VS640 cyan bleeding into magenta, new head?

[Pro-Ink]

Just wanted to get a few opinions before replacing the head. My guess is i'm starting to loose the seal in the head chambers. Just wanted to see if anyone has had this same situation before I just replace the head.
It's a roland vs640i. It's been real good to me as i've been running it about 8 years now with no issues. I'm attaching a picture of the morning test print before any cleaning. as you can see the cyan is running into the magenta and the black is also starting to run into the yellow.
While printing I can see a cyan mist all over the print, (which others were saying was just static) but i'm starting to think it's the head.

 

[damonCA21]

When did you last change your dampers and captop ? Normally when you get cross contamination its from this rather than a head failing. If the captop isn't making a proper seal it can lead to this. Do the test prints look ok after a cleaning? Also replace the ink lines from the captop to the pump.

 

[Pro-Ink]

When did you last change your dampers and captop ? Normally when you get cross contamination its from this rather than a head failing. If the captop isn't making a proper seal it can lead to this. Do the test prints look ok after a cleaning? Also replace the ink lines from the captop to the pump.

captop and dampers have never been changed in the 8 years ive had this printer. The test prints do look better after a clean. But even after a clean I still notice the cyan misting throughout at print, of course its mainly noticable in the white areas of the print. and its funny it seems to always be trailing from the black in the print if that makes sense.
I guess I'll try to just replace the dampers and captop first, couldn't hurt even if that's not the problem.

 

[Adam Edge]

captop and dampers have never been changed in the 8 years ive had this printer. The test prints do look better after a clean. But even after a clean I still notice the cyan misting throughout at print, of course its mainly noticable in the white areas of the print. and its funny it seems to always be trailing from the black in the print if that makes sense.
I guess I'll try to just replace the dampers and captop first, couldn't hurt even if that's not the problem.

its time to replace dampers and captop. Also dirty wiper blade can cause that.. replace that too

 

[damonCA21]

captop and dampers have never been changed in the 8 years ive had this printer. The test prints do look better after a clean. But even after a clean I still notice the cyan misting throughout at print, of course its mainly noticable in the white areas of the print. and its funny it seems to always be trailing from the black in the print if that makes sense.
I guess I'll try to just replace the dampers and captop first, couldn't hurt even if that's not the problem.

After 8 years it is definitely overdue some TLC. Do the captop, dampers, wiper blades etc... and give everything around the head, head carriage and wiper station a good clean up. Also check all the hoses to and from the pump as the pumps do wear with time

 

[cornholio]

I would suggest the pump.
What are the pump cycles? 200000 is the lifetime Roland suggests. I have seen them failing around that time...
The cyan misting is likely deflected nozzles.(the testprint shows some)
Printing black areas shows the trailing mist, because when black is generated with a ICC profile, it adds cyan, magenta and yellow to get a deep and neutral black.
For deflected nozzles, you normally need to replace the head. In some rather rare occasions a head soak helps.

 

[Pro-Ink]

I would suggest the pump.
What are the pump cycles? 200000 is the lifetime Roland suggests. I have seen them failing around that time...
The cyan misting is likely deflected nozzles.(the testprint shows some)
Printing black areas shows the trailing mist, because when black is generated with a ICC profile, it adds cyan, magenta and yellow to get a deep and neutral black.
For deflected nozzles, you normally need to replace the head. In some rather rare occasions a head soak helps.

Yes I replace the wiper blades fairly often and manual clean as well. I'm attaching another pic to show how much the cyan mists into unprinted areas. And this is after the machine being wiped down about a week ago.
seems like cyan kinda just goes all over.

 

[damonCA21]

That isn't really misting when it gets to that level. There is a problem with the signal to the print head, it is telling it to turn on ( or not turn off ) when it shouldn't be.

 

[Pro-Ink]

That isn't really misting when it gets to that level. There is a problem with the signal to the print head, it is telling it to turn on ( or not turn off ) when it shouldn't be.

so you think changing the head will fix it? or is there another part that sends signal to the head?

