VJ-1204 looking for fix to our dilemma

[prophecy27]

I am hoping that I can get lucky and someone here might have some tips or ideas for us to try out. We have a VJ-1204 and for the past month now we have been doing nothing but dropping money into this machine and it is still broken.

Sit back and relax and I'll tell you the whole story or at least most of it. haha.

We were printing fine with the machine right along and after having the machine off a day or two we started it back up and did a cleaning and went to print. We had lines all through the print. So we tried doing some more cleanings and even soaking the head, and it never got any better. After a few days of trying what we could, we ended up calling tech support where we got the machine from a couple years ago. I almost regret to say it, but we got it from signwarehouse.

Their first idea was that we had a bad print head and needed a new one. We purchased the print head and installed it, and after a few days the printer started printing those lines again. So we call back to tech support and they tell us our maintenance station is bad and we need a new one, to which we reply, we just bought that about 4 months ago, and we typically keep our machine pretty clean. Then the next step they tell us is that we will need to flush out the head or get another one. We flushed it out until we had the nozzles spraying good. Put the head back in and we are missing full sections of nozzles.

This is where it gets really interesting. I did lots of searching on the web and found out about the fuse problems that some people have had. We asked tech support and their answer is that the electronics don't go bad. Well, being someone that does quite a bit with electronics I know how quickly they CAN go bad. So I found the informaton and found a fuse that was indeed blown. After taking it to a tech guy to repair the fuse, he finds out that our CR board seems to be causing the issue of blowing the fuse.

We have since bought a CR board and installed that, and while waiting to get this repaired, the head apparently got really junked up and we did have to buy another one of these. When we did, we also bought all new dampers, and new head cables. We even took out the ink carts and flushed the entire system out just to be on the safe side.

So then we install the new printhead, new cables, new CR board, mainboard with new fuses, all brand new ink carts, and the maintenance station is only about 5 months old now. The new print head didn't work well at all. It actually leaked ink from the edge of the screen that the nozzles are in. We send this one back for a replacement head, put the new one in and we get about half nozzles. We took it out and tried flushing it and it seemed to have pressure buildup on nozzles and we weren't able to get them unclogged. This head is now being sent back for a refund and we have since purchased another head from a different retailer.

As soon as I got this new head I went to flush some cleaning solution through the head as I have heard that sometimes companies use a water based cleaner in them for shipping and it could be why our nozzles junk up as soon as we try it. This brand new head I had in my hands, trying to flush cleaning solution through it, worked on all but a couple sets of nozzles. Most would go through pretty easy and you could see the spray come out of the nozzles. But a couple seemed clogged up and I even tried it without the manifold attached. I spent a couple hours trying to get them cleaned out from whatever was in it, and thought I had it cleaned out finally. The retailer we got this from even flushed the head out before sending it I found out, and it worked fine. But now we are still sitting here with a printer that isn't printing properly. There are still lines through the prints and the nozzles do not give a good print. We have more than we ever had before, but there are still some gaps in the nozzle checks. We keep doing cleanings on the head and putting a lint free cloth on the capping station with cleaning solvent to soak the head to hopefully keep it from getting worse.

Now we are stuck and are not sure what to do next. We have tried just about everything that any of us or the tech people we have talked to can come up with thus far. And of course we are nowheres close really to any mutoh technicians and with a tight budget we can't just fly them out here for a few days. So I thought I would tell you all our story and hope that someone else has had problems like this and figured them out so that we can get this printer fixed as soon as possible. We have only the one printer so our shop is basically shut down for the most part since we cannot produce any prints on this thing.

For anyone that has any advice on what to do next, I thank you in advance.

 

[Red Dog]

phophecy27
I(Red Dog I just posted on 2/4)am in the exact same boat after reading your post, havent been through as many heads, but I did notice when I flushed my head when I got it it did the same thing with the nozzles.
ChecK my last post to see if the attached photo is what you are getting, and everything that I changed and tried.

One thing that Randya brought up was a possible vapor lock..my low ink sensor never went off on my key pad so I ran out of ink in magenta and black, the two nozzles I am having trouble with, I thought I would try to take dampers off, put a cup under them and syringe ink into the bladder tank after the valve to push any air that maybe in the system out. I dont know if makes sense but willing to do anything.

I also am at the end of my rope..one machine...trailers waiting to get wrapped.. and printer not working..

Hope someone can shed so light.

T

 

[jiarby]

are you doing all this work yourself?

