g1sammons,
Thank you for your kindness.
Yes, Mutoh realizes that there has been a problem with the new carts.
It was not an immediate realization, and the difficulty has been sorting out which reported problems are due to the new carts.
IF we knew that ink starvation was related to the new carts, that info would have been released and the problem addressed.
The ink starvation issue is another one that we have been unable to reproduce in house with these cars, and is normally not related to carts but to dampers, o-rings and other issues, and still doesnt make sense that it is cart caused, not saying that it isn't in some cases, but it certainly isn't in most cases and doesnt appear to be directly linked at this point.
It becomes difficult to own a problem, when you can't reproduce it on purpose, when it doesnt happen across the board, and it happens in cases where we dont have control of how it is being used.
Because these are in legacy printers with no chipped carts, people use a variety of inks, a variety of cleaning solutions and have a wide variety of environmental conditions, all that can lead to the same problem.
It would be similar if you got a report or two about banners that you printed having the ink wash off with water. You print a banner in house, and put a bit of water on it and the ink doesnt wash off, your customer comes back to you and says your banners are the problem, yet you cant wash the ink off with water yourself. So you put a banner up and put a garden sprinkler on it and none of the ink washes off, you know solvent will wash it off and you know banners fade, but the customer insists that it is your banner. Do you issue a blanket recall of all your banners? Probably not, but you sure become aware that there is something going on and you check what you are doing, you probably even try to help those whose banners are washing off with water, but it still doest mean that your banners are the source of that particular problem. It doenst mean that that customer didnt get a bad banner from you, it is just hard to rationalize.
I too am sorry that you are having issues, it is never good for business, Mutoh wants all its customers to be printing and making money, enough money to upgrade their printers periodically. People like you are how we make money to pay our mortgages, buy food and be able to enjoy life, so we want (need) satisfied customers. There is nothing constant except change, so when a manufacturer changes a part and that part looks different it is easy to assume that any problem that occurs after that change is responsible for that problem, sometimes it is, sometimes not. That is what we strive to work with our customers to determine.
Again, ink starvation is a known maintenance issue (dampers) that every printer with dampers can expect to run into at some time.
So it is not unusual to see in older printers.
Some have reported this being related to the carts not seating on the needle correctly and leaking. This should generate air bubbles in the ink lines, of which I dont believe people are seeing.
So most of these reports are don't fit the logic of basic troubleshooting.
There have been fit issues with the carts.
As soon as Mutoh realized that there were issues with the carts, modifications were requested and put into place and an announcement was made to Service techs for dealers and service support providers. We all want to resolve problems.
The difficulty is identifying which problems are directly related to the cart design.
That become difficult when only a small number of users are reporting problems that are normally due to other causes.
Had everyone or even a majority who got the carts has nozzle drop outs, it would have been easy, but that has been far from reality, ito my knowledge.
You are correct that your first contact is Signwarehouse, however I would suggest that if you have bad carts and they cannot replace them for you to contact Mutoh Customer Service and request replacements.
thank you and good luck!
