Problem head rank number

[ezequiel]

You have fully recovered hundreds of heads? Can you provide any proof of this. And a link to your business as this sounds very dubious? I have never heard of a business specialising in repairing solvent heads. I'm sure if this was true you would be very well known in the print community?

My 'hate' as you put it is for chinese sellers selling non working parts, or cheap copies of OEM parts like dampers, captops etc.. that don't work as well as the original parts. Not sure why the mods would need this bought to their attention as it is a view held by most printer technicians.

The parts I sell are tested ON the printer. If a scan motor works on the printer when running test prints without throwing up any error codes, then it is good. The same as with boards etc... Oddly out of all the parts I have sold over the years, I have had zero returns for non working parts. I don't need to justify my business to you, but I get parts from fully working and tested printers for parts.

As for 'People on this forum have stopped commenting and helping others, because of you' provide proof? Have you spoken to every member on this forum?

This is DX7 chinesse delaminated head

 

[damonCA21]

I don't know what your story is my friend.
But it may be true that the original parts are better tested or are of 10/10 quality, but sometimes and mainly in underdeveloped countries, these cost a lot of money.
That's why you end up resorting to pieces from another origin that may be 8/10 but they work. If the heads cost $100, no one would clean them or try to save, they only do it because the cost is great and that is why the Chinese teams triumphed and if you look, they increasingly use cheaper and disposable heads.
On the other hand, the heads in good electrical condition are repairable because, as I already said, the problem is that the external layer with the micro-holes separates from the internal one and loses tightness, thus creating a pressure that is not capable of being moved by the pizoelectric actuator of the nozzle

I agree OEM parts can be expensive, but you are pretty much guaranteed they will work properly. Some generic Chinese parts are OK, but some can cause more damage or problems with the printer because they don't work properly. If you get a cheap captop an it doesn't seal properly then the head can dry out and block and not be recoverable.
If you have a printer worth say £5000 it doesn't make sense to use cheap parts. Replacing parts should be part of the regular servicing, and something the business should cost into their normal overheads.
I would be interested to hear more about your method of fixing delaminated heads? To be honest in all the years I have been a tech I have seen very few faulty heads that are due to delamination. Nearly all are either electrical problems, or they have blocked beyond saving. The only delaminated ones I have seen are very old ones that have definitely made their money already, so replacing is due

 

[netsol]

my experience has been (and the REAL PRINTHEAD DOCTOR undoubtedly gives somewhat better results than my knockoff) this technology functions much better as preventative maintenance.
meaning, if you flush a FUNCTIONING HEAD, with some missing nozzles, you have a good chance of improvement
NO ONE is flushing a dead printhead, or one with significant missing nozzles & saying "IT'S A MIRACLE, IT WORKS LIKE NEW?"
several years ago, i bought a few recovered DX2 heads after they became impossible to source new ones, the results were not good

it is possible you might get lucky and get a "functional" head from one of these resellers, but,
if they say they have recovered hundreds of heads, THEY HAVE HAD THOUSANDS OF FAILURES

flushing can only do so much, you are much better off biting the bullet and buying a new head (i know it is a lot of money!)

 

[damonCA21]

my experience has been (and the REAL PRINTHEAD DOCTOR undoubtedly gives somewhat better results than my knockoff) this technology functions much better as preventative maintenance.
meaning, if you flush a FUNCTIONING HEAD, with some missing nozzles, you have a good chance of improvement
NO ONE is flushing a dead printhead, or one with significant missing nozzles & saying "IT'S A MIRACLE, IT WORKS LIKE NEW?"
several years ago, i bought a few recovered DX2 heads after they became impossible to source new ones, the results were not good

it is possible you might get lucky and get a "functional" head from one of these resellers, but,
if they say they have recovered hundreds of heads, THEY HAVE HAD THOUSANDS OF FAILURES

flushing can only do so much, you are much better off biting the bullet and buying a new head (i know it is a lot of money!)

True, I don't know of anyone who is selling hundreds of fully working refurbished print heads. I'm sure if they were the whole printing industry would know about them? Maybe they do just in China....

