Need Help How screwed am I? VS300 print head failure?

[PetrichorPrinting]

My girlfriend and I bought a used VS-300 about six months ago because we wanted to start doing some custom decal work. Shortly after purchasing it we started seeing some color-shifting as shown below. Then the metallic and light cyan started having major issues with large sections of nozzles dropping out entirely. Cap top was replaced with no improvement, head soaks performed, etc. Since we don't even use the metallic I wasn't overly concerned, the printer has been pretty serviceable for the past several months. However, tonight I ran a light cleaning and test print (bottom test print) and then attempted a medium cleaning (top test print) and lost the entire section of black nozzles, along with tons of nozzles in areas that weren't previously affected. I have no idea what the hell happened. The black ink is lowish, but still plenty in the cartridge when shaking it.

I am currently performing a head soak and will do that overnight, but I very much doubt it's the issue. It could be the cap top, or maybe dampers? Anything else I can try before calling a Roland tech to replace the head? That's a $3,000 bill that I don't even want to think about stomaching.

Thanks for any insight.

 

[LFC911]

Have you tried a syringe pull from the captop? Are any of the inks expired? Are you agitating the metallic ink daily?

 

[C5 Service&Repair]

You definitely need a new captop. Or at least the one you have needs to be cleaned thoroughly. That will help with the color cross contamination.
The bigger concern is how the lines are not is a straight row, but rather how they curve. That usually means damage to the head.