Severe ink blur on HALF magenta on Test Draw?

[vitalsignsusa]

Happy Tuesday all,

This one is new. Yesterday afternoon, mid-print the magenta ink all of a sudden started printing extremely blurry. I've attached a picture of that, with the latest test draw

http://postimg.org/image/bzl2j7q91/

Has anyone seen this happen before?

I can confirm there was no head strike during this print. I cannot visually see anything blocking the magenta head, or damage. Ink flows to both magenta dampers as well.

We do use a bulk ink system, and both magenta bags were switched out within a half hour of each other.

- Keith Watkins
Vital Signs, USA

 

[Commando]

Have you tried it on some other material?
Looks smeared to me(like the sheeting has got a wave).. IDK I have never seen that..

 

[vitalsignsusa]

Same issue on another material. I even switched out dampers and cables, and still the same issue. It actually resulted in more ink dropout on the whole head.

 

[MikePro]

maybe ink pigment seperating from solvent from settling for too long? try stirring your bags and flushing your system.

 

[MikePro]

Same issue on another material. I even switched out dampers and cables, and still the same issue. It actually resulted in more ink dropout on the whole head.

messing with dampers can be easy, or result in another can of worms if you break the adaptor on the manifold.
soak the heads, clean your printer thoroughly, flush system with cleaning cartridges, and refill with ink. starting "fresh" is a great way to begin diagnosis.

 

[gbd]

what is your head height set at? lower is better. do a power clean and see if that helps

 

[BANNERS2GO]

Check head cables. Manually pull ink through with a syringe.

 

[vitalsignsusa]

Thanks for the input everyone. It looks to be that the head needs replacing.

After an overnight soak and many, many washes, it no longer prints any magenta. Cables are good (verified by swapping black w/ magenta, the black head fired via the magenta signal)

I have a service tech coming out to check on it.

By the way, this printer is 9 years old, we are thrilled it's lasted this long!