 

[damonCA21]

It may fix it, but it looks more likely there is something else causing the overspray by not firing the head properly. This is most likely the print carriage board or servo board. This takes the signal from the main board and sends it to the heads. These do fail and you either end up with a channel not firing at all, or it can give random results where the head fires when it shouldn't. They are both a lot cheaper than buying a new head, so worth trying first. You can get used boards on Ebay, and if they don't fix the problem you can always sell them on again to get your money back

The other option could be a bad transistor on the main board which can also give problems with the head firing.

Misting will often give a small amount of overspray outside the print area, but it is normally a less than 1mm This is caused by bad nozzles deflecting the ink away from where it should be falling, but from your test print the cyan nozzles look ok. With a firing problem the head is not being told when to stop spraying ink properly, so it keeps firing when it should have stopped. This is nearly always caused by a problem with one of the boards rather than the head itself.

 

[Pro-Ink]

It may fix it, but it looks more likely there is something else causing the overspray by not firing the head properly. This is most likely the print carriage board or servo board. This takes the signal from the main board and sends it to the heads. These do fail and you either end up with a channel not firing at all, or it can give random results where the head fires when it shouldn't. They are both a lot cheaper than buying a new head, so worth trying first. You can get used boards on Ebay, and if they don't fix the problem you can always sell them on again to get your money back

The other option could be a bad transistor on the main board which can also give problems with the head firing.

Misting will often give a small amount of overspray outside the print area, but it is normally a less than 1mm This is caused by bad nozzles deflecting the ink away from where it should be falling, but from your test print the cyan nozzles look ok. With a firing problem the head is not being told when to stop spraying ink properly, so it keeps firing when it should have stopped. This is nearly always caused by a problem with one of the boards rather than the head itself.

This is good info man! It definitly seems like cyan is constantly firing, even if its just slighly. I can't get a good picture to show that but there is a cyan mist pretty much all over any print. The only thing that had me worried about the head was the cyan bleeding into the magenta and the black bleeding into the yellow in the nozzle check test print. I think i'll change out the boards and the dampers before messing with the head. especially since it's been such a workhorse for me for 8 years.

 

[Jim Hancock]

My go-to test for checking a print head is the fill test in service mode. It is printing 720x720, bidirectional, std speed, 100% ink, which is pretty much the standard everyday setting for general sign printing (except for the 100% ink part). It prints each head channel individually, without the influence of RIP settings and profiles. This allows you to watch each color and how the passes are being printed. It tells you a great deal about how each channel is performing. You can see when and where a color is banding, so you want to watch it as it's printing, not just the end result. Because it's at 100% ink, this can hide banding that would be visible when a file is using a much lower percentage of ink. So, watch the entire time. Once it's finished, examine the left and right sides of each color. It should be sharp and crisp. This is where you can see if and where any overspray is happening. If you are absolutely certain everything else is good, i.e., ink to the head, the electronics are good, then this test can confirm the condition of the head.

 

[Jim Hancock]

Any update?

 

[Pro-Ink]

My go-to test for checking a print head is the fill test in service mode. It is printing 720x720, bidirectional, std speed, 100% ink, which is pretty much the standard everyday setting for general sign printing (except for the 100% ink part). It prints each head channel individually, without the influence of RIP settings and profiles. This allows you to watch each color and how the passes are being printed. It tells you a great deal about how each channel is performing. You can see when and where a color is banding, so you want to watch it as it's printing, not just the end result. Because it's at 100% ink, this can hide banding that would be visible when a file is using a much lower percentage of ink. So, watch the entire time. Once it's finished, examine the left and right sides of each color. It should be sharp and crisp. This is where you can see if and where any overspray is happening. If you are absolutely certain everything else is good, i.e., ink to the head, the electronics are good, then this test can confirm the condition of the head.

Ok, I ran that test print from service mode. It seems like it printed it perfectly. I don't see any type of cyan misting outside of the print area at all. And I've ran test prints with solid blocks of color that I just created on my own in photoshop just the other day (not in service mode), and I could see the cyan misting especially after the black color.
so with this print being as perfect as I've seen in a while are you thinking the head is not the problem?

 

[Pro-Ink]

It's hard to get a picture of what I'm talking about, but here is a test file i set up with around 50% black, with white spaces between. You can see the cyan mist between them.

 

[damonCA21]

I would say the head looks ok. As I mentioned before I don't think it's a head issue, it is the signal going to the head from the board. I would be looking to replace the servo board as this is the one that most commonly causes problems