Vanguard VR6D Ink problems

[nicktoney]

Hello everyone! Im new to the forum but not new to lurking and searching past threads for troubleshooting.
I have a Vanguard VR6D and have had it for about two years now i believe, and Im beginning to go a bit crazy. Ive chased problems back and forth for what seems to be the life of the printer and im starting to think its me and not the machine. But i digress.

My BIGGEST issue that hasnt been able to be figured out or bandaided is with my white ink. We were setup with a 6 printhead config. two heads for each CMYK in the front and Dual white heads in the rear. After printing one board of acrylic, im getting a completely saturated jetplate/print head area. Going back and forth with Vanguard and theyre dying on the "static" sword. I can totally believe static, however im getting the same results no matter what i print on. Talking to Steve at Atlantic Graphics, who i absolutely trust, and we were starting to think maybe having dual white heads side by side is outputting too much ink, causing overspray/saturation. Going through the vanguard driver, however, i have no idea where i can "turn down" the amount of white im outputting. Im just using the white for printing second surface on the acrylic. Ill attach photos of my jetplate and the ONE board that caused it to be so saturated.

Does anyone have a VR6D? If so, which head configuration, and would you mind sharing a print screen with me to compare? Learning as much as i can with this printer is great. However trying different things over and over and getting the same result is driving me crazy

Thanks for any tips or advice!

 

[MelloImagingTechnologies]

Looks like overspray from all colors.
Make sure the de ionizer is on.
Try in a slower carriage speed.
Bruce

 

[VISCOM]

Hello everyone! Im new to the forum but not new to lurking and searching past threads for troubleshooting.
I have a Vanguard VR6D and have had it for about two years now i believe, and Im beginning to go a bit crazy. Ive chased problems back and forth for what seems to be the life of the printer and im starting to think its me and not the machine. But i digress.

My BIGGEST issue that hasnt been able to be figured out or bandaided is with my white ink. We were setup with a 6 printhead config. two heads for each CMYK in the front and Dual white heads in the rear. After printing one board of acrylic, im getting a completely saturated jetplate/print head area. Going back and forth with Vanguard and theyre dying on the "static" sword. I can totally believe static, however im getting the same results no matter what i print on. Talking to Steve at Atlantic Graphics, who i absolutely trust, and we were starting to think maybe having dual white heads side by side is outputting too much ink, causing overspray/saturation. Going through the vanguard driver, however, i have no idea where i can "turn down" the amount of white im outputting. Im just using the white for printing second surface on the acrylic. Ill attach photos of my jetplate and the ONE board that caused it to be so saturated.

Does anyone have a VR6D? If so, which head configuration, and would you mind sharing a print screen with me to compare? Learning as much as i can with this printer is great. However trying different things over and over and getting the same result is driving me crazy

Thanks for any tips or advice!

turn down you white ink to 50% I had this problem also

 

[nicktoney]

Looks like overspray from all colors.
Make sure the de ionizer is on.
Try in a slower carriage speed.
Bruce

The overspray from black is 100% caused by me increasing voltage to that head to get better accuracy. Ionizers are on, carriage speed can be on the lowest speed and same result

 

[nicktoney]

turn down you white ink to 50% I had this problem also

Id love to turn it down, lol. Can you show me on the driver exactly how i can achieve that? I adjusted what i thought was ink volume for the white, but nothing happened so i wasnt sure if i missed a box that needed checked to apply that change.

-EDIT Ive turned down the ink volume setting in my print mode editor to 1% and have zero change in the volume outputting. maybe its not taking the adjustment. I click save, and apply multiple times though

 

[alevit53]

Id love to turn it down, lol. Can you show me on the driver exactly how i can achieve that? I adjusted what i thought was ink volume for the white, but nothing happened so i wasnt sure if i missed a box that needed checked to apply that change.

-EDIT Ive turned down the ink volume setting in my print mode editor to 1% and have zero change in the volume outputting. maybe its not taking the adjustment. I click save, and apply multiple times though

Crank up the negative pressure. We had the same problem and chased it for 6 months. The only thing that too much negative pressure will effect is lack of ink to the head which will be obvious when you run tests.

