Arizona 460 recently started to band when making light cyan. Print starts out at acceptable quality then progressively gets worse. Nozzle check was clean, bled ink filters, swabbed printheads, cleaned substrate and also wiped it down with antistatic and got the same result 4 times. Does anyone have any ideas how to fix this? Thanks
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Need Help Light cyan banding issue - Oce Arizona 460GT
- Thread starter Derik
- Start date
SignMeUpGraphics
Super Active Member
Do you ever agitate your ink bags? Could be particle settling over time.
Attached are three photos of the print. The first one is of the start of the print and the other two are the last section where banding gets much more severe. All inks were agitated with their filters bled, printheads swabbed and maintenance done within 5 minutes of the job starting.
I have not checked the small filters above the printheads, how can I access them?
I have not checked the small filters above the printheads, how can I access them?
Thank you for the response, are the printhead filters something that I should replace or are they something that can be cleaned?
Here are some photos I took when I opened the carriage. First, what does the yellow indicator light actually indicate (should it be on or off). Secondly, the reservoir tanks seem to be seeping with ink from the seems of the plastic tanks. Is this a cause for replacing the ones that have ink seeping out? (Yellow can be seen in photo)
If he wasn't familiar with the printhead filter he most certainly won't know about the degasser. But yes, it's not necessary and can be removed —that was the first thing my technician did.
I'd recommend getting a technician and watching what they do to better understand the machine. It's expensive but you can learn from what they do and save on routine maintenance in the future. Buy your spare parts from digi-print supplies or similar supplier.
Printhead filter is like $5 and ink reservoir $100.
The light indicates whether the ink reservoir is full or not (I believe light is on when reservoir is full). You can match it with print status on your computer to see which way it is.
Print a nozzle check immediately when banding starts to happen. I am curious if there are more problematic channel other than Cyan. It must be an air leak that causing the nozzle dropouts but you have to isolate on which channels check the fittings of those channels as well as age of filters that might need changing.
Heres a couple photos of the nozzle check right after the banding starts. I switched the printhead filters and we are about to order some ink filters to see if that helps. We are about a month and a half away from needing that service so hopefully that is all that is needed. Also, one error that I received today was "ink vacuum system problem".
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Also pull the cover off below the vacuum bed valves and look for any leaks around the ink pumps. Maybe put some electrical tape around the leaking reservoir. My 460 gives me a ink vacuum error as well after purging 1 head. Doesn't occur when all are purged. My tech says everything is in spec. Curious what you find out.
I had same idea of putting electrical tape around potential leaking reservoir.. didn't really help. When I opened it up the gasket was broken and that was the culprit. Another time the barb connector was worn and that was causing leaking. In the end, much easier and in the long-run cheaper to start replacing parts.
Make sure you change ink reservoir also. The yellow channel appears to be leaking. Pay attention to "ink system status" and how often "meniscus vacuum" is running and "purge pressure" should always be above 5psi.
We ordered new ink filters since we are one month from needing the service, after that we are going to replace all reservoirs. One thing that I have found is the red connector on the magenta reservoir does not tighten down (just keeps rotating). I am tempted to swap the cyan and magenta tanks out for the two spare reservoirs we have on hand since these are the channels that seems to be causing print issues. Yellow seems to be using ink way too fast so that is another that I will get precedent.
Currently it says Meniscus Vacuum: 18.9, Purge Press: 5.4. Is there anything special that I need to do before changing the reservoirs?
I had the same problem —The threading had worn, probably from over-tightening. That's a good enough reason alone to change out the reservoir if connector cannot tighten. Our technician changed our reservoir both times, but seems easy enough to change by yourself. Shut machine down, close pressure valves, Protect electronics from any ink that may drip from reservoir. There are a lot of connection points and the last thing you want is ink falling onto electronics. Change male/female leur locks/caps/connectors since they are cheap and could be worn themselves.
Yellow is always going to be used faster than other inks since it's not as pigmented. On the flip-side, black is used at a fraction of yellow. If you think you're using too much ink overall, make your own profiles with lower ink limits.
We only had 2 reservoirs available so I replaced the Cyan and Magenta but was forced to reuse old connectors. It is still giving me the same issue after swapping them out. Cyan prints well for approximately 5 inches before banding. It seems like the printhead is either clogging or the ink is not being supplied after the reservoir empties. I am guessing that the reservoir should have enough ink to print a full
Do you have a suggestion for where to get leur locks and connectors that are compatible with an Arizona reservoirs? I could only find the Canon kit with 5-6 connectors of each kind and some tubing.
I would suggest you to try and put 2 seconds end of swath delay from printer settings to find out if it is an ink supply issue. This will delay the carriage travel across the media and compensate for ink supply issue that you might have or not.
It looked like your Yellow reservoir was leaking from the side. Even though that particular printhead wasn't giving you the problem, the pressure in the line is shared and may manifest elsewhere, such as Magenta and Cyan printhead.
It would be coincidental if both Magenta and Cyan, at the same time, had supply/clogging issues. The reservoirs are filled before you are allowed to print and they contain enough ink to do a full printout. A supply issue would show itself after printing if it takes a long time to refill reservoir. And in that case you'd be looking primarily at ink pump and ink filter.
As for connectors, I just harvested some extras from replaced part and received some extras from my tech. If any connector isn't tightening down due to worn threading it will almost certainly leak.
How often does your meniscus vacuum run? If often, it would suggest a vacuum leak.
Would you mind me asking how I could do this? Would it allow the supply to replenish before jetting or is it something that will help me to visually indicate a problem?
We are ordering new reservoirs to replace the rest today. Thank you for the information about the line pressure manifesting elsewhere and about the actual res function. I did a test print today and found that all tanks are still full by the time job is done. I opened the large panel today, no leaks or signs of issues with the ink pumps. I spoke to our old operator over the weekend, he did say that there was a leak near the ink filters in January but this was because of operator error (the valve was not properly closed). As far as the meniscus vacuum, it always seems to be around 18.8-19 units so there must be some sort of leak. If this is the case, how could I go about confirming the issue/fixing it? Thank you so much for all the help.
Here is a photo of todays test. The background and truck were supposed to be mid grey.