 

[netsol]

AT BEST, a repaired head will give you to ability to print at "high quality" or highest number of passes.
this gives you a much lower print speed, and there is no consistency (forget pantone matching)
certain colors are hard to print without banding with a brand new out of the box head, and IMPOSSIBLE to print with a refurb (or at least this has been my experience

 

[netsol]

a friend who was one of the first to do solvent conversions bought a printhead doctor when they were first introduced, years ago
he said he would have been a millionaire if it worked consistently EVERYTIME
it does not
it is a whole different game if you intend to stand behind your "refurbishing"

depending on the machine you have, I THINK the best strategy (assuming the head you are changing is unencrypted,
is to get an aqueous printhead (they CAN often be recovered, the ink clogs are less resilient) go through the recovery process and
change the manifold to solvent resistant

we have done this, but, be prepared to throw a quite a few failures before you have a success

IN THE LONG RUN, you are probably better off with the expense of a new head.

 

[Solventinkjet]

Never clean the heads with ultrasound cleaners! They will kill the head straight away

And they don't even unclog the head!

 

[netsol]

And they don't even unclog the head!

not the fault of the device, the fault of the cleaning solution

BACK IN THE EARLY DAYS of the printhead doctor, VLAD had a chemist on staff and i remember YEARS AGO, he had around 15 different "witch's brews" to try, one after the other.

all ecosolvents are not created equal...

as you know, i often add a bit of acetone or MEK to my mixture, (this often trades one problem, for another, however

 

[Solventinkjet]

not the fault of the device, the fault of the cleaning solution

BACK IN THE EARLY DAYS of the printhead doctor, VLAD had a chemist on staff and i remember YEARS AGO, he had around 15 different "witch's brews" to try, one after the other.

all ecosolvents are not created equal...

as you know, i often add a bit of acetone or MEK to my mixture, (this often trades one problem, for another, however

We used to use straight Goof Off as a last resort on trouble heads lol. It worked some times and delaminated others. I think it also has to do with how old the head is too. The newer the head, the easier to recover in my experience.

 

[damonCA21]

I agree, it also depends how long the head has been dried out. I have opened up very old blocked heads just out of interest, and the pigment inside was like concrete! There is no way any sort of solvent or ultrasound etc... would have shifted it.
If a head has been in very recent use, so the ink is more like thin sludge they may have more chance.
I think if there was any actual reliable way of 'refurbishing' heads then we would all be buying them and not bother with new heads anymore. I can see the point on DX7 heads, but DX4s are pretty cheap to buy new and you can get them fitted and get the customer back making money

 

[damonCA21]

not the fault of the device, the fault of the cleaning solution

BACK IN THE EARLY DAYS of the printhead doctor, VLAD had a chemist on staff and i remember YEARS AGO, he had around 15 different "witch's brews" to try, one after the other.

all ecosolvents are not created equal...

as you know, i often add a bit of acetone or MEK to my mixture, (this often trades one problem, for another, however

I have used straight acetone in the past just to get a completely blocked head partially working for testing printers. It definitely works a lot better than straight cleaning solution just for experimenting

 

[netsol]

I have used straight acetone in the past just to get a completely blocked head partially working for testing printers. It definitely works a lot better than straight cleaning solution just for experimenting

yes. but you need to "buffer" it for want of a better term
butyl cellosolve and/or butyl carbitol keeps the acetone from evaporating too quickly and not giving you a chance to flush the solvent, pigments (solids in supension) and impurities from flushing out
otherwise, you just cause the pigment to get stuck in a DIFFERENT PLACE still leaving the head clogged

 

[cornholio]

How long do you fiddle on a clogged head, until you dump it?
The hourly rates around here prohibit that, since you need to replace the head anyway.

 

[netsol]

I agree OEM parts can be expensive, but you are pretty much guaranteed they will work properly. Some generic Chinese parts are OK, but some can cause more damage or problems with the printer because they don't work properly. If you get a cheap captop an it doesn't seal properly then the head can dry out and block and not be recoverable.
If you have a printer worth say £5000 it doesn't make sense to use cheap parts. Replacing parts should be part of the regular servicing, and something the business should cost into their normal overheads.
I would be interested to hear more about your method of fixing delaminated heads? To be honest in all the years I have been a tech I have seen very few faulty heads that are due to delamination. Nearly all are either electrical problems, or they have blocked beyond saving. The only delaminated ones I have seen are very old ones that have definitely made their money already, so replacing is due

I have often used a recovered head in a PROJECT machine (increasing the gap so i could run styrene sheets through a sc545-ex, for example) but, when the project was done we need new heads to turn out work or a QUALITY that clients are willing to pay for. You are not doing a client a favor giving them a printhead that gives us a print ALMOST GOOD ENOUGH to give to the client.

and quali

 

[netsol]

are the delaminated heads normally from any particular chemistry?
i know the heads from a UV printer that have a primer channel setup tend to just about fall apart.
is delamination "luck of the draw" or more chemistry induced?