Care to elaborate on that comment....?
With pleasure! :Big Laugh
We got our hands on the printer in August last year. It worked flawlessly until about November.
- First it was the power supply for the computer. It likes to pop. We are currently on our third one. For the record...A 450W FSP power supply (not known for their reliability) on Oce's price sheet is roughly $1000. I could pick the same thing up at 600W for $86.00. Luckily we are under service contract.
- Second thing was the lamp power supply. One lamp dropped out mid print for what seemed to be no reason at all. At this point, we think it might be dirty power. The printer has it's own 16 amp feed from the mains. Electrician said it was all fine. Techs replaced the power supply, all good.
- Next issue was the lamp housing for the other lamp. That was replaced after that lamp refused to fire. All good.
- Seized extractor fan on side panel near the computer.
- Then the pressure gauge started sticking. We have no idea how, but crap got in the lines and stuffed the gauge. The techs had never replaced a gauge and sent a second guy out to check before replacing it. Apparently it's the first gauge replaced in Oce history for the 250GT.
- Next issue was a head problem. "Ink heat system problem" is what I found one morning and refused to heat up. We replaced the coolant and it worked fine...For about a week. The weeks leading up to this issue, we noticed the temperature slowly crept up on us. What was normally 46.8 or 47.1 degrees turned in to 49 and then 50. Then 52 degrees and the problem struck again. Turned out something was stuffed in the Magenta head. $6,500 dollars later it was sorted.
- Once the head was replaced we started seeing serious misdirection in Yellow (which was a new head before it was shipped to us) which also had ink pooling around it in the morning when I got in to work. Techs said it was un-related. I can't say it is, but I can say before the install of the new head it was fine.
- Next came ink vacuum. Again, I came in to work to find "Ink vacuum system problem". Imagine my surprise when it said the ink vacuum was "high" and that the pump was reaching end of life. But apparently, wouldn't be causing any issues with heads.
- Then the magical random printing in the no printing zone. I was moving the gantry, vacuum off, print queued and "waiting for table vacuum." Note our printer does not have a roll feeder, nor the firmware to run one currently installed. It has a de-ionizer though. Somehow, magically...When the printer gantry had parked in resting position, it decided to skip the de-ionizing process and the lamps fired. Because of the way the table curves, the head was moving over nothing but thin air and flooded the place with UV light and left a majestic ploom of rainbow like mist behind. It printed my crop marks of the file I was printing on the edge of the printer. Awesome. This is something nobody seems to be able to explain. Techs said it was probably just "confused."
- Table vacuum started leaking. Turned out to be two of the valves under the table that control the zones. Fairly common problem apparently...Not too fussed as this problem only costed me half a day of printing rather than a day and a half.
- Here comes another lamp issue. Lamp fan assembly sounds sickly. Making a rattling raspy sound as if one of them had blown a bearing. All of a sudden before I could get to the control panel, the print stops and says "Right lamp problem". The tech plugged his authorization thing in and found it was over-heating. Filter was immaculate (as I complete my weekly maintenance properly) so we took the lamp out. They have about 500 hours on them and they are "seriously degraded" according to the technician. There is also a thin metal wire that had snapped. When touched it shattered in to 100 pieces. I asked the tech what it did and he had no idea. I thought they were supposed to know these things!
I could go on.
Current issues:
- Magenta reservoir takes forever and a day to fill after a purge compared to the other tanks.
- Severe banding now suspected to be degraded lamps after confusing the techs with my immaculate test prints (bar the "faulty" yellow head)
To give you a time scale...This all occurred between November somewhere and yesterday. Quite a lot considering you are trying to get something done, or is this just normal? We keep being told it's such a reliable machine, but I've yet to see it.
And that is my life story, haha!
Cheers!
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