Need Help Mimaki JFX200 printing the blues.

[NathanR]

Hey all was wondering if anyone else had this problem before,
Our JFX200 suddenly started printing with a lot more cyan showing in the final prints seemingly out of no where.
the quality of the print seemed fine as all the lines where nice and sharp just everything looked as if a blue filter had been put over it. We've tried a bunch of things so far, air purge, cleaning the head, replaced the subtank and the print head.
I am able to get the prints looking close to correct if I edit the image before it gets to rasterlink so that it's -17 (less blue more yellow) in the color balance settings.
Just wondering if anyone else has had a similar problem and could suggest a direction to look.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

 

[Solventinkjet]

That sounds more like a profile issue to me. Are you 100% no one has been playing with the color settings in Rasterlink? Maybe the default profile was changed?

 

[unmateria]

Happens on all media? Looks like a "optical whitenner" problem to me, and usually happens when you are using ecosolvent on some papers (while laser or water base look ok). Try other media, and if it stills happens, you need a densitometer like i1

 

[NathanR]

That sounds more like a profile issue to me. Are you 100% no one has been playing with the color settings in Rasterlink? Maybe the default profile was changed?

unfortunately there is enough users on the printer that I can't be 100% that no one has messed with settings but as far as I can tell we are still using defaults for everything. I do agree it seems like a profile get messed up somewhere and we have started looking into icc profiles and all that fun stuff.

 

[NathanR]

Happens on all media? Looks like a "optical whitenner" problem to me, and usually happens when you are using ecosolvent on some papers (while laser or water base look ok). Try other media, and if it stills happens, you need a densitometer like i1

We don't actually use paper all that much. We tend to print on canvas, plywood,leatherette and Acrylic. We do have an i1 scanner but have been having some difficulties with Rasterlink using the profiles, but to be fair we are all very new to all this stuff so not ruling out user error at this point.

 

[NathanR]

Just a follow up to this thread and problem with a potential solution for other folks in the future.
The short answer is we replaced the main capsule filter for the yellow line and after a day or so of ink purges and printing it seems to have leveled out and started printing as expected in the yellow channel again which seems to have reset our colors to normal.
So if you happen to be using the Mimaki Jfx-200 and noticed a random color shift for no reason you might try that before losing all your hair and sleep for a month.

Extended answer and theory that led to trying a capsule filter replacement.
Basicly when printing everything was coming out blue shifted but I could get my prints to come out mostly normal if edited the printed image with the master color chanel mixer in my art program (Corel draw in this case) and in every case I had to lower the blue/cyan channel between -10 to -17 which would make the yellow stand out more. In my mind that meant the blue was some how coming out far to strong for no apparent reason or the yellow was coming out far less than it should.
one of our expensive (and possibly unneeded) attempts to fix things was replacing the head and subtank but the problem still persisted. This led me to believe that was was going on was that the yellow filter was possibly expired and clogged in a way that was letting some of the yellow ink through but it was starving the pigment that got to the sub-tank so while the head was firing just fine with all the nozzles and could print out a full yellow test visually fine, when it mixed it was far thinner and weaker factor in the mix causing colors with green or blue to come out more of a cold teal.
anyway that's the theory, not sure if I'm actually right but it seems to have worked and we are back in printing order. Hopefully this is helpful to someone else in the future and a big thanks for the help above.