why did you put headline: cartridges drying out!

ink starvation comes from air leak problem caused by many things...

from your post I presume that you have 2nd generation of heads so no problem from this!

I presume that you have problem with not sealed heads with caper caused by dried ink on head surface and cappers...

clean capers on the end of the working day, and do fill cap - so that heads stay soaked in ink. do this fill cap for few days.

regarding daily maintenance - from my experience cleaning on the end of the day is more important than cleaning machine before printing in the morning...

if you just leave machine after work, ink that has accumulated on cappers and heads dries out and in that way prevents capers to do good seal of head...

meaning that you will have air leak problem - ink starvation...


and how do you mean "...have changed many heads..."? why? how?

I work with cs6060 (seiko) for almost 2 years, and didn't have to change any head! (we work minimum 14 days a day)

-- Edited by cs6060 at 01:43, 2006-09-13

Yes, but...

Wiping unit is not doing good job enough. After cleaning it is always leaving small drops of ink on head surface. when printing that ink drops are drying out. when you do fill cup, it want do anything to this small dried drops of ink (in shape of icicle) which are out of capper position...
But after a while (few months - years) this drops becomes larger and closing to capper - preventing it to seal head good enough - making place for air leak aka ink starvation...
If you didn't check this, you should do it. (you have similar topic here)

To check this (properly) you have to disassemble (take out from machine) wiping unit. It's not complicated. I did it without service manual. Only thing you have to be careful is to place wiping unit to right level! This is of course perfect opportunity to clean head surfaces (when talking about cleaning head surfaces - I mean on cleaning everything except nozzles - in one word try not to touch them)....

Check this topic also..

Should you use capping fluid or wiping fluid to clean (and also to manually fill the caps or to take the carriage to a cloth soaked with - capping or wiping fluid).

The reason why I'm asking this (silly) question is, that my tech said that never use capping fluid since it's to strong...???

procitajte sto sam tu napisao, tj. kakav sam tu savjet dao.

cap tekucina ne moze naskoditi metalnim djelovima, dok plastici i slicnim materijalima moze. Tu govorimo o povrsini glave... iliti metalnoj povrsini... ??????????????

Is this in Vulcan. Where can I translate message from cs6060

We have seen residual dried ink when the tech comes to change heads. We have gne through more heads than I feel we should have over the last 6 months. It seems crazy that head change is the fix but they are having problems nailing it down too.

What about firmware? What version is the most problematic or is this an issue? We upgraded firmware a while back and since then have been have these major issues. I thought ugrades in firmware were supposed to help. We run color bar when printing but sometimes we run certain jobs that may only use 3 or 4 colors in large qtys, could this be a problem too?

Any ideas about material usage? Some people run lots of paper some lots of vinyl. Some run backlit materials. Are there are ideas about substrate constraints or problematic substrates in long runs that might affect the machine's hardware?

It's not logical captain....

I too have had this same problem. We will be printing a job that is beautiful then 5m in it will start banding and you can see on the colour stripe that you have lost nozzles. Stop the print, clean start again. Same thing.

This has happend so regularly that we have had 3 heads replaced in 3 weeks. Now that we are out of manufacturs warranty any more heads that have this problem are at our expense. Now it looks like 2 more are doing the exact same thing.

It is as if they are clogging up or drying out mid print, and not us or the tech knows a definite answer that will fix it other than change the head. We have had every single head replace on our machine (some a couple of times) in a little over 12 months. Does this just seem crazy to me???

yes i believe we have the latest heads as they have all been replaced and out tech said they are all the new kind.

we have had air leak problems in the past but i think a part of the assembly (??) was replaced as a way of fixing this problem.

 

can't see it being the inks as if this was the case everybody would be seeing problems. you now need to work out if it's a mechanical issue or a set-up issue. if thecaps, wipers, seala dn heads are ok, then you need to look at the heater settings, substrate used and environment.

what substrate are you using? what are the heater settings? what print mode are you running in? have you tried using the "highlight" print setting? what's the working temp around the printer like? are you doing the regular cleans? are you using the confidence strip?

sorry for all the questions, but these play a big part in the consistant running of it.

i have gone back to my tech with some suggestions made on this page and this is his response. He is very good and i do trust him, i just want to sort this problem out. Its almost as if when we replaced 2 heads that had this problem, the next two oldest ones have "Caught" the same thing.

This was his response:

Recently the entire ink damper assembly has been replaced with Seiko modification Solution U00102875500 this includes new inkline connectors which ensures that there are no ink leaks. This also included new O'rings at all junctions that ensures air tight integrity at printhead and damper junctions.
All caps have been checked and don't appear to have any issues, if faulty these generally result in missing nozzles immediatly and not after 7metres of printing.Whilst printing the caps are redunant and so do not influence drop out after elongated print runs.
The wiper blade assy was replaced on the the last service call.
 
Any more suggestions?

heads normally solve most issues, but as they are expensive the reps do not want to change them. fundamentally you have a problem, that if still under a warranty they should fix. get your rep back in and get him to run it for a day's shift and see what he finds and then what remedies he can implement.

if the heads still fail then i'd say you've got an air leak somewhere, but he's saying that the new assembly should have resolved this. all your settings seem ok, and more to the point you are running 8-pass which slows the print down drastically, making the printer's life easier. 2-pass or 4-pass you may get drop out but 8-pass never!!

have you found a cure for this problem yet?

In an earlier post I stated that we had cured all my banding problems. That may have been a bit premature. the printer printed nicely for a few weeks, but now I seem to be having major problems with nozzles dropping out. If we clean the machine, do a cap fill overnight, then we can print about 5 feet before we see nozzles dropping out. This happens on all colors, even the black which was just replaced. I am starting to think that the print head may not have needed replaced. Whatever is causing the nozzle to drop is causing all my problems. I have looked at the hoses for air leaks and Seiko seems to think maybe the capping station? Seems that they dont have any definative answer, I have had a tech out twice (at my expense).  I am not sure how that would affect the printer as it is running. I have also noticed a large buidup of ink on the printheads after they come off the capping station. I think this excess ink is drying and causing the drop out, but why are we suddenly having a problem with all the heads, whats the cure?? I dont mind paying them, but they arent fixing the problem, and I dont think I shoud have to pay for them to keep trying things. The service calls are quite expensive, and they dont seem to stand behind their work.

Right now this printer is pretty much useless. I need to be able to print more than 5 feet on a run.

Anyone have any ideas??

static products are always going to cause problems. normally you can deduce if they are static as when they peel off the feed core you can hear them sticking to the next section by static charge. you need to find a way of removing this charge prior to the media going into the printer. i have seen a few ways of doing this from cbales running to an earthing point to litle brushes that rub on the media to remove the esd charge.