Versa Camm Printer not printing colour

[Harry182]

ahhhh help me please.

We have a Roland Versa cam 540i and it's not printing colour...

We had some longer runs of printing last night on to sign vinyl.

it started printing lovely. We then sent some big runs of green and yellow and noticed the yellow dropping out...

We cancled the print to check the ink levels...I don't know if it's played a part but I just removed the ink cartridges to give them a shake... the printer was idle so wasn't drawing / circulating ink.

Did the first low clean (forgot the name) and then sent a nozzle test... all the colours were fine except there was a large chunk of yellow missing.. did a powerful clean and got the same results...

I then did a manual clean and noticed lots of yellow gunk in the area that would match where it was missing in the nozzle check...

I know it's advised to not touch the print head but we got a cleaning stick with a bit of Roland's cleaning solution and gently wiped it off (done this before with no problems)

Finished the manual clean and ran a nozzle test... it was blank apart from a few lines of black... did another powerful clean and it was the same...

I've tried circulating the ink and renewing the ink 3 times but nothing's coming through..

I don't know if it's worth noting that nothing's going through in to the waste bottle....

I've also tryed sending a print with just separate lines of cmyk but only a few lines of black print...

Any idea what's happened or where I should be looking?

Thanks for any help in advance

 

[Michael Snook]

ahhhh help me please.

We have a Roland Versa cam 540i and it's not printing colour...

We had some longer runs of printing last night on to sign vinyl.

it started printing lovely. We then sent some big runs of green and yellow and noticed the yellow dropping out...

We cancled the print to check the ink levels...I don't know if it's played a part but I just removed the ink cartridges to give them a shake... the printer was idle so wasn't drawing / circulating ink.

Did the first low clean (forgot the name) and then sent a nozzle test... all the colours were fine except there was a large chunk of yellow missing.. did a powerful clean and got the same results...

I then did a manual clean and noticed lots of yellow gunk in the area that would match where it was missing in the nozzle check...

I know it's advised to not touch the print head but we got a cleaning stick with a bit of Roland's cleaning solution and gently wiped it off (done this before with no problems)

Finished the manual clean and ran a nozzle test... it was blank apart from a few lines of black... did another powerful clean and it was the same...

I've tried circulating the ink and renewing the ink 3 times but nothing's coming through..

I don't know if it's worth noting that nothing's going through in to the waste bottle....

I've also tryed sending a print with just separate lines of cmyk but only a few lines of black print...

Any idea what's happened or where I should be looking?

Thanks for any help in advance

Hello,
Have you looked for air in the tubes? Sucked with a syringe from the dampers? Disconnected the pump and sucked very very gently whilst caps are up? Caps down?

 

[BUCKY]

Start with replacing your top cap. I would say the head is not sealing during the cleanings and is losing suction.
Without a good suction they do not flush ink correctly..... thus the lack of ink in your waste bottle.

 

[Harry182]

Right so, as it happens, one of the pipes going In to the top cap had snapped off

We've managed to put it on with some heat shrink and it works for now.

It's pulled all the colours through and it's spot on apart from the yellow!

This is the original problem we were having, the yellow was just really weak and wasn't printing 100% so we can't get a really nice red or green at the moment.

I've attached a nozzle check aswell... any ideas what this could be?

 

[Harry182]

I was having a nose about in the printer, and went to check the dampner... I noticed that whilst all the other colours poured out... the yellow did a really slow drip... so we followed the line back to the choke... checked the yellow ink under the choke compared to the rest of the inks and it was a lot slower to come out of the tube... we then checked above the choke and it was the same as the other colours...

We're going to replace the choke because of this but do you think this could be linked?

The only other thing I've seen is that the printhead could be blocked? The printers used Dailey and this isn't something that has just happened gradually so I'm unsure as to how it would just clog?

Any other thoughts?

 

[Harry182]

UPDATE:-

So we've replaced the choke and I think it's pouring out at the same rate as the rest of the inks in the same place...

And looking at the dampener, it also looks like it's flowing at the same rate. The dampener looks full.

We've also replaced the cap top and can see it pulling the ink through the print head.

We've done a few cleans to pull the ink through but don't want to do ink replace just in case it's pointless at this point...

The print head is back to printing all the nozzles as it should, but when ever we print a longer run, the yellow starts to fade out...

What's next? Is it worth replacing the dampener? Or is there any other things I can do to locate were the problem is?