A proposterous conundrum

[veloxgraphics]

The first few inches of cyan print has black in it... then as it prints, it slowly goes back to 100% cyan. I changed the dampers and captop thinking i had a bad damper, and was getting backflow of black ink into the cyan side of the head...

Still doing it...

So i dumped cleaning fluid in the cap... it ran through to the bottle, so im assuming the lines aren't plugged.

I'm at a loss...

Anyone?

 

[ProWraps]

cross contamination. it more than likely is happening everytime you come in and start printing for the day. been there done that. we just set our cleaning schedule up a notch and even though its not a fix per se, it acheives the same results.

its from when the head is parked its not sealing correctly, or something is touching the head allowing the cross contamination to wick back up into the head and possibly the damper depending on how long it sits.

 

[trimitbyrich]

yes, cross contamination. I have been there done that too. Mine was a faulty ink cartrige. I replaced cap tops and dampers only to find out it was a bad cartridge that was sucking the black into the blue. Very frustrating. I was down for 2 days over that one.

 

[MachServTech]

usually caused when the capping station is not working properly and is aggravated by a difference in pressure between ink lines (full cart next to an empty one) causing a migration of ink through the capping station to the lower pressure printhead.

 

[veloxgraphics]

I put all new carts in just now, and now it's fine. So MachServTech's theory seems to be holding true... i dont really want to waste 1/2 cartridge of cyan just because of this stupid issue,... I'll try and up the cleaning sched and see if that helps.

Thanks all!

 

[sfr table hockey]

What printer are you running?

 

[CheapVehicleWrap]

A half a cartridge!?! Glad you didn't put in the Mutoh forum.

 

[GSGservice]

You must be running a SP printer. If it's older than 2 years old and still running the original pump I would get a flash light and check around the pump look for ink on the white gear or wet ink. You might have a ruptured line but typically it is the magenta / yellow side that does this. A swollen cap top can also cause this but sound like you fixed that already. The other thing to check in the future is to physically pull the cartridges and shake them to make sure they have ink in them.