Hi everyone, I'm having some ink cross contamination problems with my trusty Roland SP 300V, and I've done a bunch of reading on this forum and attempted many fixes with little progress.
The problem only seems to be some Black getting into the Cyan (shared head). I found this quote...
"...the capping station is designed to allow a small amount of air to enter from the drain bottle up through the drain tubes. If the drain tubes between the drain bottle and the capping station are blocked, or if you have a plugged pump, air will not enter the capping station and a siphoning action between the heads may occur. If this siphon action is not broken, ink will flow from an ink cartridge with a higher level to the cartridge with a lower level, actually filling the ink line between the head and the ink cartridge with the wrong colour ink, in an effort to equalize the levels between the two cartridges."
And it seems I had that problem. Some of my tubes were plugged solid, or greatly reduced. I replaced the caps and also the tubing around the pump and drain and it all seems to be flowing now (although I'm not sure if it's possible for the pump to clog up in the same way. I'm not sure how much ink/fluid should be passing through those tubes during cleaning as some is moving, but not a lot).
As mentioned, I changed the caps but not the dampers. I'm afraid to do that since I only have some inexpensive knock off ones as opposed to original Roland.
I also tried the syringe trick multiple times, drawing ink through the heads and caps. The ink was pure black in the syringe, but I assume this is normal as the cyan wouldn't show once mixed with black??
After new parts and tubing and syringe and multiple cleaning, I tried printing out a series of three 5" squares of pure Cyan to help clean out any backed up cross contamination. Results got a bit better after several attempts at this but the cyan is still much darker indicating cross contamination is still happening.
So after a long post, I suppose my question is, what else should I do? Should I put my knockoff dampers in? Also, how far up can cross contamination go? How much ink should I draw out with the syringe to ensure I've cleaned it all out? Is it possible for contamination to make its way all the way back to the ink cartridges and if so should I try all new inks? The black and cyan both have about 25% left in them. All the lines in to the dampers seem to be the correct color, although the cyan into the damper does seem a little dark, but I assume it wouldn't be a bright cyan.
Thanks for any help with this!
The problem only seems to be some Black getting into the Cyan (shared head). I found this quote...
"...the capping station is designed to allow a small amount of air to enter from the drain bottle up through the drain tubes. If the drain tubes between the drain bottle and the capping station are blocked, or if you have a plugged pump, air will not enter the capping station and a siphoning action between the heads may occur. If this siphon action is not broken, ink will flow from an ink cartridge with a higher level to the cartridge with a lower level, actually filling the ink line between the head and the ink cartridge with the wrong colour ink, in an effort to equalize the levels between the two cartridges."
And it seems I had that problem. Some of my tubes were plugged solid, or greatly reduced. I replaced the caps and also the tubing around the pump and drain and it all seems to be flowing now (although I'm not sure if it's possible for the pump to clog up in the same way. I'm not sure how much ink/fluid should be passing through those tubes during cleaning as some is moving, but not a lot).
As mentioned, I changed the caps but not the dampers. I'm afraid to do that since I only have some inexpensive knock off ones as opposed to original Roland.
I also tried the syringe trick multiple times, drawing ink through the heads and caps. The ink was pure black in the syringe, but I assume this is normal as the cyan wouldn't show once mixed with black??
After new parts and tubing and syringe and multiple cleaning, I tried printing out a series of three 5" squares of pure Cyan to help clean out any backed up cross contamination. Results got a bit better after several attempts at this but the cyan is still much darker indicating cross contamination is still happening.
So after a long post, I suppose my question is, what else should I do? Should I put my knockoff dampers in? Also, how far up can cross contamination go? How much ink should I draw out with the syringe to ensure I've cleaned it all out? Is it possible for contamination to make its way all the way back to the ink cartridges and if so should I try all new inks? The black and cyan both have about 25% left in them. All the lines in to the dampers seem to be the correct color, although the cyan into the damper does seem a little dark, but I assume it wouldn't be a bright cyan.
Thanks for any help with this!
