-
3rd party inks, a baffled engineer and a £240 invoice!
Hi all,
Whilst theres a few threads here on 3rd party vs OEM inks, it would seem that i might well have fallen foul of such 3rd party inks, or have I? read on…
I changed over to 3rd party ages ago and havent had a problem with them apart from them smelling stronger than Rolands! But just recently I noticed my prints were starting to go a bit weird about half way through a print, they were turning purple! This is of course down to some kind of ink flow problem and after some test prints i could see that the yellow head wasnt firing 100%, it was about 70-80% firing. The dampers hadnt been changed in a while so i went for them first and duly changed the yellow. Then i did a medium clean to get the ink flowing and this did the trick – for an hour!
Then my prints start turning purple again but now it was about 6" into the print, again i did some cleans thinking that maybe I’d got a little bubble in the line somewhere, another test print later and now i see that the yellow is still at about 70-80% firing even after a few clean and also some manual syringing to really pull it through. This was now affecting the magenta cartridge as in im wasting ink. So i decided to go for the powerful clean and disconnected the black/cyan head from the pump as im now literally pouring money down the drain.
The powerful clean worked – phew 🙂 im happy again….for 30 minutes! Same problem all over, 6" into the print and we’re seeing purple prints again. Im now thinking the worse and preparing myself for a head change but before that i called the engineer and kindly asked him to just take a look at the machine and the test prints to quickly see if the head was knackered. He agreed to take a look at it for free and if needs be he would do the job. More tests later and lots of service mode button pushing he suggested a few things first. The captops were only 2 months old but i agreed to change them, we also tried another damper but still the yellow wasnt firing properly so in the end i agreed to a head change, it was the only solution really, it must be at fault.
So he changed it and did the necessary’s, he left and all was well….for 30 minutes…yup…the problem was back. Now then, he’d changed the head, the captop and damper but still the yellow wouldnt fire properly. The only thing we hadnt changed was the ink, although i did have a new pot which we put in when he was doing initial troubleshooting, so basically that cart never left the machine during all these test prints and proper prints.
When i called him and told him that we were back to square one he couldnt believe it! So he suggested that i swap the magenta and yellow lines into the head and then prepare a magenta and yellow "image" file and then print these out to see if the yellow would fire through the magenta side and vice versa the magenta. He said this would explain if there was a flow problem, if the yellow fires normally through the magenta side and the magenta was mis-firing through the yellow head then we know theres a problem. So i tried this and guess what? The yellow was still mis-firing through the magenta side even though we knew there wasnt a problem with the magenta. black/cyan/magenta were all 100% fine but the yellow was now actually getting worse and was now down to about 40% firing.
I think its pretty evident that the yellow ink is at fault here. Both yellow carts i had were both of the same batch number too. Ive called the supplier (the middleman) and hes now contacted the manufaturer. He told me that theyre very surprised by this and are looking into it. I find out more on monday.
Now the problem i have is that an engineer has come out and done all that work and changed parts (he replaced the old mag/yell head as we knew that wasnt at fault) but of course he’s spent the best part of a day trying to solve the problem, and all this time its the ink. It can only be the ink! its the only thing we didnt change (well yes i changed it and put in a brand new cart but it was the same batch number as the old one).
Sooooooo…..who should pick up the bill ? Me or the manufacturer?
The engineer has already said that he’ll compile a full report of the day and also that the machine is in full working order. If thats the case then the ink manufacturer should cough up i say. Whats your opinion on that please? Ive already been told by the supplier that im highly unlikely to get them to pay but they will certainly replace the carts! Fat load of good that is! I now have a bill of £240 for something thats not my problem. Even the engineer has said that they should pay.
Another thing as well, he reported that the yellow/mag head had only fired 1.5billion dots and that this was well short of the 6 billion that it should be good for. It was highly unlikely that the head was at fault.
Has this happened to anyone else?
Monday im ordering Roland yellow to finally see if it changes the prints, my guess is that it will, what else can be the problem?? everything that could be changed was changed – except for the ink (or at least a different batch of ink)
Any thoughts, advice guys?
Cheers muchly,
Dave -
8 Replies
-
Dave, thanks for sharing the story. I read down and can see the agro and two things spring to mind so far:
1: £240 for the repairs, well my last out of warranty bill was £1700 for a head change (£700 for the head)
2: You not mentioned pumps, thats the first thing that came into my mind, pumps!You did say shared Magenta/Yellow, so I am presuming the pump sucks both together like it does on a JV3-S. When using the syring, did you get a good resistance when sucking the yellow ink through?
