting, even last fall when I went on a 5 day vacation. For a while I was running a nozzle check every time I started printing, but have given up on that as it was always perfect. This generation of printer has a synthetic fiber roller that it uses to wipe the heads, and I believe it is using that automatically on some schedule which cannot be accessed or changed through the onscreen display and control buttons.

Compared to the S70, this is far better. That machine did have a problem with heads clogging if not used or cleaned frequently. Likewise the Mimaki JV3 I had before that. I believe Epson has really got it as maintenance and worry free as it can be. I would say that if you are going to leave it unused for long periods, I would always keep it plugged in and turned on. I would set it to do a Light clean automatically perhaps every 3-4 days. And make sure you shake the ink cartridges once every 3 weeks.

I think the idea of the printheads clogging without wasting a lot of ink on this generation of machine is pretty much gone.

 

[Tatonka]

We have 2 S80600's. I don't do anything special to keep them running perfectly, the auto cleanings they do have been enough for years, and then when it tells you to do the head maintenance, do it. Sometimes they'll sit for weeks at a time, and will print perfectly right away.