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News on our new Mimaki!

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ColesCreations

New Member
As some of you know, we have had some serious problems hitting colors, especially the light blues, such as blue skies ending up perfectly matching the Mimaki purple...

Went in to the color-thingie in the rip (FlexiSign), pulled light Magenta down, no effect on purple skies. Pushed light magenta up and light Cyan down, magic, now skies were blue...

Then we printed something supposed to be 20% magenta, it came out cyan! Now, I got a clue, is something mixed up?

Printed a color chart: 5%, 10%, 100% cyan, then 5% 10% 100% magenta, and- yes- the light colors, cyan and magenta were swapped...

Took the cover off the print head, swapped the LC and LM dampers / hoses on the printhead (figured as little as possible ink mix), and did a new print...

Colors are now bang on!

WTF? (Can I say that here?)

Has this happened to anyone else, and why? This is a BRAND NEW printer, I have wasted close to a full set of ink and 40' media messing with this... The fault must be from Mimaki, right?

Comments welcome!
 
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ColesCreations

New Member
Brand spankin' new, never used...
At least we (hopefully) have the solution, don't know if my fix is a "proper repair", or which part of the LC/LM head is supposed to have which color, but at this point- who cares? First tried to switch the cables (the flat ones going into the print heads), but the printer would not even start booting up, so that was NOT a good idea...
IF hoses are switched, it must be back by the ink cartridges, as it took a bit of fiddling to be able to switch the dampers over, and numbers matched before i switched them.
Yeah, I know, should probably flush and do it in the back, but would have to print "forever" before getting clean colors, tired of putting most of our ink into the waste-bucket. Shoot, it's got $300 worth of ink in it already, only 2 weeks after we got the Mimaki!
 
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ColesCreations

New Member
On e-Bay, these can be had new for 17-18k now, should have done that maybe, but wanted better warranty.

We bought ours from a dealer in Europe, flew down to see it and learn how to maintain it. The "tech" had managed to clog up the capping station, did not know much how to fix it. Seemed like I knew more about it than he did, and it was the first time I saw the machine. (or any solventprinter for that matter). I had done lots of research and studied manuals though.

We worked on it, got it to print the test-files great from Rasterlink (which of course had no LC/LM in them), our FlexiSign prints from our laptop with FS sucked, but figured we needed a bit more installation (Our files had LC/LM).

I questioned them about why they had put ink in it, they said thay would ship it with ink, I said no way, unless Mimaki said OK... Mimaki said no way, flush it. Anyway, shipping ended up taking almost 3 weeks, should have been 3 days, glad it was flushed, even if the cleaning was so-so. That was the first half of our ink set.

Guess we could have gotten better support if we bought the rip from these guys, did not even think it was a problem with the printer untill today, when we found that the light colors were actually swapped, I have probably voided the warranty now too:)


On the up-side, saved $8k compared to the closest dealer, who is still 5 hrs drive away, and we can still call them for support, but 10 hrs drive, + the time to fix @ $150/hr... :signs101: is cheaper, and, like many have said; Nothing breaks during warranty, afterwards you need to be your own tech support. So- Chicago, you're right, if we had purchased from the local dealer, including the rip solution he provides, we could-have should-have raised hell, but figured buying new, everything should be ok.
 
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GARY CULY

GARY CULY

New Member
Yep Your Rep And Set-up People Screwed You .i Got A 3 Day Course From Them On How To Run It ...sounds Like You Dint Get Any Help There ..i Wouldnt Blam Mimaki Cause You Had No Training ..no Way You Couldve Put The Wrong Ink Color In The Wrong Places In There?
 
