CJV30-130 Cyan Ink Running Dry

[CustomCornholeBoards]

In preparations for hurricane Matthew, I flushed out our CJV30-130 lines, cleaned the head and capping station, thinking we would be without power for possibly weeks. 2 days after flushing the system, I came back into the shop, put in the ink cartridges and filled the system back up. Test prints showed the grids were good, so I proceeded to print. On the 3rd print, the colors were off. I did another test print to see that both of the Cyan channels were 70%+ empty. I did 5-10 ink fills to get the grids back to maybe 90%. After that, each test print would remove more and more grids on Cyan.

What I've done:
All possible cleaning options
Installed new capping station top
Changed both Cyan dampers
Flushed Cyan head channels with solution from a syringe (thinking there were debris stuck/dried)


I had a back up pump, however the right intake line is too short to reach the H connector on the bottom of the capping station, so I'm unable to rule the pump out.


Does anyone have suggestions on what to try or what can be causing this issue? The machine has been used almost daily for the past 2 years.



Update: I changed the valve/connector on the top of the dampers for Cyan. The dampers are now filling with ink, but they are not printing on the grid.

I also swapped the right Magenta channel with the right Cyan channel and ran a few test prints, Magenta never printed a grid for Cyan and the original Magenta channel dried up and will now no longer print on test prints after multiple ink fills. Please see attached photos.

Before swap


After swap

 

[CustomCornholeBoards]

Final update:

The original culprit was our capping station top. The second issue that made everything worse was, the newly installed capping station did not come with the 3rd nipple cap top installed on the bottom, allowing air to escape during ink fills. I have attached a photo of this tiny cap that caused so many issues.