Mimaki CJV150-75 Missing Nozzles and printing fuzzy with overspray

[CJV150-NB]

Hello,

I'm fairly new to wide format printing. I purchased a Mimaki CJV150-75 in '22 to be able to print marketing materials in-house (stickers, banners, posters, etc). I don't print every day, but I do at a minimum run test prints everyday to make sure everything is in working order. About a month ago we had a weird power issue where our utility was sending high and low voltage into our building because of a transformer failure. One side of the panel was only getting 41V and the other was 120V. During this period the printer was only on the auto cleaning cycle for a half the day before we figured out the voltage coming into our building was messed up. Our printer has always been connected with a surge protector. Since this day I haven't been able to get the printer back to working order. I've run over-night nozzle washes and recovered most nozzles but it has reached a point where no matter what I do nothing improves. This is what the test prints look like:

I've tried printing some solid CMYK blocks to see if the nozzles would clear up, but the results were fuzzy colors with a bunch of what looks like overspray.

The service tech I've worked with says the printer needs a board replaced, or the head is bad. Are there any more things I can try before jumping in and spending $4-5K to get the machine running again? The capping station is clean. I can see waste ink being pulled through the lines during cleaning cycles. I'd like to do as much of the trouble shooting my self to keep the service call time down if I need to go that route. Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Smoke_Jaguar]

Check your capping station alignment. There is a plastic bump block that the head carriage rests against that can be adjusted with 2 Phillips screws. With the printer in station maintenance mode it should slide freely so you can look between the gap to see if cap is centered on the Printhead.

 

[Solventinkjet]

Check the bottom of your head. The way the nozzles are deformed on your nozzle check indicate a head strike/physical damage to me.

 

[CJV150-NB]

Check your capping station alignment. There is a plastic bump block that the head carriage rests against that can be adjusted with 2 Phillips screws. With the printer in station maintenance mode it should slide freely so you can look between the gap to see if cap is centered on the Printhead.

Thanks for the advise. I'm assuming this is the plastic bump block that you are referring to? The capping station and head look to be lined up right in the middle. Just to see if it made a difference I shifted the block so the magenta side of the capping station would be covered a bit more.

I ran an ultra clean and a nozzle wash for 30 min and got some minor changes. I was able to get another line of Cyan to print and it looks like the magenta area nozzles that were really messy have aligned a little bit better.

Solventinkjet There haven't been any head strikes in the period between when the printer was working great and the power issue. I'm doing another nozzle wash for 99 min, and after that I'll check the head to see if there are any signs of damage. I cleaned around the head last week and it just looked like a clean mirror. If there is damage to the head what would it look like?

 

[Smoke_Jaguar]

Drip some cleaning fluid into the cap to see if it is draining well. Plugged pump/cap can also make cleaning ineffective.

 

[Ogre]

Definitely not the motherboard.
Test to see if the capping sealing is good and the vacuum doesn't pull air. Replace the capping with a good quality one, test the vacuum then run a normal clean. If all good then do a nozzles wash for 15 minutes then run a new clean to see if there is any improvement. Repeat the washing and cleaning if necessary.
I saw this fault so many times and always it was the capping sealing. Replacing the capping is the cheapest solution that you can try before replacing something much more expensive.

 

[CJV150-NB]

Definitely not the motherboard.
Test to see if the capping sealing is good and the vacuum doesn't pull air. Replace the capping with a good quality one, test the vacuum then run a normal clean. If all good then do a nozzles wash for 15 minutes then run a new clean to see if there is any improvement. Repeat the washing and cleaning if necessary.
I saw this fault so many times and always it was the capping sealing. Replacing the capping is the cheapest solution that you can try before replacing something much more expensive.

I have dripped cleaning fluid into the cap. I can watch the pump lines pull ink from the cap and it doesn't look like there is any air bubbles when the cap is sealed to the head. There are air bubbles when the head fires ink into the cap and the cap is below the head. I can clearly see all the inks drips build up on the head during the cleaning cycle, but the Cyan doesn't have as much ink.

With the solid colors printing fuzzy is this just because of the missing nozzles? How about the misty spray that I see from the magenta?

