"OverSpray" issues with my Mimaki JV3-160SP

[MikePro]

nope, had service guy out a couple weeks ago to diagnose and he proclaimed static or print head issue. Neither of which he fixed because I wasn't a fan that he just left without doing anything, and I still got a 4hr service bill for his consult.

I've dealth with both via head replacement and environmental tweaking, but ghosting from black has disappeared but blue remains still. Was mainly just curious if a mis-alignment on my part was causing the continued issues and how to fix them.

I will be doing the damper swap to continue diagnosing the cyan overspray. was just making sure, first, that my head replacement was completed before moving on.

 

[artbot]

it is good that you replaced the head. not from a financial stand point. but you do still have the old head which might clean up pretty good after a long surface soak and be a good "back up" print head if you have some terrible head crash or clog. also "dead" heads that don't throw error 07's can be used for diagnosis. so hang on to it.

did you do the half burnished, half not burnished test with the material? all the things you are discussing keep pointing to static behavior. the physics of viscosity and drying times and particle size, dyne, static, even print heads that send print dots slightly astray in a slightly static environment. it's fascinating and irritating what can ultimately go wrong in the printer.

look for these things. "what did i do directly before the issue occured?" new roll of material, weather change (is it finally warm and you are running the a/c now), new ink cartridge, etc.

isolate the issue with the tatic material test first (it's easy), then the damper swap, if nothing isolates, then data ribbon swap. for instance if something happens there a voltage might now be too high or low. i'd figure voltages can change over time with wear and tear. it could be anything.

you will know what is going on tomorrow.

 

[Germaki]

Hey guys, new to the boards here. I'm having the exact same problem with my JV3. (With the cyan ink, too) The problem (at least in my case) is not the head, as I have switched dampers and the overspray happily follows the cyan lines. Thing is, this is the first warm weather we've had for a while in WI, and the humidity is 80%.... any other suggestions?

 

[artbot]

did you do the half and half static media test?

 

[Letterbox Mike]

Do you ave any OEM inks you can swap in? This may not be your problem, but we tried aftermarket inks for a few months and eventually found we had the very same problem you're having, terrible overspray on the cyan head. We tried literally everything to fix it without luck. Finally as a final resort I figured I might as well try an OEM cartridge and that fixed it and we haven't had the problem since. We were using Clearstar's MaraJet ink (ugh), not Bordeaux like you, but for all I know it's all made in the same factory in China somewhere...

Anyway, might be worth trying an OEM cartridge just to see. If that fixed it that would t least rule out a bad head.

 

[artbot]

this is a very possible issue with a large batch. there was a member of the mimaki yahoo group that was having trouble with a certain color. always followed the color (it was a custom batch of inks for glass printing from dupont). finally the ink was too high a viscosity causing ink starvation.

if doing a quick test of the ink issue, i'd just prefill a damper with a different manufacture's ink (this is no reason to go back to OEM). and fit it to the line. do a quick minimal draw to get a bit of air out of that line. you don't have to do a great job since it is just a test. and print a troublesome test file to see if the behavior changes. that's a lot less wasted ink and labor than purging an entire line.

i'm wondering still if what is being described as "overspray" (which occurs after the print pass) is actually a dyne issue where the ink is crawling. is the overspray connected like a tiny web of fissures or tiny spreckles like an air brushed edge?

 

[Germaki]

Sorry, new to the forum here, can you explain or link to the process for the half and half static media test? I'm not familiar.... Thanks

 

[MikePro]

welcome from wisconsin!

p.s. hectic here at the shop, but I'll post a follow-up to close this thread out, for now. printer is runnin' and OEM inks may have been the solution... or at least the flushing of the system did the trick. Or at least the problem is still there, but OEM may be not affected as much as the Bordeaux inks.

 

[WrapperX]

I was having a very very simalar problem for a long time. My Cyan head was overspraying when we started the printer but then would clear up to a much more managable look. I did the damper swap, did nothing, did a data cable swap to see if it was a data issue. I would think that you would need to have REALLY high static issues to cause this as I have pretty humidity in my shop and I never really had this problem. Took the carriage off the machine and got a direct look at the bottom of the heads and saw the problem - a major strike at some point had dented my print head. This was causing misfiring. Changed the heads and then ran about 3 hours of alignements and slant adjustments and everything mechanical adjustment, prnt adjust/ #adjust/ Slant Adjust, etc and finally it cleared up. If you didn't do any of those alignments when you switched your head(s) then that will make it seem like the problem isn't fixed. If you need a walk through on the adjusments you can PM me I took very good notes when our tech was here swapping my head and doing the adjustments...

