What is wrong with my cyan head?

[jwright350]

Mutoh 2606, cyan is blurry. Short background, when I got the printer in it was slightly used and a Mutoh tech replaced the pumps (for reasons unknown) before I took delivery. After much fighting with getting ink to flow I realized that the 3rd pump on the right was plumbed backwards..in effect it was pushing air up on the cyan head, not pulling thru it.

The machine prints perfectly, except for this blurry ghosting on the cyan.

Below is a machine generated test pattern, so I've isolated that its not in the rip.

Do I just have a blown out head?

 

[CheapVehicleWrap]

Those look like bar codes to me.

 

[tbaker]

that looks electrical to me. unplug your machine, check the head cables, check the encoder strip.

 

[chrisphilipps]

You can't really tell what is causing the problem from the calibrations in the attached picture, what does the nozzle check look like? Are you missing the same nozzles every time or are they changing? Also have you printed out the Palette test on the printer to see how that prints, it is located under Menu > Test Print > Palette. This could be either electrical or ink flow, the other two test prints that I listed above will help to narrow down the causes.

 

[jwright350]

Nozzle check is almost perfect, the same few are out all the time...I could probably soak the head and get all the nozzles back. The problem is the late jet firing and/or deflection that I can't figure out. This is causing the blur. On a basic nozzle check you can't see the blur much, but on that test image I uploaded on the first post its very noticeable.

The palette prints with the same blurring on colors that are heavy in cyan. If a color doesn't use (much) cyan they look perfect.

It only happens on the cyan head, so I don't really think its encoder strip related.

I'm trying to avoid putting a grand in a head and then having the same problem.


.... just realized the mod must have down sized my image...so its hard to see the late firing nozzles...
try this link: http://members.cox.net/jwright350/banding.jpg

 

[chrisphilipps]

Does the print start out normal and then get worse or are the prints bad as soon as they start? If it starts out good and then gets worse than it is most likely a problem with air getting in the cyan lines somewhere, you can test this by swapping the cyan and light cyan dampers, without disconnecting it from the ink lines, and see if the problem switches to the Lt. Cyan head. If the prints start out with the blurriness than you will have to check the Head Cables and CR Cables to make sure that they are not damaged, if they look good than it is most likely caused by an issue with the print head. The only other thing to check would be the head id, if the head was replaced by the previous owner or a technician and the new head id was not input into the printer this can also happen.

 

[jwright350]

Yeah, happens all the time. I'm told they are the original heads...so I bet I got a bad one.

 

[timson]

did you try to adjust the head voltage of the cyan head?try to unplug and plug the CR-tape of the cyan head, Is there any stain in the CR tape (cyan-head)