Bizarre Mutoh Valuejet banding

[Flame]

Hey guys, long time no talk. Got a weird problem that I've been troubleshooting for a couple of days, and am striking out. So I am getting horizontal banding, but it's almost like... "streaking". It's always horizontal stripes and sometimes splattery. Hopefully these 2 pics make what sense of what I've just said.

So I've tried the basics, clean all around the head and capping station. Soaked the head 3x now, multiple strong cleanings... nothing. Then I went more advanced, I performed a PF adjustment, I cleaned the raceway (then re-greased it slightly), I cleaned the encoder strip and then the encoder wheel, very carefully and thoroughly. Still prints like that... So then I went and started to play with profiles, ink limits, wave pattern etc... before it hit me that it printed perfectly fine in the past, so I went back to my original settings.

So same material as I always use, same settings I always use, and this is what I get. I can't print a good solid color. I did a nozzle check, looks perfect. What am I missing?

I thinking there is a chance that it's dampers, as the machine is approaching being 2 years old soon, so I just ordered some in. But my last one I ran for almost 5 without damper problems. Anyone able to save me some grey hairs?

 

[papabud]

just an odd random question but have you tried a different batch of material?

 

[letterman7]

Looks like a material issue or even a heat issue to me. I've had "same" materials act completely different from time to time. No explanation except weather..

 

[Flame]

Yeah I have tried multiple materials with multiple heat settings, does the same thing to all of them. The red one is a material I tend to have issues with once in a while, but the blue example is a material that usually prints spot on perfect.

As far as weather... eh... it's been raining here, but she's always raining here too. LOL

 

[papabud]

it could be your baffles. if they have a hole or a leaking manifold would also cause this issue.
double check the cleaning station make sure ink isnt pooling up in it.

 

[Flame]

it could be your baffles. if they have a hole or a leaking manifold would also cause this issue.
double check the cleaning station make sure ink isnt pooling up in it.

Baffles? I don't think I know that term.... care to explain?

Maintenance station does appear to be damp, but I don't know about "pooling" . I pop the cap off and it all appears to be draining fine. Last time I lost a maintenance station... I had bad nozzles, but this time I have perfect nozzle checks. So...?

 

[RG]

All I know about baffles is that I took them out of my Harley about 15 years ago. I had a problem similar to yours with my 1204. Ron from the SW told me that when the printer initializes and you have the opportunity to select Media Type you should select Type 1. That might have helped out my banding problem somewhat, but I ended up using a 1440X720 profile for most of my printing. That fixed it. If you do a solid block of each CMYK color, are all the colors banding? If only one solid color is banding, the problem could be an o-ring on the bottom of one of the dampers.

 

[papabud]

The baffles are little plastic reservoirs that your ink flows into and sit in a manifold above your print head. Its been a while but they should be I believe about half full

 

[Flame]

The baffles are little plastic reservoirs that your ink flows into and sit in a manifold above your print head. Its been a while but they should be I believe about half full

Haha we call those dampers. Never heard them referred to as baffles before, but now I know what you are referring to!

I do have dampers arriving in the next couple of days. Another update... For kicks I ran a few strong cleanings with the ink tray removed, and hardly anything came out, like at all. If I pour a lil cleaning fluid into the far left station, it drains right out. But cleanings basically don't give me anything. Hmmm

 

[floater302]

I know sometimes when i get streaking like that, ill change from wave pattern to fine and fuzz and it takes care of the problem. my mutoh is like a woman never acts the same from one day to the next.

 

[papabud]

my mutoh has issues with cleanings every now and then.
my work around is i made 4 files. 1 for each color.
i use onyx and took each fill removing all the color but 1 from each file. Then i run each one. it floods the material with that one color. also helps and finding other issues.

 

[studio10]

In my case horizontal stripes with splattery is combinaton of bad material and low temperature.

 

[TrustMoore_TN]

my mutoh is like a woman never acts the same from one day to the next.

THIS!!! :ROFLMAO: Soooooo true.

 

[printcleric]

Hey I'm also from the PNW, and right around now during season changes we always run into issues like this. Do you have a dehumidifier nearby? I've found that keeping the humidity around 40-60% can really help.

 

[Artworkinmotion]

I have this same issue on my Mutoh 1324 which is three years old. When I run the diagnostic print pattern You can see the streaks easily in Cyan and Magenta. Black and yellow look ok. I sent pics of the diagnostic print pattern to my dealer. He told me to run a short flush if that didnt work to replace the maintenance station. he said they are only good for about a year average. The solvents and cleaning solution breaks them down. I have ran several long cleans and flushed the maintenance station with cleaning solvent. itr appears not a lot of ink goes into the waste container, I would expect more running thru the waste tube. The only thing that helps is running my dot pattern to 1 and slow carriage speed. This is like putting a bandaid on the problem though. Although it looks better these streaks now look like I just printed on a piece of raw metal only on the colors that favor magenta and cyan. And yes my nozzle checks look great also.