what could be causing my black head to be like this?

[gabagoo]

Jv3 130 spII - I usually see this issue with the yellow head and a good nozzle wash seems to clean it out. Yesterday I remembered that last Friday I did not perform my weekly nozzle wash so decided to do it yesterday. I ran it for an hour. I did print yesterday with no issues with any of the heads.
This morning I ran a test and my black head is firing about 60%. I ran a nozzle wash for 30 minutes and very little change. I ran another one for 50 minutes and again no real improvement, as you can see in my pic. I now have it on a nozzle wash with the main power shut off so it can sit indefinately.

What do you suppose causes it to not fire properly especially when i ran a 60 minute cleaning the day before? I am baffled.

 

[heyskull]

I reckon head cable or contamination where the head cable goes into the print head causing a malfunction or even the print head is dying.

SC

 

[daveb]

Usually meant it was time to change out or work on the capping station on ours. Not getting a good seal around the head, can dry out pretty quick. Had our JV3 for 8 years, nozzles dropping out were usually air leak somewhere.

 

[MikePro]

A crummy wiper blade can also contaminate the head.

 

[gabagoo]

A crummy wiper blade can also contaminate the head.

This may be the culprit as 1 of my cyan cartridges is low and because it is a little slow at this time of year it has been this way for about a week now. Is there a way to force the machine to wipe?

 

[gabagoo]

well it must have been that low cyan cartridge preventing the wiper from doing its job. I swapped out cartridges and ran a 1 minute nozzle wash just so it would wipe the heads and my black is back.