JV3-160SP prints but no ink comes out

[spencer2004]

I am working on a Mimaki JV3-160SP which had been working fine up until yesterday. In the middle of a print all nozzles stopped firing and no ink was coming out but the head carriage was still moving as normal and the printer was still doing it's usual stuff that it does during a print. No errors came up.

After restarting the printer it started printing correctly again for about 5 minutes but now it wont print anything, still no error messages and everything apart from the lack of ink coming from the heads seems fine.

HELP!!!

 

[MikePro]

most likely your pumps/capping station are clogged-up and not refreshing the siphon effect of your ink supply.
which usually happens if you're not doing disway washes and cleanings regularly.

 

[Solventinkjet]

It's most likely a bad encoder sensor. The JV3 is one of the only machines I know of that does this. If the sensor doesn't send a signal back, it just keeps moving back and forth but the heads don't get a signal to fire.

 

[spencer2004]

Hello and many thanks for the replies.

Just an update it seems that when the printer is turned off for a while (then turned back on obviously) it sometimes will do 1 test print but not print anything afterwards.

VanderJ I am so happy that you have told me this. As it happens the linear encoder strip is faulty and I am waiting on a replacement so hopefully the new one will solve the problem.

To be continued Monday...

 

[spencer2004]

It was the encoder sensor lol.

Thanks again everyone!