VJ 1304 worked good then prints went fuzzy now no print.

[Jthompson Designs]

I will start from the beginning, I use my 1304 in my off season from my other business. I have printed about 15 or so banners in the past couple of weeks along with other odds and ends. after sitting about 3-4 days I came back to reprint another banner I printed last week sometime, It started out fuzzy so I canceled did a few cleanings and the nozzle check came out ok but not perfect, tried printing again and still fuzzy like overspray and text was blurry, so I cleaned the encoder strip, still no help, cleaned around the head and did like 5 more cleanings, nothing. I went ahead and soaked the head and put everything back together. Now it will not print at all. I pulled ink through the dampers which seemed low and there was air in the lines, did that a few time and still can't get it to print or even do a nozzle check. when I don't use it I always run cleaner through it and when I come back to use it everything works. I am confused how it can work then just stop. any suggestions? Also when I cleaned the head and pushed cleaner through it it seemed all the tiny nozzles were spraying fine. The printer was bought new and it probably has 75 banners and 4 sets of inks through it, so its not used up per say. Any help would be great.

 

[Jthompson Designs]

Anyone?

 

[chrisphilipps]

When you had the printer doing cleanings was any ink going into the waste tank? Also you said that you pushed cleaner through the head, did you take the print head out of the machine? If so did you put the head back in level? It sounds to me like you either don't have a seal between your maintenance station or your maintenance station has failed.

The other thing to consider is if you did pull the head out and disconnected the head cables, when you put them back in if they didn't go in straight then you could have blown the F2 fuse on the mother board and possibly caused other damage.

 

[Jthompson Designs]

when I do a normal cleaning now no ink is getting sucked into the waste tank, I unplugged the machine before I pulled the head out so I don't know how a fuse could have gotten blown, How do I check for this? If I do a cleaning and put clean solution in the capping station it will suck it through but it will not suck ing through. When I put the head back in the machine it seems to be sitting level. DO the maintenance station just fail completely and not work at all? It seams to be working but I am wondering if like you said the seal may not be good enough. Thanks for your help

 

[chrisphilipps]

It doesn't take much of an angle on the print head to cause an issue with the capping station seal. It might be worth the time to remove the print head and make sure that it is definitely laying in there level. I have seen service techs make this mistake so it can happen to anyone. The best way to check this is to look at the bottom of the print head right after it was sealed on the cap. The cap will leave a ring on the nozzle plate showing where it made contact. You should see a solid ring all the way around the outside edge of the nozzle plate.

As for the maintenance station failing normally they fail slowly but the operators don't notice it. The maintenance station is there to ink the printer up and keep the head wet after it is inked up. When the printer is in normal operation and it is printed with fairly regularly the ink flowing through the print head during printing is enough to keep the head wet. When you let the printer sit or have a head strikes and you loose nozzles is when you would notice a maintenance station issue.

The F2 fuse would have blown when the machine was turned back on if the head cables were not inserted back into the print head straight. This probably isn't the issue since the maintenance station doesn't seem to be pulling any ink. The F2 fuse is on the mother board in the back right hand corner behind the heat sink, you would actually have to pull the board out to properly test it.

 

[Jthompson Designs]

Thanks for the heads up on the printhead not being seated in right, I had it in and out several times. This time I put just the head in and made sure it was flat, looked underneath and it looked like it was sitting lower. BOOOOOOOOOOM back in business. Now it seems I may have some contamination issues. Is that rubber gasket on the top of the head replaceable? when I cleaned the head this time before reinstalling it the 3rd to last and second to last would spray cleaner up through the manifold holes, if I put a hose on one it would spray through the other bad thing is they are separate colors, I checked to see if the 3 screws were tight that hold the metal piece that holds the head and all is good. manifold looks good with no cracks etc. Thanks again for your help

 

[chrisphilipps]

The print head is designed so that one nipple goes to one channel on the bottom of the print head. If you are pushing through one nipple on the top and you are getting it out of two or more channels on the bottom then the print head is probably damaged beyond repair. You only want to push cleaner through a head like that in a last case effort and you only put slight pressure on it. It sounds like you may have put too much pressure and it damaged the head so that the channels are no longer separated and there is no way to correct his.

 

[Jthompson Designs]

I used very little pressure when cleaning. Printing good now, what is weird ever since I got my printer I had the tech/sales man come back a few times to look at the issues I was having from the beginning, I would get specs of other color when printing gray that were noticeable and like I always had a little yellow specs in my red I know its in the color pallet but it was like contamination and he said that was normal, even when I would print the color pallet there would be specs never a true solid colors. I wonder if it was like that from new?

 

[chrisphilipps]

Can you post a picture?

 

[Jthompson Designs]

if you look close you will see the specs, I have always had this since I bought the machine brand new.

 

[chrisphilipps]

I don't see any specs in the print.

 

[Jthompson Designs]

can you see how the gray is fuzzy not solid with specs of yellow and red? I attached the picture.

 

[chrisphilipps]

I don't see any yellows or magenta dots in the test print on my end, I am not say they are not there but I can't see them. The fuzziness of the grey is probably because the print head is no longer calibrated since it was removed from the printer.

 

[J Hill Designs]

can you see how the gray is fuzzy not solid with specs of yellow and red? I attached the picture.

you wont get a 'solid' grey without grey ink

 

[Jthompson Designs]

I guess what Im saying is it is fuzzy and it has been that way since day one. if I print the pallet from the printer none of the colors are solid they all have a fuzzy look to them.

 

[Jthompson Designs]

I don't see any yellows or magenta dots in the test print on my end, I am not say they are not there but I can't see them. The fuzziness of the grey is probably because the print head is no longer calibrated since it was removed from the printer.

How do I go about recalibrating the print head? That fuzziness has always been there since I bought it.