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Black is Back

Vinyldog

New Member
Awhile back my poor old SP540V stopped printing Black. All other colors printed fine but black just disappeared. I played with it for awhile cleaning and replacing different things but after my new L360 arrived it was relegated to use as a cutter and things that would print reasonably well without black, which was a surprising number of things actually. But I hadn’t printed anything on it in about a week so I decided to just print something today to limber it up. And it turned out, really good.

So I ran a nozzle check and guess what? Black is back baby!

Anyone ever heard of that before?
 

Vinyldog

New Member
I changed the dampers, caps, did medium cleans, ran the cleaning cartridges, replaced the O-rings and cut off the crimped parts of the feed tubes at the damper and the cartridge, cleaned the E-Strip and have done regular weekly head-soaks since it stopped printing black, back in February I believe.
It will probably go away again but it was really sweet to see it working well after all this time. And doing it bi-directional. I have been having to print uni-directional for some time to get a decent result.
 

player

New Member
Maybe your pump is suspect then?

I would take the ink bottle off, get a big plastic tub and do a cleaning to see if ink is being evacuated by the pump.

There has to be something out of whack. Did you use Roland dampers and caps or 3rd party?

I have had a colour that test printed perfectly, but as I printed it was ink starved because of the damper. I would get better results in uni-directional mode because it slowed down the ink flow, giving the clogged damper a chance to keep up to demand. As soon as I changed the damper it was perfect. Unfortunately for me, a Roland tech was able to rip me off for $2,000 for travel and a new head. He never changed the dampers even though I requested it, So as soon as he left the new head clogged up again and exhibited the same starvation as the old one. When I called the Roland dealer (TG Graphics Montreal) back, I was told to go screw myself. Later a very competent tech (Tom Daly) from Hamilton stopped in and not only discovered the inept Roland service, but also discovered the idiot Roland tech didn't enter the new head rank numbers. I also learned if you don't put new dampers in with a new head it voids the Roland warranty on the new head. Thanks TG Graphics Montreal.
 

Vinyldog

New Member
Now there’s something I have never tried. You’re speaking of the refuse ink bottle that screws up from the bottom below the cap station?

I have wondered just how much ink dumps into that thing. That would be an interesting to see.
I’ll put a large container under it for sure. A little of this ink goes a long way when it spills.
 
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