Need Help Roland BN-20 Pain!

[JohnSmith17772]

Hi guys, I hope you can help!

I am losing it with my BN-20. It was left standing for a year whilst we moved house, and I believe the print head got blocked. So I have stripped it down, and replaced the head/dampeners. When I had it all connected up, to start i wasn't getting any ink to the print head, the lines were empty (from the ink pump). I have now fixed that issue, it was the seal with the printer cap.

Where I am now: The printer head lines are full and appears to be delivering ink to the printhead, however not a drop is coming out. When I print, everything is blank. I have done a few ink pumps and head cleans to no avail. I have also used my multimeter to check the continuity between the two tiny fuses on the main board (if there are more let me know!). Does anybody have any ideas of what to do next. I am tempted to get new ribbon cables, but at this point I feel like I am throwing money at an endless problem. Oh and to top it off I keep getting a temperature warning, even though the room is 20degrees. Although this stops after I turn it off/on a few times.

Any help appreciated

 

[BigNate]

it has been my experience that if you are committed to putting a printer back in service after it sat for a year (from the condition I am assuming it was not purged of ink before storage.).. you will save time and money if you just "bite-the-bullet" and pay a trained tech to bring it back. Possibly to a state where you can put it on a maintenance contract.

now, if you are a hobbyist and not really looking to make money with this printer, then keep tinkering. otherwise get this one (or a new one) working and generating revenue. Assuming you can get the sales, a BN-20 can generate enough billables of plain stickers to outright pay for itself in less than a week of full-time printing. So how long are you going to keep it sitting wondering why it doesn't work instead of making money?

If you want to keep tinkering with it, I also predict you will have a lot of odd issues from ink drying in places you never thought to look.... small cracks in plastic that dried out too much and now does not hold a vaccuum - even though it looks perfect still.... who knows what else? (well, a tech who has seen a lot of these will be worth his salt for these issues.)

 

[Smoke_Jaguar]

Temperature warnings on those heads, in my experience, are a huge warning sign of a bad head or possible connection issues. Ink rarely dries in the lines unless there's a source of air getting in, but it starts to dry inside the capping station, then the nozzles in the head and slowly into the manifold over time. If a head is clogged, it will usually still be detected and technically fire the nozzles just fine, just no ink will get out. If ink dries and starts expanding and destroying electronics inside the heads, then head detect, temperature and other crazy errors happen. If your ribbon cables have become damaged, definitely replace them. If the cables have burn marks on them, they might've been inserted at an angle and shorted something out.

Might have some luck with an overnight solvent soak in the capping station. Also, fill the cap with solvent and verify it can drain/pump with a cleaning cycle.

In short, sounds like new head time. I know it sucks, but any time you want to store a printer, always good to fill them with flush before turning them off. Hindsight and all that.

 

[Roland Certified Tech]

Check the fuse on the head board

 

[Joe House]

The temperature sensor is on the print head and if you're getting temp errors and it's within spec, then your connection to the head is bad or the head itself is bad. It's very easy to get the cables inserted incorrectly on those if you don't know what you're doing. That can fry the head, or if you're lucky, just not connect to the head properly. Reseat the cables being careful to make sure that they are centered and in straight. If you're getting ink into the cap top, then this is an electrical issue. If you're not getting color into the cap top, then you've got a plumbing issue.

Good Luck

 

[Roland Certified Tech]

Joe is correct and a great guy.
Just be aware if you need a new print head, the BN-20 are on clearance at a great price here in USA. I don’t know about UK. Cost of new head vs new printer…..
Hopefully the BN2 are way better the the BN series. Haven’t seen or sold one just quite yet

 

[cornholio]

BN20 have been a pita since it was introduced... I told our sales guys to stay clear of them. Guess what, they sold a lot of this crap. BN2 are a lot better. (Choke valves in the ink path, Ethernet, instead of crappy USB, replaceable media guides, print heater and dryer... they actually fixed all the shortcomings of the BN-20. Except a display...)
Your problem sounds like a connection problem, that happens all the time, when people splatter ink over the FPC's or think all the four FPC's are the same.
The result can be a fried head and or mainboard. If you need to replace any of these, just throw it away... a printhead costs about half the price of this printer.