JV3 250SP - Time for major maintenance!

[Warped&Proud]

We've had some issues with this thing for a little bit. It prints "OK" most of the time, but it's been suggested we replace the main board for a couple of very specific reasons. I won't waste time as to why, as that is not the aim of this post.

I've replaced print heads and a slider board - simple. We've done the alignment thing to death, so my team has a really solid grasp of pulling that off and getting razor-sharp prints out of the sucker.

But replacing the main board and bulk ink carts scare me a little. The last thing I want to do is swap all this out, have a dead machine on my hands and get fired for it.

We have a print-out of the maintenance/service manual, but no PDF. (Anybody have a PDF?)

I need two bits from you lott.

1) Can anyone suggest where in the maintenance manual (or what sections) I should look at to replace the main board and to swap in new bulk ink cartridges?

2) Does anybody have any suggestions of things I should look out for, or recommend alternate steps, etc. before, durring and/or after performing the above procedures?

I know this is going to be a gigantic pain. We've alotted a full week of down-time for this specific printer. Anything beyond that, and we are hosed.

So, grand pooh-bahs of the printing universe, I beg of your wisdom!!!!

As always, thanks so much in advance.

 

[Spencer McMurtry]

i have replaced the motherboard in the jv3-160sp, it is the same board in the jv3-250sp along with the jv3-75SPII. it is not hard all that hard to switch out you will just have to redo all the calibrations and if the new board has a newer firmware 3.3+ i think you will need chips for the bulk ink system. I think there is a way to backup all your calibrations not sure on how to do this however. i have a copy of the manual for the jv3-160sp i could give you this if you would like not sure what the differences are between it and the 250sp.

 

[Warped&Proud]

Monday is the day we start swapping this thing's guts out.

We have new bulk cartridges with specialized chips in them. They were purchased at the same time, from the same place, as the new main board. I'm also planning on re-plumbing our existing bulk ink system to the backs of the new ink cartidges.

I'm going through the maintenance manual and a few other PDFs I've dug up over the last hour or so. I have yet to find anything that shows how to back-up any settings from the current main-board. I'll report here if/when I do.

Another thing I'm going to do is document this whole process. I'm going to take photos from beginning to end.

Anyway, It's going to be a messy few days once we get started.

And again, thanks for the PM infinitef! Your help is definitly greatly appreciated!

 

[Warped&Proud]

OK, here's an update:

1) New bulk ink cartridges with cheater chips - installed...
2) New Motherboard - installed...
3) Started inputing settings...
4) tried to do a test drop... Uh, oh.....

After installing the new main board, this JV3 won't even produce a test draw. As in, it's like it is "frozen" on the test draw menu screen.

It also won't print when something is dropped in the rip's queue.

We took photos of the cable positions from the previous MLB. We even labeled the position of the couple of questionable connections and drew a freakin' chart - all the cables are in the correct spot.

Anyone have any ideas?

edit:

We even tried doing the alignment testing and it won't print the test draws for that process... Did I plug something in wrong?

 

[Spencer McMurtry]

i would resit all the ribbon cables did you make sure the pins are facing up on the longer ribbon cables? on the small ribbon cable on the top right make sure the pins are facing down on it. also when plug in the cables feel free to take a close look at them and see if anything is bent or looks out of the ordinary. those ribbon cables are pretty picky and have to be plugged in just right.

make sure the power is off and unplugged before you unplug or plug in any cables

did you get all the head ids in?


goodluck!

 

[Warped&Proud]

on the small ribbon cable on the top right make sure the pins are facing down on it.

I was just thinking I should have a close look at that one, being as the space where the main board goes is so cramped. We had a really hard time just seing it as a support post is in the way!

This morning is all about looking at all the connections, one cable at a time.

And yes, it did let us enter in all the head IDs. Weird, hugh?

 

[Warped&Proud]

Checked the cables - all of them... They were fine.

We swapped the OLD mainboard back in ... and the OLD board works exactly how it did.

I'm now seeking info on how to extract the csv file (or whatever it is called) from the OLD board so I can use it with the NEW board. The goal: see if it is some obscure setting that is preventing the NEW board from working correctly.

If that does not work, the "NEW" board (purchased by my old boss, whose job *I* was given) is defective.

Again, anyone know how to extract the settings off of this machine using the FW ROM flashing utility? The instructions I have found are extremely incomplete and unclear. I need step-by-step instructions from start to finish, not starting at step 16 of 47 like the ones that came with the FW utility.

Thanks in advance, as always.

Oh, and Spencer, thanks a bunch! You've made me double think a few things that really needed to be.

 

[particleman]

Did you enter the head IDs again when you installed the new board???

My knowledge of this next part is limited but it has been a long time ago since I did it, but when we did a flash to 3.1 for our megaink bulk system we used the tools on this page to dump our .prm file out of the printer, the file on their site also has some instructions, I know the utility will do it but I don't remember how.

http://www.megainkusa.com/MUSA/downloads.html

 

[Warped&Proud]

Yup, we entered the head id numbers.

We also had to do it when we swapped the old board back in.

Thanks for everyone's assistance. As mentioned, we swapped the old main board back in, and redid all our alignment settings from scratch.