Need Help Seeking Advice: Clogged Blue Ink on Mimaki TS55-1800 After Christmas Break

[Elobina]

Hi everyone,

During our 2-week Christmas leave, the blue (cyan) ink on our Mimaki TS55-1800 sublimation printer got clogged. All other colours are functioning well. Here's what we've done so far:

1. Cleaned and soaked the printer
2. Replaced dampers and caps.
3. Had a technician check the ink circulation and pumps.
4. The technician performed a quick syringe flush of the printhead using Mimaki 03 cleaning solution.

Despite all this, the technician has concluded that the printheads are irreparably damaged and recommended replacing them, which would cost us €8,400.

Before we proceed with such a significant expense, does anyone have suggestions for other methods or techniques we could try as a last resort to salvage the printheads?

Any advice or shared experiences would be greatly appreciated!

 

[balstestrat]

How does the nozzle check look like? If I remember correctly those can have issues with the head cables.

 

[Elobina]

H

 

[Elobina]

How does the nozzle check look like? If I remember correctly those can have issues with the head cables.

Here attached is the testprint - in this the yellow is also missing from head 2 but this is because of cleaning and comes back. But the blue has looked the same now for a while. In the beginning we received 10-20 blue nozzles back after each nozzle wash.

 

[Signarama Jockey]

I remember watching a Mimaki turn into a paperweight in a situation just like this. One channel went out and all of the work shifted over to the other printers. Then the Mimaki sat there because it was too expensive to fix. Eventually, the ink started clotting and settling and when the tech finally looked at it, the problem had progressed to a total replace of the entire ink system. Us wanting to save a couple of bucks in the short term basically cost us the entire machine.
I'd go with what the tech recommends. Wish I had a better solution for you.

 

[Smoke_Jaguar]

Yeah, if a syringe flush didn't fix it, new head is probably name of the game there. Could probably cut the bill in half if you were comfortable with doing a head swap, but I'd have to side with the diagnosis.

 

[Elobina]

OK - thanks for the input, just wanted to be sure!