Need Help Anapurna H2500i

[frojasferrari]

Hi there, long time no post....

We are having a problem with our 2 years old Anapurna H2500i. The cyan its banding. When you print the PRIME , the machine prints the typical grid where you can see all the nozzles firing and on the right side of this grid it print solid colors, in the solid colors you can see white lines, as if the nozzles are deflected, but on the grid pattern you can se everything alright, except for my cyan that is "shaky" on top and bottom of the grid. The technicians of the brand (Anapurna... so do the math) have not been able to even DIAGNOSE whats wrong, they are going for the easy exit, new printhead, we don't have problems on changing the printheads, but we want to know WHY this happened, so the new printheads don't have the exact same problem in a year (the cyan started showing this on January). Heres a video:

 

[signman315]

I have zero experience with Agfa Anapurnas, but I have used UV printers for 11 years. In my experience (primarily the HP Scitex line) what you are showing would call for replacing a print head. From what I understand Cyan inks require a larger pigment particle and the larger particle size typically wears out heads faster than other colors. Think of it as sand paper jetting out of the heads, large particles are like a rougher grit sand paper, causing the jets to deflect and wear out more quickly. The other possibility is head strikes causing damage to the jets/head...but based on the test prints you posted I don't think that to be the case. If it were a head strike then most likely you would see deflection/damage on the adjacent heads, unless of course the adjacent heads have recently been replaced. Depending on your work load, a Cyan (or any other head) could realistically need to be replaced just from regular wear and tear after 1 year....this would mean you would have a moderate to high printing volume for that year but not unreasonable. I've seen heads last about a year with minimal head strikes and high volume...high volume being defined as at least 20 hours per week of constant print runs for the whole year. The printers I'm familiar with have a heating element in the head that warms the ink to the point that it is jettable, and sometimes that heater weakens and begins to fail. A consideration but probably not the problem you are experiencing, typically a bad heating element in the head will show a pattern of weak center jetting that I'm not seeing in your tests. Again this is all based on my experience using machines/inks other than Agfa, but figured it might help you get to the WHY you are looking for. Hope it helps! If you do come to a conclusion please post it in case it can help someone else, thanks!