eco solvents and printer maintenance ?

[Paul Howard]

(hot) Oh yes, maintenance problems, well i bought it for victory design a year and a half ago for 15g’s they told me its only worth a 4g’s these days… I was shocked.. and the pumps and stuff costs loads too. (:)
Since then i have been dealing with vinyl logistics ltd they have given me great customer service and all the help i need, i have changed to there pump and ink system as they have better prices and for your spares like pumps heads and dampers etc try unicomp ltd there cheap as chips,
you can also clean out your hardened tubes and heads using the solution for solvent inks it takes a little while to do but is cheaper than bying new bits all the time,

does eco solvent inks go hard in this printers ? yes they do, if you leave them for 3 days you will be solid anyway. i recon they all do really they have designed it that way to get after sales, there must be away of designing a machine that doesn’t let the air get in to the tubes, maybe a pressurised ink pot or something?
It does cause a little stress as when the jobs come in the machine decides to spit the dummy and throw all its toys out of the pram!

[advancedgraphics]

i did fear this might be the case,
it seems that the more stuff you print the less it costs,
ie: if it’s constantly printing it’s not drying out.
i’m stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea on this.
we dont have enough business to run a solvent based machine
on a daily basis, but we need a solvent based machine.
bit of a nightmare all round.
thanks for posting your experiences on here, i appreciate it.

[Kevin Flowers]

Sorry got to disagree, i have a Rockhopper 38 running eco solvent inks i have left the machine 3-4 weeks without running it. send print to it runs a quick cleaning cycle which is programmed into it & off it prints. occassionally it will clogg and head etc but quick clean off it goes. a lot better than a Cadet what a friend of mine had that clogged every few days.

Kev

[advancedgraphics]

don’t be sorry kev,
the more input on this the better.
are you using the mutoh eco solvents ?

[Rodney Gold]

I must also disagree , We have a Roland Soljet that uses Eco-sols and is almost maintenance free
We have closed up twice now for 3 weeks and come back to print with no problems and and not having done anything special other than switch the machine off.
I also print sporadically , IE the machine is not running all day but prints on demand with no hassle. In all the time I have had it , one pump was replaced due to a faulty bracket and a head was replaced when it went prematurely bad , and I paid only a portion of the cost as it hadnt done the X billion dots it was rated for.
I have had one tech call out when the machine started printing greeny greys and a magenta line was found to be slightly blocked. The line was flushed and not replaced. Never flushed the machine in its entirety. Still using the same dampers , capping station et al.

I know a lot of full solvent machines initiate cleaning cycles when idle , even they can be very reliable if correct parts were used initially and if you are careful about the capping station.
I have a small solvent based flatbed and it uses about 3-5ml of ink a day on self cleaning, We inspect the capping station for seal and the suck pump and reservoir regularily. If not being used for a while , we put a few drops of solvent in the capping station , park the heads and do a clean cycle when starting up. Ink wasteage is nerver listed as a cost to print by mnfgrs and it can add up to 25% of total ink useage (cleans , deep cleans , perhaps a flush? , test prints , ruined prints , colour checks and so on)
If you do the daily maintenance etc , you generally wont have a big problem. I wouldnt be as confident as to tell you using the machine with 3/4-1 week intervals between prints will ensure no trouble either. IF you arent going to use the machine fairly regularily , you should consider outsourcing as the hassles and other costs associated with digital printing really need regular printing to realise the cost savings of your own machine.

[John Simpson]

quote KTF:

Sorry got to disagree, i have a Rockhopper 38 running eco solvent inks i have left the machine 3-4 weeks without running it. send print to it runs a quick cleaning cycle which is programmed into it & off it prints. occassionally it will clogg and head etc but quick clean off it goes.

Kev

Quite agree with Kev, my rockhopper 62 doesn’t give me any maintenance probs except for 1st 3 months of it’s life when they found the pump hadn’t worked from new.
L J

[chorley signs]

Roland VersaCamm’s appear deal with this problem- leave them plugged in and in standby mode all the time- uses a little power and ink but it keeps all the essential stuff clear- we print maybe 2 or 3 times a week at most yet we have had no problem, however the guy we bought it off had had to replace the printheads because he had left it unplugged for a couple days

Rob

[James kelly]

I’ve had my Versacamm for well over a year and have left it unplugged twice for a fortnight when on holidays, just turned it back on, it did a quick clean by itself and commenced working faultlessly right away.

Like Rodney, I have never ran any maintenance or full clean cycles yet it has never faultered. I’ve had a few large format printers over the years and the Versacamm is the only one that I trust to do what it’s supposed to do and not faulter in any way.

[Frog Man]

Maintenance was one of the reasons I stayed away from the hard solvent machines that and the fact that I
work from home and didn’t want the fumes.
I have a Roland machine using eco-sol inks and the only maintenance I do is give it a wipe over with a cloth
to get rid of dust.
I see some of you turn the machines off when not in use for a few weeks, I was told not to do this. I leave
it plugged in with power on at the mains but not turned on, you can hear fans which according to the Roland
technician creates a vacuum that keeps the heads in contact with sponges to prevent them drying out.