Is the ink you have been using to be one of the well known brands of 3rd party inks?
The ink manufacturer should cough up, but I would think that you would have a struggle.
I suggest you don’t name and shame them until you have sorted a resolution with them out.
-
Im in talks with the middleman about the ink and apparently theyve had no issues with yellow! (did i expect them to admit to a bad batch? of course not!)
The magenta went exactly the same way as the yellow even with a new head so it had to be the inks at fault. I bought some Roland magenta, pulled thru some magenta test prints, did a normal clean and guess what – BLOODY perfect test prints. No misfires or dodge nozzles. It doesnt take a genius to work out that the magenta was the problem just like the yellow.
Ive now had it with 3rd party inks, im back to rolands and thats the way its staying. They might be more expensive but at least i can scream at someone if the same problem happens again 🙂
Cheers for the tips 😉
Dave -
The actual price of buying inks per batch is a lot of revenue, I have got a JV3 and for the first 10 months it was drinking ink especially when it wasnt in use. But now I measure all the inks before i do a big run and then measure again just after i have finished, my wifes £9.99 digital kitchen scales is the best thing I have bought in a long time.
Internal signage I run on 360 dpi at an average run price of about 85p – £1.25 a metre and outdoor signage £1.50 – £2.50 on 760 x 760 dpi. the cartridges cost a lot but if you use them correctly and monitor your inks regular, nobody should ever need to change to OEM inks.
Anyone who isnt get value for money out of manufacturers inks should monitor the costs for a few weeks with a digital scales, if the costs are excessive your machine isnt set up right. I question hybrid about the amount ink I was using and then identified a problem with the firmware on the machine and I now I am using half the ink I use to.
I wonder how many other Mimaki or maybe even Roland machines are out there all set up wrong to drink Inks
-
I weigh inks and write on the carts how much is left… i do this about once say a month, so I know what to re-order or when to use a cart for a long print run. At the moment I got about 6 cyans on the go, not very good at all!
-
Hi Dave
i am always in front of the cyans, got 2 new ones up on the shelf as we speak, mimaki doesnt seem to use a lot of the cyan ink.
one thing i was told by mimaki engineer if you weigh the carts a lot be careful not to tilt the cartridge 45 degrees as if the ink leaves the weight counter balance at the front, it can give a shorter life reading back to the chip.
ie. if you got say 40 percent left if you tilt it may only read 35 percent when you put it back.
i use cardtridges from 840mm down to 435mm and then add another 20ml
down to 415mm each ml costing 16.7pWhy buy after market inks, when you can have so much fun being tight fisted with the ink costs.
Anyone thinking they need to buy cheaper inks, need to get there know machines inside out.
i must confess i know very little about the workings of the machine, but do know the running costs inside out!
-
lol.. ok.. still no profile pic (get digging!!!)…
I must admit I wont go any further then that, the return on investment is working out well, so I haven’t got time to play around with it, however we have been known to weigh the inks before printing a very long run and then weigh them after, found it very economical on ink. Have found the mimaki with Shiraz uses a lot of magenta and sod all cyan, lights also don’t get used much.
-
hi Dave
not running the lights just four over four, do you notice a lot of colour difference is it better on the skintones running 6 colour
i must admit i like the way the inks lay onto matt papers the ink is so much different than the epsons i was used to.
the epson machines on black and white is usually bang on to what you see on the screenie. Highlight, Midtones and shadows are bang on.
the Mimaki lays down greys and black much darker flooding the paper and filling in the greys to black, giving near enough the same finish you would get off a high end litho machine.
As for my mugshot
did post a pen pic but it is has fallen off the site for some reason, maybe i was frightening people away, i plan to sign up a membership before long so we re-post a pic thenkind regards
Simn
-
ok simon… there is actually a lot more here then you can see… so choose your membership carefully 😀
Pics sometimes gets removed if they dont follow the rules…
I had experience of running out JV3-160S which is default cmyklclm and a JV3-75SP, both great machines but print in a different resolutions due to head layouts….
I can tell the difference between the lights and the non-light machine, i really like the lights as they lift an image up in some areas, we tend to also print RGB bitmaps more then CMYKs.
Log in to reply.