My Roland was uncapped for as much as five days

The family and I took a vacation to Disney. I did a thorough manual cleaning and put it to sleep.

I get back last night around midnight. Stop into the shop and hear a beeping noise from the printer. I don't know when it happened but the printer went for an automated cleaning over the last week and faulted. I took the cover off and the worst possible scenario has happened. The caps were down, the carriage was past the wipers and uncapped for as much as a week.

Welcome back from vacation! That will be six thousand dollars please.

I pulled all the dampers and took a syringe full of flush through all the heads and got full recovery. I then did three medium cleanings and everything is fine. The Roland is running like nothing happened. I felt like I was kicked in the stomach when I saw the heads uncapped after a week long vacation. Thankfully all is well.

Moral of the story: Clean your printers then fully power them down. It's better to have them totally off and capped then to be beeping and uncapped for days on end.

 

Before this happened I would have said no. You have to leave it on for cleaning cycles, but now, I say shut it off.

Unless you have someone there to check on it daily for faults, clean it very well and power it down. When you get back do a head soak a couple normal cleanings and you'll be fine.

I about died when I saw those heads exposed like that, just sitting there. The caps were all died up too. It was a horror show. It's a miracle that I was able to get them working again with little effort. I thought I was sunk.