Need Help old ROLAND SP-300V problem

[bostjan]

Hi All,
My old and reliable Roland has developed issues with black color. On the test print black is almost not visible, but if i print rectangle 100%K printer somehow manages to print decent good black. Please see attached photos. Other relevant facts:
my print volume is very low but i print something small al least every 4-5 days
black+cyan printhead was replaced by serviceman 2 years ago
after i discovered the problem few days ago i replaced captop and damper, checked all the pipes/lines manually cleaned everything, vipers too, 1 medium and 1 powerful cleaning cycle - no change
my black cartridge is very old from year 2019
Al in lines seems to be ok, no cross contamination.

Any ideas or advices on what to check further? Is it possible head/nozzles is/are bad after just 2 years of very light use?

Thanks and good prints everyone
Bostjan

 

[damonCA21]

A head can fail at any time, so it could be that. Easy test is to swap the blue supply onto the black side of the head and the black supply to the blue side and see if the fault now occurs on the blue

 

[Jim Hancock]

What damonCA21 said... Also, as your black cartridge is going on 6 years old, you may want to verify it has ink in it. Pull it out of the printer with the printer turned off so you don't reset the ink counter display. What can happen is the physical tab on the cartridge can occasionally get stuck and not trip the ink out microswitch, fooling you into thinking the cartridge still has ink in it. The 100% K you are printing is likely the other 3 colors printing, as the software profile is applied to the black rectangle. Unless you set Versaworks to print that rectangle as 100%K only, the profile will use the other colors to make black.