My "Reliable" Oce 250GT Strikes Again

[DravidDavid]

Hi guys,

Just a weird behavior that's just popped up recently.

After hitting the go button, the printer sets up and starts printing nicely. Then it simply stalls at one end of the printer or the other. The head could be sitting on either side for anywhere between 10 seconds and 20 or more seconds. Might not sound like a lot, but when you're used to seeing it kick of in another direction effectively instantly, 20 seconds is a lifetime!

To give you a better idea, it's as if the printer has hit the "Pause" button when printing without telling you and then continuing after it's had a break. It's typically only done it in the morning after a weekend where it gets switched off and un-plugged. It gets turned on the next Monday and does it's stalling trick, but never again once going and left on for the rest of the week. Only now have I just started it from idle and it's gone and stalled a few times on me.

Heads are regularly purged, vacuumed and swabbed. Ink flow seems just fine. Ink reservoirs are behaving exactly how they were a while back. I've got brand spanking new lamps and everything. Perhaps I'm due for a filter or something.

I've got a video which I'll have to upload. Any ideas?

 

[AlsEU]

Any errors appeared? Any errors/warnings/messages in the log? When the Firewire cable was replaced? It may be a problem with the data transmission between the mainboard and the carriage board.

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

Has someone been playing with the swath delay settings?

 

[DravidDavid]

Thanks for the replies guys!

No errors what-so-ever. More recently, it started doing one swath, pausing and returning to zero with the oh-so-insightful message "Print Failed". I fixed this simply by re-ripping the file, so it could have been a coincidence, or it could add credibility to the firewire theory. Not sure when the firewire cable was replaced, so good point! Although, the motherboard gave up the ghost mid last year and a lot of stuff was replaced.

Swath delay is set to 0. The only delay I've changed is the vacuum timeout, nobody's touched it in at least a month, haha.

I've recently purged the air out of all filters as I thought an ever-lasting ink reservoir problem could be related. I thought perhaps the ink wasn't getting where it needed to be in time and was waiting for it to fill mid print.

I'll keep testing and probably just call the tech to plug his dongle thing in later on next month if it keeps happening more frequently.

 

[MagnetStew]

Check your network cable. When we moved to our new facility my Mutoh's did the exact same thing. Turns out it was a bad network cable in the wall. We replaced it and it fixed the problem. Just a thought.