1204 head strike

[letterman7]

Weird thing starting to happen - I'm getting head strikes at the end of the print "throw". In other words, the carriage goes out, stops and comes back for the next pass. At the end of each of the stops it'll head strike. I can't figure it out. Everything is clean on the head, no clogs, dragging hairs, etc. It seems to do it most on reflective. If I 'head up' it'll minimize, but will still happen. This started happening about the same time a couple sets of my rollers were starting to fail and print-tracking. All the rollers have been subsequently changed. To clarify, I usually run a 30" roll reflective when this is happening. But if I run a full 48" roll of regular print vinyl, it will happen at that far end of the roll as well, so it has to be something with the stop/return point of the head.

Any ideas?

Rick

 

[Craig Malmberg]

You might look at the heat settings for the reflective. I had the same problem years ago. If your AC blows on the printer, it can cause your printer heaters to get hotter than they needs to be for the material and cause the same issue.

 

[floater302]

Craig is correct about the heat and if your using ckeap vinyl with thin backing the heat will do it everytime.

 

[letterman7]

Ah, interesting. Never thought about the heat settings. I usually run 3M, so not so concerned on thin backings. Would you change the overall settings, or one platen in particular?

 

[floater302]

You will have to play around with the settings until it stops waving