I'll buy a new cap and let you know if I see any improvement. Any recommendations on the best place to get Mimaki parts on the West Coast of the US? I'm in Washington state. With a machine that is so new is it possible that the capping station is already bad? This machine is barely over a year old (the first machine was damaged by a tech during a warranty service and the dealer replaced it with a new printer).

 

[Smoke_Jaguar]

Check head gap as well, if too high, can get some fuzziness. Also, do a media compensation check.

 

[CJV150-NB]

I'm waiting on the replacement cap. I'll give an update once the part is replaced.

Two new pieces of information:
1. I ran a spot color check to see if I could get the black to print solid. It did print solid, but there are splatters to the left side of the print. Is this because of dirty nozzles that aren't being clean with the bad cap or a bigger issue with electrical or printhead?

2. I also ran the drop position adjustment and got curved lines. This seems like a bigger issue than the clogged nozzles. Also the "Pattern #" doesn't print cleanly in black. Any idea what is causing this?

 

[CJV150-NB]

I have dripped cleaning fluid into the cap. I can watch the pump lines pull ink from the cap and it doesn't look like there is any air bubbles when the cap is sealed to the head. There are air bubbles when the head fires ink into the cap and the cap is below the head. I can clearly see all the inks drips build up on the head during the cleaning cycle, but the Cyan doesn't have as much ink.

With the solid colors printing fuzzy is this just because of the missing nozzles? How about the misty spray that I see from the magenta?

I'll buy a new cap and let you know if I see any improvement. Any recommendations on the best place to get Mimaki parts on the West Coast of the US? I'm in Washington state. With a machine that is so new is it possible that the capping station is already bad? This machine is barely over a year old (the first machine was damaged by a tech during a warranty service and the dealer replaced it with a new printer).

Drip some cleaning fluid into the cap to see if it is draining well. Plugged pump/cap can also make cleaning ineffective.

I have installed a new capping station. And four more nozzles of Cyan came back and the deflection in the magenta nozzle has been reduced as well. I'm going to soak the head over night and then try again in the morning.

I've read that doing an ink fill can help clear nozzles. My ink levels are too low on the white ink to run this function, so I'm waiting on replacement ink to arrive.

Thank you everyone for the help. I'm hoping the over night soak and a better cap will clean more of the nozzles.

 

[SightLine]

Did you move the head carriage to the left end service area and inspect the actual bottom nozzle plate on the head? I have to agree with Solventinkjet, that looks a lot like the head itself is physically damaged or possibly some very heavy gunk buildup.

 

[CJV150-NB]

Did you move the head carriage to the left end service area and inspect the actual bottom nozzle plate on the head? I have to agree with Solventinkjet, that looks a lot like the head itself is physically damaged or possibly some very heavy gunk buildup.

Hi SightLine ,

I appreciate the response. I did inspect the head using the service area on the left side of the machine. There is no visible damage to my untrained eye. These pictures were taken one after another. The right shot is just with a flash.

I think it has to be clogged nozzles because the printer was working perfectly before my building had the power issue. The machine was not getting power for 3 days and it was 90+ degrees over that weekend. I came back on the following Monday and ran a test print and all the nozzles were out. After 5 custody washes the nozzle came back to about where I have it now. After replacing the cap yesterday the deflection in the Magenta was reduced and I got 4 more of the Cyan nozzles back.

I did notice with the new cap, it tilts a couple degrees down to the right. It appears to seal well, no air bubbles during the cleaning cycle. This is the cap I purchased: https://www.solventinkjet.com/product-page/mimaki-dx5-dx7-cap-top

 

[SightLine]

I'd have to agree. From those photos the head does indeed look fine. Only other thing I can think to try is some long nozzle soaks (like several hours with the cap filled with cleaner, machine unplugged and head parked on the cap) then cleaning cycles and see if more clears up and comes back. Yeah ink fillups can help as well but there does have be be plenty of ink.

 

[CJV150-NB]

After two more overnight head soaks and no improvement, I decided to replace the printhead. I went with the MUTMIMDX7 and swapped the memory board over from the original. This was really easy to change over and saved me a lot of money doing the work myself. The printer is back up and running. Thank you everyone for the help.

 

[Smoke_Jaguar]

Note that the memory board is for the parameters of the head it came with. Good to adjust the rank code when installing the new head to its code.