 

[prophecy27]

are you doing all this work yourself?

Jiarby, we have been doing a lot of work ourselves. I know they say you should have a certified mutoh tech do work on these machines, but for the price they want to come out here, it wasn't really an option for something that we had thought would be a simple fix. I do have a background in electronics, even though it may be a little different kind of electronics, I worked avionics systems on aircraft while in the military for 8 years. I have been building and repairing computer systems for the past 9 or 10 years now. I might not know quite as much as a certified tech, however, I believe I have enough knowledge about electronics to successfully change parts in this machine. We have been on the phone with many different mutoh technicians from all over, and they have even seemed to feel comfortable with our abilities to do these things. But something we have noticed that we do get conflicting recommendations about certain things from different techs.

For instance, we were told at one point to soak a head, and to do this we could just cut a piece off a tshirt and soak with cleaning solution and put over the maintenance station. Others we have found out say that cotton is the worst thing to use and that it needs to be a lint free cloth. Any suggestions you may have though, we are more than willing to take into consideration.

I am going to check the fuses once again on the mainboard today, just to ensure that nothing there is messed up.


REDDOG

As for your problem, it could have been something as simple as an air lock. When you flushed your head, we have learned something else here. Sometimes when putting your cartridges in after doing a flush of the system, and you do your initial charge, it sometimes uses more ink than what the actual cycles records to the smart card. This could have been why your low ink level didn't come up, although the sensor should have been tripped from the cartridge itself saying you were out. One thing you could do at that point is above the head where the main ink line splits into the two separate lines for the head, you can disconnect the line here and using a syringe, pull the ink from the cartridge up to that point. This way you don't have to take the head out.

If you do have the head out, you can use a syringe and pull ink through the dampers, however, sometimes what this does is while pulling ink through one damper, it will try to suck air back up through the other one because those two dampers are connected at the splitter. We had once taken and pulled ink to the dampers through both dampers at once with two of us, but it also possible to try and hold something over the other damper to keep it from sucking air back through.

Either way, once you get the ink back up close to the head, you should be able to do a couple cleanings and get the ink the rest of the way and you can watch the ink flow down to the head to ensure that you are getting a good seal on the maintenance station and it is indeed sucking ink through all the dampers.

One other thought, was that if you are missing complete sections of nozzles, this was when we found out that we had a couple bad fuses on our main board. There are 7 of these fuses on the mainboard, and not all are the same. These are labeled by F1 - F7. All but F2 are a small round canister type of fuse on the mainboard and to check those it is easiest by checking across the pins on the bottom of the board. F2 and F7 are more of a resistor looking fuse and are quite small. F7 can actually be tested without removing the board if you can find it. It is located to the left of the tall black heatsink. F2 however, is behind it and it is harder to get to.

Also, if your ribbon cables for the head were going in hard, you may want to make sure that there is no damage to the ends of them. If the ends start getting damaged, it is possible that it will not make a good connection with the pins or even short out and you may be in for more trouble. These are not too expensive and if you are in any doubts that they are good, I would recommend just replacing them. For the 1204 it is a 31 pin ribbon cable, and I believe the 1604 has pretty much the same components as the 1204. I hope this information helps you out more than it has helped us.

We are still broke and looking for any information on what we can do next. I have been looking through the service manual and still can't seem to figure out where the printer has problems. We are starting to think that when the fuses went or the problems we had with the CR board seeming to go bad that maybe something else somewhere got fried as well, but unsure of what else it could be. The schematics in the service manual really do not help a great deal for following where each signal goes through or does not give much in the way of troubleshooting any electronic issues.

 

[Flame]

I can only help with one part, and that is the best material to use for soaking your heads is actually a coffee filter. Soak it in cleaner, lay it over the station, dock your heads and lower head height. Don't use cotton!!!

 

[Red Dog]

I do have a new ribbon cable coming.
As far as the head, I never did a complete "System/Head" flush. just ran some cleaning fluid through the nozzles before installing it, changed dampers, pulled ink into them and I thought I was good to go - Wrong.
As far as the electrical end, wow, not very comfortable messing around with it. but I will take a look.
I will post nozzle check and the rear bladder that seems to not fill on its own.
Notice one side of black out, and magenta, both sides about the same.
It also looks like I have over spray mist on one of my test prints.