 

[WrapperX]

Germaki - this is the burnished test that has been mentioned earlyier in this post:

you can isolate/eliminate the static issue by "wiping" it off of a test piece. take a sample of material off the roll. place it flat on a table. with a piece of felt (or sock but that doesn't work as good). very deeply burnish vertically half the material. so that at the scan of the print carriage, the heads print across a burnished and unburnished area. if the ink behavior prints much better in the burnished portion of the material, then you do have a static charge on your material. by doing this you knock off the charge.

hairy structures growing in the ink on the material after a print pass is long since done is also a sign of dyne and drying issues. the ink's meniscus is being broken and thus the fluid is wandering way passed the point of basic dot gain.

i'd do the static test, then do a data swap at the ribbons. (we can lead you through this if you've not done it before). and definitely clean the encoder strip. but do each one then do a test print. otherwise it might disappear and you'll never know what fixed it.

 

[MikePro]

sweet, yeah... i'll most likely need to follow-up on head alignments. I pretty much have it square, after re-installing the cyan (when I initially installed the carriage-mount plate to the head, crooked, beyond spring adjustment). Until I get caught up with prints, I'm still sending out accurate product (no banding, etc.), but precision will be the ultimate goal when I have more free time. So to make sure I'm ready for summertime outlet mall directory changeovers.

 

[MikeBrodar]

On The Mimaki JV3 Bleed Overspray issues... I had a Variation of such. Mine was due to head carrage Being out of Wack. I was Getting Overspray on Cyan, and My Black 000 Was Bleeding Blue hue. All Indications Were saying to me "Static", This was Not the case. Maybee This is What You've Got Going On.
On the Main Carrage There is a lever for adjusting For the thickness of materials, There are two Black Sloted Scews That Are on the face of the unit. Loosen These Screws Just a bit To allow The Lever to be moved Up and Down. If When You Atempt to Move the Lever up and Down and There is No Budge Odds are Ya Had a head Strike or jam at one time and knocked the position of the head (as I Did). I Slightly Forced it It Popped Back into Propper place. Asuming Your using Thin Material Hold the Lever up And Tighten these Screws.

 

[natedawg9640]

We are in the middle of dealing with an issue like this. though we've stumped them so far. if you do a test swatch, there are two "blocks" of lines from each print head. in the cyan print, the first block is fine, but the second block is a little out of whack. no explanation. we've been through two printheads, two slider boards, dampers, and we actually just had mimaki in japan make a new long cable bundle. mimaki usa doesn't think it's a main board, but up to date, it's yet to be solved.

 

[natedawg9640]

Was this ever resolved for you? If not.... heres what we found out.

after replacing the special made main cable bundle, still no change.

so we went low tech, changed the blue cyan cartriges, did 4 "ink fill up" to get the ink purged out of the lines and into the new ink, and guess what... problem fixed. It was bad ink the whole time. so if you are getting crazy halos around the prints, try this low cost solution first.

 

[MikePro]

i think "Static" is a b.s. answer from techs when they're stumped... paid over $500 to hear it the last time I'll ever have a tech. work on my machine. (granted, he gave me a few other options but no confirmation that a $2k head swap would work and has never worked with 3rd party inks, so he couldn't rule that out either)

So I removed potential causes of static, upped the humidity, and still no resolution. I'm sorry if any service techs on these boards take offense, but if I'm paying $200/hr... I expect a little more than "maybe" this and "maybe" that, so I taught myself (with the help of a few people on this forum) how to replace parts on the printer. Saved my company $1k on a head swap... and ultimately changed 2 more.

+1 to potentially bad batch of ink may have been the issue, as I finally decided to replace the head myself and switched back to OEM inks just incase (plus EVERYONE complained how bad the smell of Bordeaux inks were compared to OEM brand)... problem was resolved but which of the two was to thank is still up in the air.

 

[Letterbox Mike]

My money is on the ink. It's the same problem we had and doing nothing but switching back to OEM solved it instantly for us.

 

[natedawg9640]

what ink were you using? Lyson?

 

[WrapperX]

We were/are using the Lyson inks and I have heard alot about what happens when you use third party inks and all that Jazz - frankly I'm not impressed nor do I think Lyson Inks are comparable to the Factory Mimaki Brand Inks. We've had multiple problems with the Lyson Ink cartridges emptiing without triggering the ink near end or even the ink end sensor as a result the line/head goes dry in the middle of a print amoung other probelms.

As to my problem with the overspray. We eventually replaced the head after we physically removed the carriage to get a good look at the underside. At some point a crash had damaged the Cyan Head and that was causing the inks to fire in random directions.

Thank you all for your help. Hopefully others out there who may have this problem will be able to read this and save themselves the trouble of trial and error.

 

[MikePro]

Bordeaux ink, in my case... but we also were using it for an entire year with no issues, so I wasn't so quick to make the assumption of a "bad batch".

soon-to-be switching to Triangle Inx here, as I've heard nothing but good things from reliable sources.

 

[Jack Knight1979]

Triangle Inx ruined me. I've had good luck with Solaris inks.