FUJI -Acuity 1600 LED

[w4mat]

I have a 2019 Fuji Acuity 1600. How long are your print heads lasting? I have had 3 die in the last 4 months. We are a shop that is trying to grown in the sign business currently we do not print signs every day so on days we don't have projects to print we do print a ink dump just so the heads are working daily. I am trying to figure out if this is just the life of the heads or if we are doing something wrong with maintenance. If it is the life of the heads I am going to lose money quickly on this machine and may need to look at a plan B.
Here is what we do to take care of our heads daily....
-run a cleaning
-wipe down heads daily
-run a test draw
- print a ink dump daily

Any suggestions on what we are doing wrong or how to get more life out of the heads?

 

[AlsEU]

What do you mean 'die'? Blocked nozzles? Damaged electronically? Do you use original inks?

 

[w4mat]

I mean blocked nozzles. My tech guy from Fuji refers to this as the head starting to die out. We do use original inks from Fuji. For example we will have a head get a couple blocked nozzles and then over the next couple weeks more and more nozzles become blocked in that head to the point that the quality of the print suffers. No matter how well we take care of the head once we have a couple blocked nozzles it just seems to keep getting worse. This is my 3rd head in 4 months to do this.

 

[ProColorGraphics]

When I had mine, I was told the average is about 1 per year you can plan on replacing.

 

[ProColorGraphics]

I have a ton of parts left over. I am working on getting a list together for trying to sell them. Let me know if you are interested.

 

[AlsEU]

I mean blocked nozzles. My tech guy from Fuji refers to this as the head starting to die out. We do use original inks from Fuji. For example we will have a head get a couple blocked nozzles and then over the next couple weeks more and more nozzles become blocked in that head to the point that the quality of the print suffers. No matter how well we take care of the head once we have a couple blocked nozzles it just seems to keep getting worse. This is my 3rd head in 4 months to do this.

Is it always the same colour channels or different channels?

 

[swordguy3222]

We had an LED 1600 several years ago, worst printer I've ever used. Fought with Fuji for almost 2 years telling them the machine was a lemon, I would suggest telling them to take it back and refund your money. We switched over to Epson solvent printers, now have 3 running almost all day every day. LED 1600, terrible machine.

 

[AlsEU]

We had an LED 1600 several years ago, worst printer I've ever used. Fought with Fuji for almost 2 years telling them the machine was a lemon, I would suggest telling them to take it back and refund your money. We switched over to Epson solvent printers, now have 3 running almost all day every day. LED 1600, terrible machine.

Why? What was the problem?

 

[swordguy3222]

Why? What was the problem?

Ink starvation, didn't matter how much bright or dark the image was, machine never would keep up ink supply. Plus, the white channel was hit and miss. Sometimes it printed, most times 90% of nozzles were missing. I don't miss that machine.

 

[AlsEU]

Ink starvation, didn't matter how much bright or dark the image was, machine never would keep up ink supply. Plus, the white channel was hit and miss. Sometimes it printed, most times 90% of nozzles were missing. I don't miss that machine.

What kind of colour profiles were used? Generic? Or created especially for the substrate?

 

[swordguy3222]

What kind of colour profiles were used? Generic? Or created especially for the substrate?

All custom profiles. Never trust generic profiles, plus the rip I use encourages you to make your own.

 

[AlsEU]

I had many LED1600 in my hand and seems that you had bad luck with yours. Usually they work pretty fine.