Any other Oce owners using the 258 inkset series?

[ForgeInc]

I ask because we have been having a bunch of problems with our Oce Arizona 660XT machine, and am curious if the culprit could be the inkset? While it adheres great to substrates, perhaps it is just too sticky and too thick for the variable drop printheads?

We have gone through over $50,000 in printheads over the past year, and I gotta believe not all of those are due to operator error or headstrikes?

 

[Bigmancr2003]

I ask because we have been having a bunch of problems with our Oce Arizona 660XT machine, and am curious if the culprit could be the inkset? While it adheres great to substrates, perhaps it is just too sticky and too thick for the variable drop printheads?

We have gone through over $50,000 in printheads over the past year, and I gotta believe not all of those are due to operator error or headstrikes?

We havent used the 258 ink yet but $50k for printhead/year is too much. We are using 225 ink, which materials do you use to print on?

 

[MaxiKyle]

We use the 258 ink set and I have just dropped my first nozzle after 2 years of steady printing. Just to clarify, I have dropped plenty of nozzles, but this one looks like its gone for good. Still prints fine though.

We are still having some adhesion issues on some materials even after moving to the 258 from the 256 we were originally using however. Mostly when we try to lay down too much ink to make the part opaque enough.

 

[ForgeInc]

We're using 256 here. $50k in heads in a year is insane. What does Canon/Oce say, are they trying to blame it on user error?

Basically, we are still trying to sort out the issues on our press. So far, their response boils down to: The need to perform daily swabbing of the heads. (We do, even though the literature that comes with the press says to swab once per week) and to avoid any head strikes.

That said, even if a printhead hasn't failed, or been hit - they constantly go out of alignment. Luckily we are trained to re-align them. But this alignment happens often, (43 times total since we have been trained to do it in Feb of this year, oftentimes without any sort of headstrike causing it) leading us to believe there is a larger issue than simply dirty nozzles or headstrikes.

 

[ForgeInc]

Well (I think) the log should show how many purges are done each morning which would indicate that the heads are indeed being swabbed every day rather than weekly. (Since you have to purge 2-3 times when performing the "weekly" maintenance) I don't see it on the user log but there should be a detailed log/report that you can download to your computer. Anyways, all that would do is prove to them that their excuse is bogus. Even then, them claiming that the weekly equivalent of a maintenance procedure is required daily and blaming head failures on "not doing them" sounds silly, especially on that scale.

We've had a few horrible head strikes (usually stopped by the sensor, thank god) but there are times where due to user error the heads rub against media without triggering the sensor and stopping the print. We've never knocked a head out of alignment but when our tech came and did the yearly checkup and checked the heads they were slightly out of alignment. All he did was press down on the front and back of the heads (with the top cover off) to re-seat them properly. I believe he re-calibrated it after that.

When you say you're trained to re-align the heads - did they give you a service key? If I remember from previous posts you guys are under a service contract?

I'm just curious as to why they would train you to fix something that shouldn't be happening...

Yup, we are trained with a service key, AND under a service contract. Since OCE trained us we have agreements in place that our repair work doesn't affect our service contract. Though, we can only do minor things like head alignments, etc. Started in Feb of this year, and we were the first shop to do this i think. We've had so many issues with this press, it was agreed this was a way to speed up our recovery. Unfortunately, it doesn't solve the larger issues (typical treat the symptoms not the cure the disease) and while sometimes we'll be up and running quicker, it just means we are paying the repair labor rather than oce, instead of making money off the press.

Keep in mind this press was replaced once by Oce. Thus my question of whether all the 660xt's running 258 just can't run 18 hours a day, or - did we just have bad luck, or - is it operator error? I highly doubt the latter as we don't have these issues with any of our other equipment (we have 5 presses) but i could be wrong. I haven't heard of anyone else running this press with the other inksets and having these problems, thus my query above about the 258 and other folks' experience.

 

[growler]

Been running 258 for 20 months, printer is still just as good as the day it was installed. 460GT.

Have only had to have 1 service call and that was for a gantry reset.

They did release a new cleaning procedure (for 258 only??), use IPA and not the flush and do it more often. I find you learn the machine and when it needs a full swab outside of your weekly one.

Love my 258 inks and its adhesion.