sp540 urgent problem, help!!

[bruce brown]

Just to confirm, when you swapped the cables, you left the heads in their proper place, just switched the ends of the magenta yellow cables on the cyan/black head a vice versa, and it should have printed black and cyan where yellow and magenta would be and vice versa? If you haven't and you do and you see a reverse, could be the print carriage board.

just tried and yes it prints blue black ok when swapped at one end only, so must be an electrical issue.I noticed that when we try to print it says heating and won't print until we press the pause button.could this be linked?

 

[bruce brown]

Call a technician and schedule an appointment.

Technician came and said it was a print head.Its not....

 

[Zoogee World]

just tried and yes it prints blue black ok when swapped at one end only, so must be an electrical issue.I noticed that when we try to print it says heating and won't print until we press the pause button.could this be linked?

It's very strange that your having the exact same issues on 2 machines at the same time. You haven't had any power surges or quick power lost or anything of that nature just prior to these problems starting?

 

[Solventinkjet]

The only thing I haven't seen mentioned here is the o-rings. Did you change them when you changed the dampers? Also, sometimes on these older models you need to clip a little bit of the ink line off so the o-ring makes a good seal. The old o-ring can create an indentation in the ink line that makes the new one not seal very well.

 

[bruce brown]

It's very strange that your having the exact same issues on 2 machines at the same time. You haven't had any power surges or quick power lost or anything of that nature just prior to these problems starting?

No surges or anything out of the ordinary.First printer started dropping out black midway through jobs.We switched to the other printer and it started dropping cyan midway.then both stopped printing black and cyan shortly after. Really weird, but causing us a real problem because we have no printers and the only local technician is stumped.

 

[Zoogee World]

No surges or anything out of the ordinary.First printer started dropping out black midway through jobs.We switched to the other printer and it started dropping cyan midway.then both stopped printing black and cyan shortly after. Really weird, but causing us a real problem because we have no printers and the only local technician is stumped.

As Solventinkjet mentioned, could be an air leak.

 

[bruce brown]

As Solventinkjet mentioned, could be an air leak.

Not an air leak, there's no ink issue as it prints black and cyan fine when the head cables are swapped over from red/yellow, so its some kind of a communication problem to the head.Nothing looks burnt or damaged on the boards and all the fuses work.

 

[Zoogee World]

Not an air leak, there's no ink issue as it prints black and cyan fine when the head cables are swapped over from red/yellow, so its some kind of a communication problem to the head.Nothing looks burnt or damaged on the boards and all the fuses work.

Could always try a carriage board and see if that helps, probably your cheapest option, board wise. I believe you mentioned earlier that you replaced the cables, was this the 4 cables that go to the head only or did you also change the long cables that go from the carriage board to the main board (I think that's the right one)?

 

[Solventinkjet]

Not an air leak, there's no ink issue as it prints black and cyan fine when the head cables are swapped over from red/yellow, so its some kind of a communication problem to the head.Nothing looks burnt or damaged on the boards and all the fuses work.

Ah that makes sense. In that case I would suspect blown transistors on the main board. If the fuses are good, it's usually the transistors that are fried.

 

[bruce brown]

Just to confirm, when you swapped the cables, you left the heads in their proper place, just switched the ends of the magenta yellow cables on the cyan/black head a vice versa, and it should have printed black and cyan where yellow and magenta would be and vice versa? If you haven't and you do and you see a reverse, could be the print carriage board.

narrowed this prob

Ah that makes sense. In that case I would suspect blown transistors on the main board. If the fuses are good, it's usually the transistors that are fried.

There are 2 small fuses 1.6a, soldered into the motherboard at the bottom right, just under the 2 card cables.One of them had blown on both machines.Had an electrical engineer friend solder on new ones and we are up and running! Incidentally , I noticed a "working" mother board for sale on ebay.On close inspection of the photo supplied I noticed the same fuse had a piece of fusewire soldered over it.... Thanks to everyone who replied Its much appreciated and definitely helped us to narrow this down.