M&J Sign Co.
New Member
Our HP DesignJet 8000 is having some printhead issues. Two printheads went out a couple months ago (Black and Light Magenta), and our supplier had them shipped off for cleaning. They came back, and worked fine for a while. Then two (Black and Cyan) went out again. They had been working fine just the day before, and because the black had been one of the two cleaned, our supplier's tech guy thought it might be an issue with the capping station. It wasn't, and we ended up buying a new capping station in addition to two new heads.
Now, the Yellow and Light Cyan are out. The owner of our company is reluctant to spend more money on new heads. So I have a few questions:
1. What is the normal lifespan of these printheads? This printer has been with the company since 2008, and has not printed every day. Normal maintenance has been performed since we've had the printer, and these issues are the first we've had with the printer (as far as I know - worked here since 2010, but was told all was well until now).
2. Is there a place to get quality printheads for a relatively low cost? We replaced the Black and Cyan from a middle-costing company, but they have since upped their prices. All the cheap ones are overseas and require wire transfers - are places like alibaba.com legit for buying these expensive pieces of equipment? On these forums, I saw some posts about Konica Minolta heads, with conflicting information as to whether they were compatible.
3. Because we can print from Flexi 8 using just CMYK, is it worth switching the still working Light Magenta head to the Yellow spot? Would that even work? It seems to me that it would have to print a lot of "yellow" jobs to flush out the LM in the head, but eventually it could work - if it didn't completely screw things up.
Now, the Yellow and Light Cyan are out. The owner of our company is reluctant to spend more money on new heads. So I have a few questions:
1. What is the normal lifespan of these printheads? This printer has been with the company since 2008, and has not printed every day. Normal maintenance has been performed since we've had the printer, and these issues are the first we've had with the printer (as far as I know - worked here since 2010, but was told all was well until now).
2. Is there a place to get quality printheads for a relatively low cost? We replaced the Black and Cyan from a middle-costing company, but they have since upped their prices. All the cheap ones are overseas and require wire transfers - are places like alibaba.com legit for buying these expensive pieces of equipment? On these forums, I saw some posts about Konica Minolta heads, with conflicting information as to whether they were compatible.
3. Because we can print from Flexi 8 using just CMYK, is it worth switching the still working Light Magenta head to the Yellow spot? Would that even work? It seems to me that it would have to print a lot of "yellow" jobs to flush out the LM in the head, but eventually it could work - if it didn't completely screw things up.