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ColesCreations

New Member
Don't see how training would help, unless I had spent another day with them, which I could have (and should have, but hindsight etc)... The thing printed, stuff looked good from the dealer's software.
And no, not that easy. It says LC and LM on a neat little sticker under the cartridges, and I think it will come up with an error message if you just swap the cartridges.
BTW- I DO blame Mimaki if they shipped out a printer with the ink lines crossed! It has cost us a lot of money in wasted time, ink and media, and by the time we figured it was a problem with the printer, it took about the same time fixing it, as it would take being on the phone with the tech.
Could we ask Mimaki to cover the ink set?
 
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eforer

eforer

New Member
10:1 the dealer primed the ink system with a syringe at the damper and plugged back in the wrong spot. I always do damper work 1 at a time, and I have all my hoses labeled just in case I get mixed up.
 
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ColesCreations

New Member
Don't think that's the case, as the labels on the hoses matched, and now that prints are correct; the test print comes out in the wrong order, not the same order as the ink cartridges, like before.
 
eforer

eforer

New Member
ColesCreations said:
Don't think that's the case, as the labels on the hoses matched, and now that prints are correct; the test print comes out in the wrong order, not the same order as the ink cartridges, like before.
Click to expand...


Wow, thats just bizzare. Guess someone at Mimaki had a little too much sake at lunch.
 
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ColesCreations

New Member
Hey, I'm not saying that I did nothing wrong here, just weird, don't understand what's wrong.
Would like to try a print with Rasterlink Pro to see if it could be a rip-related problem, but don't want to shell out cash to try, it's printing fine now, we'll live with it.
 
eforer

eforer

New Member
It would be worth your while to invest in some profiling equipment. The process for creating a profile would have revealed this issue early on and on top of that, let you dramatically improve the quality of your prints once it has been fixed.
 
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ColesCreations

New Member
We'll be on the look-out for a cheap eye-one pro.

Printed out a few colors from a pantone CMYK guide, they are pretty close, and plenty good enough for 99% of our work, so right now this has moved a bit down on our christmas wish list.

If I had tried printing color-charts earlier, that would also have helped pinpoint the problem, I guess.
 
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schurms

New Member
Its so sad that happened. The worst is your tech guy is clueless. That seems to be a industry standard. I never saw a solent printer and ripped it all apart and works good.............................. learn to only rely on yourself or people you can trust.
 
Ken

Ken

New Member
Glad you're up and running in Norway..kind of a nightmare story..but you've got it going..congrats! I also have to live with long-range tech support..never thought I would have to dismantle my versacamm as much as I have..ah well..you do what you gotta do..Cheers!
Ken
 
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ColesCreations

New Member
Thanks... I know, it was tough, extremely frustrating, we must have tried a hundred different profiles and settings etc before it dawned on me that LC and LM was swapped, I checked several times to see that the cartridges were placed right, and when the test-print colors came in the same order, that was "proof" to me that all was OK.
I have not even mentioned to Mimaki that I swapped the hoses, would probably void the warranty...
Then again, don't need warranty now, can fix it all myself:biggrin:
 
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ColesCreations

New Member
News again!

Removed the whites, did some changes in the rip, and wtf again!
Light blues were purple again! I messed around with it for a couple of hours, and then figured that the printer had "fixed itself":rolleyes:

So, I swapped back the dampers, and prints were fine again. But- it was hard to sleep that night- why in the world would that happen?

Next day I went through the steps again, and realized I had changed the Flexisign Production manager setting from CMYKlclmW to CMYKlclm, so I switched it again, back to w, and the f**king thing swapped the lc and lm!

The problem was obviously in FlexiSign the whole time, and has cost us more than i paid for FlexiSign in the first place. And- for those thinking this is the way it should be- it's not. The order of the ink cartridges in the printer is the same for both configurations, and should make no difference what so ever.

Good news is that nothing's wrong with the printer, we purchased RasterlinkProII now, Cheap FlexiSign for sale:Big Laugh
 
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ColesCreations

New Member
Well... We have paid for 8.5, before I knew about this stuff, have not even installed it yet.

Actually think we will just throw it in the garbage disposer, don't want to cause our friends trouble:thumb:
 
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