Mimaki JV3 replaced dampers, now nothing on test print!?

[backenwright]

Hi Guys

Ok moving on from this topic ( http://www.signs101.com/forums/showthread.php?t=64363 ) where we established the high likely hood of me needing to swap out a couple of dampers, i bought in 3 genuine mimaki ones and replaced KMC all went pretty smoothly and the cyan came back perfect but the Magenta and Black didnt fire one single stroke on the test!

I then saw air in the black and magenta lines so started to quickly realise that there was a leak somewhere which turned out to be a couple of bad o-rings on the damper lines which I have now replaced and have no air leak now but still no Magenta or black either :/

This issue is probably down to the 5 day down time waiting for the o-rings? so it was probably dry in the down time, ive done plenty of ink fills a couple of strong cleans, nozzle wash for 99 mins etc but still nothing as of yet, I have also swapped the Magenta and Black for the Cyan to make sure the dampers are all ok and they ran fine on the Cyan head, so im asuming the head has dried out a bit? if so am I going to get this back up and running or is there something else im missing? pumps fine by the way it hold the cleaning fluid and pumps it away nicely on a dishway wash.

Do i just need to keep going with the 99 min nozzle washes?

Ideas guys?

 

[MikePro]

when you replace the dampers, you wind up with a bit of air in your lines...
make sure you do a "fill ink" a couple of times to prime the heads.

I had the same thing happen myself, and fill ink didn't fix it... so i filled a syringe with cleaning solution and injected it through the heads... and then filled the syringe with ink from an old cartridge and did the same thing to force ink into the head. worked like a charm!

 

[artbot]

when you do a normal clean is there latent ink sitting in the cap? and if so is it a normal amount. you definitely dried out that head. next time something similar happens, clamp off the cap/pump tube to that head and fill that cap with solution. and park until parts come in. (and parts like o-rings and dampers should be bought in large quantities from china in my opinion. i'll take a fresh cheap $5 chinese damper over a mimaki that i want to "make last".)

for starters, clamp off the tube going to that cap. (later on install valves and access lines that run outside of the printer). just take off the back panel to the pump. fill it with solution and park as vertically as possibly. check it every 30 minutes to keep it filled all the way. their is air in that line below and it will displace the fluid. also pull both the KM and jet solution into the caps so there is a higher solution ratio and replace.

in my opinion you should immediately pull that head and really clean it at a counter. with surface soaks etc. a head with ink unattended that long should have some serious clogs. clogs that most likely won't come out with less drastic measures.

 

[backenwright]

I had the same thing happen myself, and fill ink didn't fix it... so i filled a syringe with cleaning solution and injected it through the heads... and then filled the syringe with ink from an old cartridge and did the same thing to force ink into the head. worked like a charm!

Thanks for the ideas so far guys, im going to try the above suggestion as a starter, when you say injecting the cleaning solution thru the heads, did you do this using the same tube to pull the ink into the dampers but just took the hard peice of plastic tubing off the end of the of the rubber tube? then push onto the head as if it were a damper?

 

[backenwright]

Update!

Ok so I have tried flushing cleaning fluid thru the head to a degree of success, it fired back up and I now have half of my test on black and magenta! horrah! but then after a strong clean it went back down hill again!

What gives? could there still be a small air leak somewhere in the damper or in the nuts the connect to it? seems strange as the ink is in the tubes with no air bubbles.

pic attached of my latest test showing the success then not so much success after the strong clean.

 

[Big Blue]

not sure if this will help but you might try using a syringe and draw the ink throught the dampers and the capping station, throughh the lines at the pump... It is a easy process. take off the cover on the back of the printer and look at the lines if you dont see any ink in them take them apart at thesplice and suck the ink through the system with a syringe..... Had a similar problem a month ago switching inks, after the switch my cyan would not print at all, did this procedure and workded perfectly.

 

[WrapperX]

not sure if this will help but you might try using a syringe and draw the ink throught the dampers and the capping station, throughh the lines at the pump... It is a easy process. take off the cover on the back of the printer and look at the lines if you dont see any ink in them take them apart at thesplice and suck the ink through the system with a syringe..... Had a similar problem a month ago switching inks, after the switch my cyan would not print at all, did this procedure and workded perfectly.

This is what I was going to suggest. When I did my damper swap I had a similar problem - wasn't down as long as you were/are but I couldn't get the head primed just from the Ink Fillup option. SO I did the hard suck from the pumping station and kept sucking/pulling until I had ink Coming through the line. Worked for me. - I was told that my pump might be going out too - this would be the cause for a weak suction at the capping station. Have you ever changed your pump?

I guess its kind of a duh question - but are the dampers fully on the head nipple/plug? I thought one of my dampers was at first, but when I rechecked and pushed them all down to see, one of them popped in even more then it was. Might not be a bad Idea to check that out.

Also - did you damage any head nipples/plugs in the change out process. These are appaerently very brittle.

Did you manually fill the dampers before you plugged them back on the head? This would cause you to do more ink fills via the machine then if you hadn't.

 

[backenwright]

Thanks guys, all sorted now!

Basically I got round the back and pulled thru the ink as suggested and heard a nasty air leak as i pulled on the syringe from the capping station, seems the magenta black head wasnt fitting well on the capping station, luckily i managed to swap with the redundant white inks one for the magenta black one and hey presto were back in business!

Thanks for all the help.

Leon

 

[CL Graphics]

so did the new dampers fix the streaking problem in the prints

 

[premiercolour]

Why pay international shipping from China for $5 damper but you can buy dampers for $7 ea from us out of California USPS $.88 cents postage? Only for signs101 members!

when you do a normal clean is there latent ink sitting in the cap? and if so is it a normal amount. you definitely dried out that head. next time something similar happens, clamp off the cap/pump tube to that head and fill that cap with solution. and park until parts come in. (and parts like o-rings and dampers should be bought in large quantities from china in my opinion. i'll take a fresh cheap $5 chinese damper over a mimaki that i want to "make last".)

for starters, clamp off the tube going to that cap. (later on install valves and access lines that run outside of the printer). just take off the back panel to the pump. fill it with solution and park as vertically as possibly. check it every 30 minutes to keep it filled all the way. their is air in that line below and it will displace the fluid. also pull both the KM and jet solution into the caps so there is a higher solution ratio and replace.

in my opinion you should immediately pull that head and really clean it at a counter. with surface soaks etc. a head with ink unattended that long should have some serious clogs. clogs that most likely won't come out with less drastic measures.

 

[Cmiller01]

Im having the same issue! We just replaced the dampers today, all six of them. They seem to be seated well they dont move when we press them, the nuts are firmly screwed on. The only two that would prime for me was the magenta/cyan printhead. I cant get the others to fire. So, we disconnected everything and took a syringe to it and drew the ink out though the line and dampers, there was quite a bit of air in there. We reseated everything, must have done about 8 ink fill ups, strong cleanings and we did two 30 mins nozzle washes. Still nothing. Any more ideas???
Also, this thing was only down maybe not even a half hour each time because there was two of us taking it apart. We have done this before and after the Fill Ink a few times we got them back. I am stumped