Yellow not printing Versacam HELP

[dirtracer23]

Replaced damper, replaced cap top, replaced pump, swapped ribbons, done several head cleans. One time when I didnt get the magenta primed right yellow printed where red should have been. Not a spec of yellow on the test print either. Any one had this problem before, please HELP.

 

[cdiesel]

Maybe a stupid question, but do you have ink in the cart?

 

[Ken]

The stupid questions actually apply here.
My stupid question is: What do you mean when you say you swapped ribbons?
But not a speck of yellow on the test print?
You know..I'm thinking you have a plugged or kinked feed line.
Have you been able to flush the system with cleaning fluid?
If the cleaning fluid is not flowing..then a bad pump or plugged/kinked lines.
Keep working the printer so that other heads dont get worse until you get this sorted out.
Can I ask if you are using OEM ink?
Good luck.
Ken

 

[artbot]

you need to isolate if the issue is above or below the caps. first. do a damper swap. put the yellow on the red and vice versa. does magenta print from the yellow position? if it does you have a supply problem. if suddenly magenta won't print from they yellow position you have a vacuum problem. on the vacuum side of things you can swap pump lines. to isolate. don't just throw parts at a machine. it disallows you from understanding what issues your printer actually has.

couple questions. are your yellow dampers looking good? when you draw ink with a syringe from the damper, do you see bubbles? is there any yellow ink sitting in the cap top? is yellow passing into the waste bottle?

considering what you've done so far. i'd take off the yellow damper and aggressively pull yellow into the syringe. and also get a wire and force it down the yellow ink line about 16". clogs aren't uncommon at this point coming up and over the head carriage.

 

[DRamm76]

I'm going to go ahead and ask the question that Ken asked. Although some people don't think it makes a difference, the truth is, 3rd party inks don't make a difference to anyone until all of a sudden there's an issue. Then people will acknowledge everything else BUT that...

Are you using a 3rd party ink in the machine?

 

[artbot]

as for third party, i've had less cleaning issues moving to triangle from mimaki SS2. the retarder ratio is slightly higher, thus giving the printer a bit of a break with the usual very quick drying SS2.

 

[dirtracer23]

It is a new Roland cartridge.
Im getting ink thru the head with syringe w/ some bubbles it seems.
Ive pulled cleaning fluid thru head w/ no problem and then Ink.
It sounds like maybe I losing prime because of air leak
I will check that and get back, thanks

 

[artbot]

the only proof of losing prime is if your dampers are emptying. the printer works off of a siphon, but very delicately balanced. the pumps refresh the positive pressure inside of the ink lines. many people think that the ink tubes have negative pressure. it's that the tubes are weighted so that the volume of ink is heavy enough to neither drip or run back and the tubes need the seal to not let the weight at he other end (cartridge end) to not siphon the ink backwards.

 

[dirtracer23]

OK, swapped dampers and it is printing YELLOW and no RED.

Had another used head that I swapped and had same issue.

Does this mean board issues now?

 

[artbot]

if you swapped a non printing yellow damper/line to a printing magenta damper/line. and the magenta line would not print at the yellow position, but the yellow started printing at the magenta position. and your cap shares yellow/magenta (which i believe it does). and you switched heads to the same result, then you have to assume that you have a data issue at the yellow print head position. it could be a bad data ribbon connection, or frayed data ribbon, bad fuse on a slider board, or bad fuse on the main board.

looks like you need to do a data swap. since your printer has two heads, you will send the black/cyan data to the yellow/magenta head and vice versa. attached is a data swap diagram for a jv3 160sp. don't do this if you have any misunderstanding or doubts about getting it right. if done properly the printer will assume that all is well and send the data to the wrong head. because it doesn't have knowledge that the head isn't where it used to be. if hooked up wrong, you will loop a charge the wrong direction through the head. so... ask around if in doubt.

after the data swap, if yellow suddenly prints yellow (you would send it some cyan data in order to do this), you will know that the head is fine, but the cable or board or slider board isn't. but first isolate if the yellow wakes up with cyan data.