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Suggestions Yellow turning green

BigBoyMs

New Member
Yellow is fine at first after running a cleaning. Then has blue or green lines in it. I am trying to print 100% yellow. I printed 4 blocks of 100% black yellow magenta and cyan. All looked good yellow started getting lines in it. When I sucked some of the yellow out of the dampers, it had no yellow in the lines, but was putting blue lines into the print even trying to print 100% yellow. When I came in yesterday, one of the yellow lines was green. I followed the line all the way back to the cartridge and it looks green all the way. Would that be from me trying to pull the ink from the damper? I saw blue ink in one of the yellow dampers.
 

Solventinkjet

DIY Printer Fixing Guide
You are getting cross contamination which could be a few things:

1. The dampers are failing due to old age or just a bad seal somewhere and causing the cartridge to pull back on the system, which pulls the nearest neighbor's color into itself. If your dampers are over a year old, I would change them as they are considered maintenance items that need to be changed every 1 - 2 years to work as needed. Yes some people get more life out of their dampers but if you just change them as recommended by the manufacturer you never have to worry about these problems popping up in the middle of a big job.

2. If the yellow cartridge is empty but not flagging the machine properly, it will create suction that is similar to number 1 above. Just make sure there is ink in there. If there isn't, you just need to get a new one.

3. The head is being contaminated by some outside source such as ink build up on the spitting sponge, a wiper that is stuck in the out position or ink build up on the maintenance station and head surface. Make sure absolutely everything that touches the head has no ink build up on it and the head itself doesn't have ink build up on the bottom. This is common in 1204s because it's hard to get to the bottom of the head.

4. The worst case scenario is that the head is damaged internally and the cross-contamination is being caused by a broken channel. In that case, you need a new head. You can test this out as a last resort by trying to flush cleaning solution through the yellow and cyan channels. If you push cleaning solution through 1 channel and it comes out of another one, it's dead.
 

BigBoyMs

New Member
I never have replaced the dampers. I ordered them yesterday. I will look at everything and make sure there us no ink build up. Thanks for the information!
 

BigBoyMs

New Member
You are getting cross contamination which could be a few things:

1. The dampers are failing due to old age or just a bad seal somewhere and causing the cartridge to pull back on the system, which pulls the nearest neighbor's color into itself. If your dampers are over a year old, I would change them as they are considered maintenance items that need to be changed every 1 - 2 years to work as needed. Yes some people get more life out of their dampers but if you just change them as recommended by the manufacturer you never have to worry about these problems popping up in the middle of a big job.

2. If the yellow cartridge is empty but not flagging the machine properly, it will create suction that is similar to number 1 above. Just make sure there is ink in there. If there isn't, you just need to get a new one.

3. The head is being contaminated by some outside source such as ink build up on the spitting sponge, a wiper that is stuck in the out position or ink build up on the maintenance station and head surface. Make sure absolutely everything that touches the head has no ink build up on it and the head itself doesn't have ink build up on the bottom. This is common in 1204s because it's hard to get to the bottom of the head.

4. The worst case scenario is that the head is damaged internally and the cross-contamination is being caused by a broken channel. In that case, you need a new head. You can test this out as a last resort by trying to flush cleaning solution through the yellow and cyan channels. If you push cleaning solution through 1 channel and it comes out of another one, it's dead.
I replaced the dampers and got the green out of they yellow and I printed a wrap that night. When I went up the next day, one of the yellows lines was green again. I put a new cartridge in when I replaced the dampers, so it was not the cartridge. I flushed and flushed and cleaned the lines and put another damper in the one that had blue and did test prints of just 100% yellow and the blue lines never got any better. I tried one of the other manifolds at my shop and changed the rubber gasket between the manifold and print head and it is not clearing up. I would have tried a print head, but it is dried up.
 

FrankW

New Member
Replace the maintenance station. Most of the time this symptoms are the result of a capping which don‘t work properly anymore. Should be replaced once a year.
 
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