FB500 Printing Bad

[Signplicity Mike]

Hello- Trying to print white text on clear 3/8” acrylic. Getting this fuzzy over spray look. Have done all the normal head cleaning. Help!

 

[clarizeyale]

seems like a head height issue..... but that doesn't make sense, it measures the thickness...

could also be the material :/ sorry

 

[FrankW]

Check the Lot-Number on your white cartridge: there is a known problem with AEMC000B.

 

[jwilde]

Any time I'm doing a rigid substrate with white I shoot for a .085 head height max. I usually wipe down any really static charged material with an alcohol just before printing. It won't help with the overspray, but that text seems to be quite small, if you can spare the time I would use the "fine text" print mode.

 

[Glavin_ID]

I am having the same issue with my FB700 right now. I am printing white on black coroplast. Tech thinks it might be a bad print head. Please let me know if you figure something else out.

I am going to run a prime bar test today to check on the health of the head.

 

[Superior_Adam]

That looks like a static issue to me. Acrylic is horrible about that at times along with polystyrene and PVC.

 

[Signplicity Mike]

Never heard of "Fine Print Mode"...we are doing Max DPI when we rip, which might be the same thing. Called another local print shop and they said head or static as well.

But if things couldn't get worse our printer just shut down. It cant fill the print heads from port 6 (white)...port 5 is working. there are no line kinks, we have purged and emptied everything, we have swapped the lines & swapped out the connectors from other inks we know worked. We are left to believe the pump is bad. Error code E-CN-6. Weird thing is when we clear the heads its dripping white ink out of both 5 and 6. So wondering if its not sensing the ink being filled...or maybe there is just a ton of ink in there...we have done it 3 times and its still dripping white ink out of both 5 & 6.

We are now left to vinyl weed over 2,000 names on acrylic...this is all due Monday of course.

 

[Glavin_ID]

Wow, our printers must be linked or something, we had the same problem with one of our white heads earlier this week. Inside of the cup above the head where the ink fills, there is a small "Thermistor" I think they call it. If there is a build up of ink on said thermistor, the head thinks it has ink in it, even though it doesn't. Take the cap off that cup (they are grey on our machine and they are numbered 1-6) 4 phillips head screws, one in each corner, be careful because there is an o-ring on the seal that is very important. If that little glass rod is covered with ink, VERY CAREFULLY wipe it off with a lint free cloth and head flush. Be very careful because it is glass and if it breaks you are SOL. Clean the thermistor, put it all back together, fill that head with ink, then do a few purges. I literally just did this on Wednesday because our #5 white head was not printing at all when i did a jet test.

 

[jwilde]

I know it seems you have bigger problems now, but depending on the version of firmware you're at... You should be able to RIP your file as you normally, as it's loaded on the machine, click jobs, select the file you are wanting to print, then select print mode, in there you will see additional options like "unidirectional" (to alleviate the lawnmower effect you see for certain prints) and also "fine text" this makes a considerable difference in very small text. With that it's adding time as well. I will say that, I'm pretty sure this isn't your problem but if you were to wipe it down with alcohol, lower the head heigh and use the fine text you should get much better results.

I will also say that switching over to white is a killer on these machines and the white ink does not behave as the other inks do. It creates an array of problems. We try to batch everything up and convert to white as little as possible. We have a couple of the fb700s both have white, but I will not convert one of them for this reason.

Good luck and my head hurts for you if you have to cut and weed 2,000 of these things over the weekend. YIPES!

 

[Signplicity Mike]

Glavin_ID...ours seems to be like that but its telling us it cant fill the head. Looks like we have ink running to it but its saying its empty. We will try your cleaning and see how it goes...thanks!

 

[clarizeyale]

That looks like a static issue to me. Acrylic is horrible about that at times along with polystyrene and PVC.

hmm so now that I think about it... we were wondering why our fb had been so crappy... it wasn't until we got a 2nd HP flatbed that a tech noticed that our ionizing bar wasn't working... LOOL so he had it replaced.

since then, the prints look a lot better.

 

[FrankW]

Glavin_ID...ours seems to be like that but its telling us it cant fill the head. Looks like we have ink running to it but its saying its empty. We will try your cleaning and see how it goes...thanks!

Had that with a customers FB500 too: at this machine the ink filters of the white channels were clogged (at the OHS, inside the printer, behind the cartridges).