Falcon Outdoor Jr. Black

[thmooch]

Falcon Outdoor Jr. Black is giving me an issue. I have attached a pic but not sure you can see it. What is happening is there is a slight (for better word) "space" as the print is not completely closing to the right. I am suspecting maybe some clogged nozzles. I did 2 - 15 min head soaks then cleaning cycle. Should I go longer? CMY are good, just K giving me this issue.

Thanks in advance.

 

[randya]

What does the nozzle check look like?

 

[thmooch]

image attached. looks bad.

 

[J Hill Designs]

yeah black looks pretty bad - I would isolate that as the problem...try a overnight head soak?

 

[thmooch]

I did notice that when doing the soak that it seemed there was not (what I would consider) enough black ink on the rag. Anybody second the motion of an over night head soak?

 

[randya]

image attached. looks bad.

Well, it is good news/bad news.

Good news is that it looks like you are not missing nozzles, but have misdirected nozzles.

Misdirected nozzles can be caused by dried ink around the nozzle orifice, but can also be caused by damage to the nozzle plate.

I am not a big fan of overnight soaking, just be sure that it doesnt dry out.
I prefer a soak and rewet about every 15-20 minutes with a few drops of solvent. Do this for an hour, run a clean off the front panel.
Repeat as needed.

The whole idea is to get solvent where the dried ink is.

I cant really tell from your pic, but it could be a RIP/design issuefont issue.

If you create a black square and a black circle, does it do the same thing?

 

[Graphics2u]

Looks like all the nozzles are firing just deflected badly. You could try pulling ink through the head with a syringe, sometimes that will clean out the blockage also.

 

[thmooch]

good info. guys.

This happens with other fonts/graphics. I have been using alcohol as a soak but will switch to the cleaning solvent and do several more 15-20 min soaks & strong cleanings for the rest of the day then park the head and pull with the syringe. We will see what happens...

 

[OneUpTenn]

Try taking the cleaning solution and dabbing some on the pad where the heads pass through...brain freeze here...cant think of what its called. Let it run printing something just black for a few minutes. This has always worked for me in the past. The pad that removes the excess ink.

 

[thmooch]

oneuptenn, you talking about the wiper?

 

[artbot]

looking at the nozzle check vs. printing anomaly, i don't think a deflected nozzle can cause that. there'd be banding within the solid black area of the print. and or the line to the side would be broken. instead it is solid. this looks more like a data issue to me. the black head is firing early as it approaches it's x/y, then hesitating, then fully firing. an encoder strip can't cause this because it would just be the y position. this issue is x/y. very weird. it's like your black head is hiccupping. are the files vector or raster or both?

 

[thmooch]

artbot, the black actually does have banding(can't see it real from my pic). I print tiff files.

 

[Graphics2u]

looking at the nozzle check vs. printing anomaly, i don't think a deflected nozzle can cause that. there'd be banding within the solid black area of the print. and or the line to the side would be broken. instead it is solid. this looks more like a data issue to me.

Could possibly be a data thing but that black head is really messed up. Fix it first and then see if you need to go further. Remember the black you are printing, unless you are using no color correction and 100% black, is made up mostly of c-m-y depending on the profile you are using. That could account for less banding being visible as compared to just printing 100% black.

 

[thmooch]

well, no luck so far with soak & cleaning cycles. I do feel the Solvent cleaner is doing more than the Alcohol, by the looks of the rag(more black on the rag now). I printed a 2"x28" block of black and as previously mentioned it looks good(cmyk all printing). Same issue with text & graphics though. I tried the syringe to pull ink also and no difference. I will do more/longer soaks tomorrow & see what the nozzle check looks like.

as always, I greatly appreciate everyone's input.

 

[Newbie_on]

as always, I greatly appreciate everyone's input.

Check your mechanical and electronic adjustments.

 

[thmooch]

well, after limping along for a month or so I decided to replace the head as deflecting nozzle checks kept getting worse. Installed the new Head, entered ranking. Now black is back to where it is supposed to be(fingers crossed.)