 

[nicktoney]

Crank up the negative pressure. We had the same problem and chased it for 6 months. The only thing that too much negative pressure will effect is lack of ink to the head which will be obvious when you run tests.

Im currently at -5.2 going up past that turned the readout RED so i wasnt sure what kind of pressures the system could take

 

[alevit53]

I've also been told that the "zero" point could be wrong over time. Not sure how that happens. Put your guage on it a see what it reads.
You could also have ink in the negative pressure manifold or the in the small tanks mounted on the carriage.
We took the whole system apart, cleaned evything, replace all the hoses and filters, and still had the same problem unitl we just kept upping the negative pressure.
It's been running for the last 6 monoths without any issues.

 

[marunr]

What RIP are you using? I set the white output from there.

 

[nicktoney]

I've also been told that the "zero" point could be wrong over time. Not sure how that happens. Put your guage on it a see what it reads.
You could also have ink in the negative pressure manifold or the in the small tanks mounted on the carriage.
We took the whole system apart, cleaned evything, replace all the hoses and filters, and still had the same problem unitl we just kept upping the negative pressure.
It's been running for the last 6 monoths without any issues.

How high is your neg pressure set? Ill run mine up later this afternoon and see

 

[alevit53]

4.5 on the guage but don't know if that is accurate.

 

[nicktoney]

i took it up to -5.9 and had no difference on a fast print. still getting the buildup on the jetplate and heads. looking at the bottom of the jetplate, it looks like my ion bars arent long enough to reach the back half of the white heads. I wonder if moving it back a touch somehow could help.

What RIP are you using? I set the white output from there.

Im using Onyx currently and working through switching to Caldera

 

[CMYKENGINEERING]

Hello everyone! Im new to the forum but not new to lurking and searching past threads for troubleshooting.
I have a Vanguard VR6D and have had it for about two years now i believe, and Im beginning to go a bit crazy. Ive chased problems back and forth for what seems to be the life of the printer and im starting to think its me and not the machine. But i digress.

My BIGGEST issue that hasnt been able to be figured out or bandaided is with my white ink. We were setup with a 6 printhead config. two heads for each CMYK in the front and Dual white heads in the rear. After printing one board of acrylic, im getting a completely saturated jetplate/print head area. Going back and forth with Vanguard and theyre dying on the "static" sword. I can totally believe static, however im getting the same results no matter what i print on. Talking to Steve at Atlantic Graphics, who i absolutely trust, and we were starting to think maybe having dual white heads side by side is outputting too much ink, causing overspray/saturation. Going through the vanguard driver, however, i have no idea where i can "turn down" the amount of white im outputting. Im just using the white for printing second surface on the acrylic. Ill attach photos of my jetplate and the ONE board that caused it to be so saturated.

Does anyone have a VR6D? If so, which head configuration, and would you mind sharing a print screen with me to compare? Learning as much as i can with this printer is great. However trying different things over and over and getting the same result is driving me crazy

Thanks for any tips or advice!

Basically, as it has many times been noticed by us, that all Vanguard equipment is built with Chinese BYHX printing control management systems and boards, which is the cheapest DIY kit available among third-party suppliers. This may not at first seem significant, but it means that unfortunately the driver will not allow decreasing the amount of addressing white. It will always send 100% white flood and the only way to modify white density is to use a spot color build in Photoshop or similar.

We have a simple file to test spot white densities (attached). You can use it to test the white density settings in Photoshop, for example, and match the white you are looking for. If the file cannot be opened by your RIP software, let us know.

It would be appreciated if you could share a picture of the results; we could try to comment on the quality of your white ink and perhaps offer you more advice.

For the black color overspray, there could be several causes. Ink viscosity, voltage, and temperature are the main factors to check.

 

[MelloImagingTechnologies]

If you call into Vanguard they can remote in and help you work through these things.
What exactly is your problem? You say it's overspray on the carriage plates?
Or is it overspray on the print?