The printer is fixed. I decided to have a tech from Advantage Sign Supply come in. I was tired of guessing and the problems were testing my patience. As expensive as it was, Advantage seemed to be as cheap as anyone. It took a week to schedule but the tech arrived yesterday, hoping to just replace the slider board. That didnt fix it so he had to overnight a mainboard in. Today he replaced, another slider, and another new cyan. After that and some calibrations all is good and I'm printing again.
In the end I feel like I made the right call to try and fix it as far as I did and then called a tech in at the right time. The advantage to having a tech come in is parts that go bad under their watch aren't your responsibility. If I had ordered a slider board and put it in, it would have been fried, I would have been out the money and still needed another slider and the mainboard. For others in a similar situation, consider carefully when to call it quits and call a "professional" in.
It sucks to have spent so much money but it had to be done. Honestly my biggest gripe with Advantage is the tech showed up in a Cadillac rental. Not sure why they had to choose one of the most expensive rental cars when I'm responsible for travel costs.
Just for reference I'll post some prices below so you know what others may or may not be getting into. All prices are from Advantage Sign Supply who is an authorized Mimaki dealer and must sell parts at MSRP. There are cheaper places for parts. Consider the pros and cons of what you are buying and from where.
Heads-$1500 each
Slider board-$750
Main board-$43XX
1 day labor-$1500
Travel costs-Approx $650
I may be able to have the mainboard and/or slider boards repaired to resell so I'll be looking into that to recoupe some money.
My best guess is that my original magenta problems were cause by old capping station and/or pumps and at some point, trying to fix that, I must have bumped a ribbon cable or something to short out the cyan. It sucks but what can you do.
In the end I feel like I made the right call to try and fix it as far as I did and then called a tech in at the right time. The advantage to having a tech come in is parts that go bad under their watch aren't your responsibility. If I had ordered a slider board and put it in, it would have been fried, I would have been out the money and still needed another slider and the mainboard. For others in a similar situation, consider carefully when to call it quits and call a "professional" in.
It sucks to have spent so much money but it had to be done. Honestly my biggest gripe with Advantage is the tech showed up in a Cadillac rental. Not sure why they had to choose one of the most expensive rental cars when I'm responsible for travel costs.
Just for reference I'll post some prices below so you know what others may or may not be getting into. All prices are from Advantage Sign Supply who is an authorized Mimaki dealer and must sell parts at MSRP. There are cheaper places for parts. Consider the pros and cons of what you are buying and from where.
Heads-$1500 each
Slider board-$750
Main board-$43XX
1 day labor-$1500
Travel costs-Approx $650
I may be able to have the mainboard and/or slider boards repaired to resell so I'll be looking into that to recoupe some money.
My best guess is that my original magenta problems were cause by old capping station and/or pumps and at some point, trying to fix that, I must have bumped a ribbon cable or something to short out the cyan. It sucks but what can you do.