Thanks
T

 

[Red Dog]

more pics of what I have going on

 

[prophecy27]

Red Dog,

Some of this looks like what we were running into. One thing to look at first might be the maintenance station. How is the seal looking on that capping station there? These do get wore down and can cause the maintenance station to not get a good enough seal to pull the ink through all the heads.

I don't know if you replaced that or not. If you did replace the entire maintenance station, when you installed it, did everything line up correctly? Another thing we found out from a tech is that when you install the maintenance station, the hoses that drop down to the waste tank should be trimmed so that they run straight and the shortest possible length to reach where they need. If there are drops or too long, it will also cause the maintenance station to not get enough suction. You should be able to put a little cleaning fluid in the capping station and the fluid should flow right down through. If it doesn't, one of the lines through there may be plugged a bit too.

It could also depend on the head you have gotten. We have been finding out that some heads just seem to be bad right from the get go. And did you change your head rankings when you put the new head in? And hopefully you have the head aligned good. We thought we had the head aligned as it should have been, but there is a small jig alignment tool that helps with this as well.

Hope this gives you some ideas to try.

 

[Graphics2u]

Are these genuine Mutoh heads?

 

[timson]

is ther any air in the ink tube

 

[timson]

you can try also the O-RINGS and the capping station

 

[timson]

what is the firmware version ofyour mutoh vj1204?

 

[prophecy27]

I figured I would give some updates on what we have been finding out. This might be a little long, so bear with me. But it is interesting to say the least.

Apparently, our dilemma started simply by where we bought our equipment. What we have found out is that if you have a problem with your printer, check the version number. This may not be as necessary if you bought it new and know where you got it from. Our version number is a 1204AS. The A stands for America, and the S stands for Signwarehouse. That is where we bought this machine from, and this is something you will want to know if you bought a used machine and not sure where the machine originally came from.

What we found out is that Signwarehouse made a deal with Mutoh to get these machines. Mutoh WILL NOT help for tech support on a Signwarehouse machine. That was part of the deal. Signwarehouse is where you have to get tech support for this machine, and if you're warranty is up, they will want to charge about $40 a phone call for each tech support ticket issue. You can email them for free, but can take up to 24 hours to get a response. The other part of this deal apparently is that Signwarehouse has their own version of firmware.

DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT, ever try to upgrade the firmware of a Signwarehouse printer with the firmware directly from Mutoh Service Site. This will break the machine and cause more issues. Updating the firmware was recommended to me at one time and the Mutoh tech we had to take it to later for other problems, had to dump the NVRAM and reinstall the firmware, and we still couldn't get the signwarehouse firmware to take. We did however, finally get it to take a newer Mutoh version of the firmware, but it looks like this has caused more issues.

We had recently tried putting in a brand new head and the printer would not recognize the head. It would give an error, I think it was the E016 error TLB-L/I which is a problem with data transfer or something. Now we are thinking that the main board in this machine is junk. All due to the fact that it had a certain kind of firmware version installed from signwarehouse and for some reason you are not able to update it to a genuine mutoh firmware, it has to be signwarehouse version of the firmware.

As for the other problems we were having with the printer, we are still not totally sure what all is wrong with it. Once it started having problems, it just kept getting worse and worse. We were lucky enough to meet some great people along our way to help us out, we were able to get refunds on defective parts, and even the mutoh tech we had trying to fix the machine and replace the head, refunded our money for the head that we couldn't use along with the money we were paying for their time fixing it. The part we got lucky with is that they took the money we were spending with them, applied it to another customers account, because this customer is buying a bigger machine from them, and the money we put toward their account, we purchased their Mutoh VJ-1204 for a good price. Now our machine is basically just a parts machine for our working printer. This one at least is a genuine mutoh printer and mutoh techs will be able to work on it.

I hope this information helps at least someone out there. If you have problems with your printer, and it's a signwarehouse printer, you may have to go directly through them, and that's where we got upset. We weren't happy with spending all that money with a place, not being offered any kind of extended warranty on our equipment, and then wanting to charge us for phone calls as soon as the warranty run out. And honestly, there were times we did talk with tech support there, and felt like we were being treated like idiots.

 

[chase_graphics_CT]

Maybe your serial number has something to do with it? My Mutoh 1604 is one of the first 100 produced and last time my guy was here working on re-calibrating the print head he told me that they built a lot of the hardware differently for the first batch.

 

[vmishev]

The same problems with the printer

I have the same problems with the print result from the printer please can someone give solution of this problem.

I have white line on the print.

Please some solution.