Process to change carts / refill ink on JV33? (I'm at INK END on black)

[Atari]

Hello all,

I'm a JV33 user. I was at "INK END" on my black ink using a Triangle Easyfill system. I still have black ink in the system. I've been meaning to buy permanent chips for a long time, just did that, and all other channels CCMMYY are now reset to 9's (full) but KK are still at 0.

Under normal conditions with stock mimaki carts, would you just pop in a new cartridge and it would magically do it's thing? or is there a process through the menu that you must use to simulate adding a new cart, refilling ink, etc?

Thank you

 

[Atari]

Update: On cold restart of the JV33 (using the switch on side), while the KK carts are OUT, it still comes up "INK END". So I assume there is a menu based process required to "replace" are cartridge to reset this.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Vinylman]

Please advise us as to what update you are running on the Mimaki JV33? ie. what is the current driver number when you start the printer showing in the boot up LED on the control panel of the printer?

IF it is newer than 2.2, you may NOT be able to fool the machine into resetting the ink carts. Mimaki, in an effort to thwart users from using none OEM ink carts changed the OS withe the updates after 2.2, and there are several threads that deal with this issue here on the board. Some research on your part will hopefully provide more details to you.

Best of luck.

 

[Atari]

Version 3.20.

However... keep in mind:

- this printer has been running successfully on the triangle easy-fill CIS system (with expiring 3rd party reset chips) for a long time
- My brand new permanent reset chips function 100% on CCMMYY channels. All green, all 9's. So these chips definitely "work" with V3.20.
- When the black KK carts (and chips) are out of the machine, I still get an "INK END" on the KK channels

I'm still working on it... it looks like there is a small leak of some sort back there in the black. I re-insert one of the black CIS carts like 10 times and for a split second it glitched to green light then back to red. I'm guessing something going on with the contacts back there. I'll have to tear into it.

I'll try to take some good photos so we can all benefit.

 

[Atari]

Well....

So I tore it all down. It wasn't messy back there actually.

I even tried putting one of the permanent chips directly on the CIS cart (bypassing the hardwired passthrough chip socket built into the cart). Same situation. "INK END" on both black channels.

There must be something I can do with the menu system for diagnostics?

 

[Atari]

Not too long before the "ink end" started to appear, I replaced a damper on the black channel. Not sure if it's related. I'd never replaced a damper before. Not sure if it worked.

 

[SightLine]

What triggers "ink end" is the tab that pops out on the side of a cartridge towards the bottom rear edge. When it pops out it pushes a microswitch in the cartridge slot. The only thing I can think of is that the 2 black cartridges for some reason have those tabs popped out or both of the switches for the black cartridge slots are somehow stuck. However the odds of both having the exact same problem at the exact same time seems unlikely. Do you have any other known good black chips (even one) you can try just to rule out the 2 permanent black chips as possibly being bad? Other things to check behind the slots would be the connectors back there to be sure none have somehow become disconnected.

On the led on the board behind the cartridges, myself or someone else would have to pull the cover to verify if that is normally on or not. I want to think it is normally on though as I have had that cover off before multiple times and I think there was an led on back there.

 

[Atari]

However the odds of both having the exact same problem at the exact same time seems unlikely.

My exact thoughts as well. I guess I will have to tear into it again today and manually trigger the microswitches to be sure. I may even troubleshoot the board and the switch itself by moving the micro switch connections around on the board. Something like:

- test the switches as-is/where-is
- Connect (working) yellow switch to (non-working?) black channel on board
- Connect (non-working?) black switch to (working) yellow channel on board

Sorry, I don't have any non-expired black chips.

On the led on the board behind the cartridges, myself or someone else would have to pull the cover to verify if that is normally on or not. I want to think it is normally on though as I have had that cover off before multiple times and I think there was an led on back there.

Thanks for that. I hope red is normal. I have a bunch of photos.... I'll upload after I do the testing today.


The one bit that scares me is in looking at the various circuit boards, they seem to have individual circuits for each of the color channels. Like a SMD capacitor or resistor for each color channel, etc. I'm a little worried that maybe one of the boards is damaged. Could HEAD damage or print head ribbon cable damage cause this somehow as well? Hmmm

 

[Atari]

Gallery

Here's a gallery with all the photos for this project:

http://postimg.org/gallery/1iokrifo/7d7188c8/

 

[Atari]

Ink mess

Btw, the ink mess I mentioned early in the thread wasn't too bad, and it seems to be due to this:

 

[Atari]

Btw, the ink mess I mentioned early in the thread wasn't too bad, and it seems to be due to this:

Maybe a bad seal on the cart connector there or something.

 

[Atari]

Update

Update:

I was able to eliminate the cartridge insertion and ink end switches from being responsible for the error.

On each cartridge slot, the two sensors are brung together into single molex style connector. These 8 connectors from the cart switches plug into the correspondingly number 8 connector slots on the "X-Motor Relay Board" that is behind the cartridge slots. Anyway, I just unplugged slot 5 (one of the yellow channels) and swapped it with 8 (one of the "INK END" black channels). If the black switch hardware or the black channels on the "X-motor relays board" was bad, I would expect these to now throw red lights on the yellow slots. After doing this and rebooting the printer, there was NO change. The black channels both still report "INK END".

So this points me back again to some menu based process to tell the printer "I've put in a new black cartridge", or something wrong with JUST the two black permanent chips I have (doubtful...all other chips work 100%).

Keep in mind, printer when "INK END" on the black channel (using Triangle Easyfill CIS Carts & expiring chips) before I put these new chips in. It was actually the reason I bought the chips.

I guess I will try to find something on the JV33 to study the setup menu functions to see if there is something that might help here.

 

[Atari]

Using #TEST menu, I was able to test the cart sensors here as well (that is a bit easier than the method I used above! )

Anyway, there is also a test for "INK-IC Check". When I ran this test, CCMMYY permanent chips all passed, KK permanent chips both failed.

THEN...when I retested the KK chips using my other expired 3rd party chips (from the Triangle setup)... these chips PASSED (as valid..although I can't use them since they are expired).

So, this tells me that someone in China may have programmed my chips in a hurry and forgot the actually program the KK chips

The only other possibility, maybe... is that something upstream on another board (X board, motherboard, etc) is shorted somewhere. But I don't think so since I could confirm a programed, but invalid K chip.

What do you guys think?

 

[Samurai_Screwdriver]

Not sure if it will help in this instance but something that can sometimes be used for good troubleshooting is to intentionally install the wrong color cartridges into the slots you're having problems with. If the Cartridge Sensors are working properly then you should get a message on the LCD informing you that the wrong colors are installed in that slot - If you get this then you know that the chip readers in the machine are doing their job correctly.

Not sure where you got to with checking the Ink End Switches but be aware that once you install a good good cartridge in a slot that has a stuck switch that cartridge chip will be written as "zero" - Even if you fix the switches that cartridge chip will forever read empty regardless of whose machine you insert it into.