printing everything with a red scale

[Colin Crabb]

Your head test is giving the answer – The red scale is due to cyan & black ink not being printed correctly or at all in paces, and causing a false colour shift, simply down to the head need cleaning/fixing.

[josh morris]

thought as much, put it into cleaning mode and the black cap top looks clogged up and full of ink, so will order new caps and ive ordered foam swabs to give the head a clean.

also the sponge under the heads (in front of the wipers?) is solid and useless, where can i get a new one from?

[Chris Wool]

quote :

cleaning mode and the black cap top looks clogged up and full of ink,

so the pump may not be working as well with solvent machines use it or lose it, presume you leave it all switched on between using it.

[josh morris]

yes its always left on, have never witnessed it self clean though

[Martin Pearson]

Does your machine have a maintenance/self clean mode? Not all machines do especially not older machines.

[josh morris]

im not sure now tbh, i was under the impression it had but now im not so sure, how would i find out?

[David Rogers]

IIRC the Cadet 540 plus is based on the older SP versacamm so didn’t have the self clean. (2 heads CM YK)

Anyhoo, find it better just to run the bugger every day or two for a foot or so and manually pull ink through when there was that many missing bits on the head.

Pump or drain line split likely to be causing capping stations flooded.

Call your engineer, he’ll recommend a reliable source / supply the required parts…maybe at a premium, but they’ll do the job as a non-working printer is a giant, expensive dust magnet.

Dave

[Martin Pearson]

Haven’t got a clue lol, I don’t have a solvent machine because I don’t have enough work to keep one running but read a lot of posts so know they don’t all have one.

Sure someone who knows will answer though :lol1: :lol1:

[Martin Pearson]

see told you Dave answered while I was typing :lol1: :lol1: :lol1:

[josh morris]

thanks David 🙂

how do i pull the ink through manually?

i was looking on the digiprint website and seen roland cap tops for very cheap, but have also seen them on uk websites for over triple the price (look identical)

as much as i would like to call my engineer i simply dont have the money for him to do any work on the printer as yesterday i got laid off from my job i was using to fund my new business. so would like to do as much as possible myself

[Colin Crabb]

You do clean this machine regularly ? – Around printhead, capping station, wiper?

Can’t help with pulling ink through as never done it, only every changed dampers & wiper here on our Mimaki.

[Martin Pearson]

If it’s the same sort of Idea as my aqueous printer then you would do it via the waste ink lines from the caps
Looks aren’t always the best way to judge, could be manufactured from a better quality material for one thing. Course it could just be that prices in the uk are way above other Countries :lol1:

[Steve McAdie]

Its got a self clean you set it in the service menu if it isn’t on already. You should leave it on at the mains and turn off on the front panel otherwise the self clean won’t work, I’ve got the caps from digiprint fitted to mine, caps are a consumable with expected life span of six months mine have been on quite a bit longer and still working fine. Chris could be on the right track with the pump maybe not working properly these machines were fitted with a pump that was prone to failing early.

Steve

[josh morris]

thanks Steve, will order some cps from digiprint then, my engineer told me about the problems with the pumps, does anyone have a link or part number for the new style pump? also i cant seem to find the sponge pads above the ink waste bottle, where could i get these? 🙂

[Steve McAdie]

You mean the mist sponge in front of the wipers? If so you can get them all from digi print. Think i bought my pump and adapter kit from Digi print as well. If you do buy from digi print then there is a discount coupon code on the homepage of this site (bottom right of page) should get you an extra 5% off.

[Steve McAdie]

I think the versacamm pump upgrade uses the soljet pump.

[josh morris]

thats the one 🙂 been doing some digging and think its the xc540 pump i need, going to order everything now and give it a good overhaul, and prey its not head damage! 😥

[josh morris]

so ive ordered the new style pump with the fitting kit, new mist sponges, new wipers, new wiper scraper and new cap tops, should be here at the start of the week i hope.

in the mean time i gave it a good clean and almost got it back to how it should be, but with one exception..

the cyan was firing 90% black?

a bit more cleaning and i got it a bit better

so thought i would do a test print to see how it would do and thought maybe it just needs the inks to be pumped through a bit, it printed a lot better than the last test print i did (previous post)

after it finished printing it performed a self clean, so after it had finished i did a test to see if there was any more cyan coming through, and the answer is, non what so ever! came out black and was firing less.

does anybody know what this would point to? bad pump? cap tops?

sorry for the long post :lol1:

[Steve McAdie]

It is probably the pump not working on the black/blue side, black ink has travelled into the blue head if you print a block of pure cyan it should clear but you may have to print quite a bit out, I get this problem when i do a head soak, it can take up to 500mm X printer width block to clear totally but you should see it gradually clearing itself as it prints.

Steve

[josh morris]

thanks Steve, well the new pump should be here tomorrow with a bit of luck so will fit it and see what happens. is there a how to guide on fitting a new style pump or a video guide that anybody knows of? 🙂

[Steve McAdie]

when i bought the new pump kit it came with instructions.

[josh morris]

great, was it an easy job? it should be here today so i’ll probs be asking some advice later :lol1: