Need Help Single Color Head Issue

[Olen Myhre]

Good Morning Everyone,
I'm hoping someone has seen something like this and can give me some directions on fixing this.
HISTORY
This is a JV33 with the SS21 (Bordeaux brand) inks. We bought this machine new probably a decade ago and not a heavy printing shop (although it seems we are printing more and more these day). We've not done anything different in years (same inks, etc. etc. etc.) The head was replaced a year or two ago by our "technician guy" James McGill. He also replaced the capping station about 3 months ago along with a damper or two (but not all of them).
PROBLEM
About a week ago, our cyan just randomly started having poor quality (see attached file). It even sprays cyan "mist" over the material guides and you can see it on the white pad in the attached picture. I had just replaced the white pad so it doesn't look that bad in the picture (it is after about 30 minutes of printing).
I'm still running it but I have to do everything on 24 pass. It looks OKish (barely) but have to get this fixed obviously.
WHAT I'VE TRIED
I've tried numerous 1.5 hour nozzle washes.
I've checked to make sure the blue "cap" is on the underside of the capping station....the one techs sometimes forgot to remove from the old and put on the new when they are replacing the capping station.
I've tried numerous hard washes.
I've checked to make sure the station is capping correctly on the ink head and I don't see any issues from what I can tell.
I've printed feet of nothing buy solid cyan to try to "flush it" clear.

This head is not even seen a fraction of the life we got out of the first one so surely it's not time to replace it already.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Is there some way to pump cyan through the head in large volumes to break whatever is in there loose?

 

[hybriddesign]

Hi, I've been through this before as well and unfortunately it seems like in the end it's probably a head replacement and yeah, sometimes they last forever and sometimes they don't. If you want to try it you can disconnect the ink line where it goes into the cartridge needle assembly and stick that into a bottle of cleaning solution (bonus if you warm the solution). Clamp all the other ink lines shut Hemostats, clips, etc) and then pull 3,4, 100 syringes full of liquid through the head. It might clear it up but whenever my heads have started misting like that I always end up having to replace them even after spending hours and hours trying different flushes.

I use boardeax in our JV150 and we had the same exact issue with cyan recently as well. I was even convinced at one point that it was the inks fault and tried OEM cyan. Wishing I had just replaced the head in the first place as it would have saved me a good 5+ hours trouble shooting.

Anyways, good luck! Head replacements are easy btw.

 

[Joseph44708]

Ive had a simular problem with a one month old New Magenta head on my Seiko W-64. Tried all kinds of cleanings with no luck. Every one said it was an ink flow problem. So I switched the Magenta head over to the Black head position and the problem carried over. The head was misfireing. Purchased another $1200 head, two weeks later same problem. Purchased another $1200 head from a different supplier and it has been printing great for eight months.
The first supplier offered a one year warranty. They made me jump through hoops backwards and said it was installed wrong. Then they completly stopped communicating with me when my certified Seiko tech that installed the head and switched them around chimed in and told them what the problem was.