I've had trouble with my 1204 for several weeks now. It would not print yellow at all!!! After researching talking with others in the industry, I purchased and changed all the dampers as well as the maintenance station. I used a syringe to pull inks into the new dampers and have run "little charge" cleaning numerous times. My problem now is it will not print a single drop of any ink after what seems like 100 attempts at printing a rather large test print. Any suggestions on what to try next would be appreciated!
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Need Help Mutoh 1204 not prining a single drop of ink
- Thread starter kyprinter
- Start date
Solventinkjet
DIY Printer Fixing Guide
If you know ink is flowing through the maintenance station and it still doesn't fire, the head fuse blew on the main board. Depending on how old your machine is, it's either soldered on or, hopefully, it's the newer style board with the socketed fuse. I have them available here if you need one. That fuse works for both soldered and socketed versions.
Solventinkjet
DIY Printer Fixing Guide
Check the gap between the head and the platen. It's very common when people put the head back in that the left side is slightly higher up than the right which causes the head to not seal with the cap top. If that's the case, you just need to go back in and wiggle the head until it drops down completely. Also, did you put new o-rings in with the dampers?
No, on the o-ring replacement.
Solventinkjet
DIY Printer Fixing Guide
I'd do that first as they are probably not sealing well enough to keep the air out.
Solventinkjet
DIY Printer Fixing Guide
THANK YOU!!
Ordered o-rings, but have a question. How much of a gap should be between printhead and vinyl? I'm trying to determine if maybe my printhead is not all the way down. It doesn't seem like it will go down any further, but there is a gap.
Solventinkjet
DIY Printer Fixing Guide
If it's as far down as it can go you should be good. What usually happens is you can see clearly that one side is higher than the other. If that's the case it needs to be corrected so that it's parallel with the platen. If I remember off the top of my head correctly, the head gap is 2mm in low head height.
I have replaced printhead cables, checked printhead height, checked F2 fuse, still nothing. Could I have gotten a defective maintenance station that isn't working correctly. Not sure if the MS pump is actually trying to pull air in or not. Any other suggestions before I throw this thing out the window???
Mine was doing that, I replaced the maintenance station cause it went out. I had to prime the caps several times. then did about 50 little charges and 4 strong cleaning.
How did you prime the cap?
I ran a 1204 for 6 years and I have never heard of priming the cap. Whenever I installed a new MS or put a new cap top on the printer, I always wet a swab with cleaning fluid and used it to wet the rubber on the cap top. In fact, I did this at the end of each day and after 6 years of use, every nozzle was firing as it should. This might be what is called priming the cap. It just makes sense that a moistened cap top is going to make a better seal on the print head than a dry cap top and keep all jets firing as they should.
I took a syringe and suck the ink through the damper and just kept going until I saw no air in the line then immediately put it back in the printer head. I did that to all of the lines. After several little charges, several more like 50, they stayed primed.
I did buy cards for my ink cartridges, because they were new and all of this stuff said it used ink, but it didn't.
rambo555
New Member
Can you tell me what syringe you use to suck the ink through the damper? I think the one I am using is too large at the end, so I am sucking a lot of air. Where did you get your cards for the ink cartridges? I have the same issue. My ink is half full but the printer tells me it is not genuine ink. It is, Mutoh ink from Fellers.