Cyan mixing with yellow ink in the damper

InkjetMall Customer Support Printer Maintenance & Cartridges
13

Thanks, Kelly. No, they’ve never been in the wrong locations, and even if they had been, the amount and placement of the ink on the external surfaces wouldn’t be accounted for by that.
I’ll do as you suggest about rinsing the cartridges, but what would that potentially do for them?

I think I need to take off the right side of the printer case again and check that there isn’t any leaking from the new pump and capping station area too.

David

14

Thanks, Dana,

I agree that the ink might be coming from the cleaning area. I’m going to take off the side cover again and check it.
Haven’t seen any ink drips from the dampers but I’ll check again. It’s possible I didn’t tighten something enough when installing the new dampers.
Any idea of what the “something else” could be if the yellow damper/channel is still doing that after damper replacement?

Thanks again for your thoughts,
David

15

Update:
Last night I pulled the right side cover from my 7800 to take a look at the pump and capping station. Everything looked good to me there. The drain lines did not appear to be kinked and I didn’t see any sign of ink where it shouldn’t be, other than the ink on the fronts of the black and yellow ink bays. Not just around the nipple. I described all of that above. I also took a look at the damper assembly and didn’t see any leaking. I haven’t really pulled it apart yet but nothing obvious to explain the green ink in the yellow damper.
I ordered some more ink last night from Inkjet Mall. I don’t have enough right now to run another power clean when I get the new yellow cart. in place.
After I get the replacement ink, I’ll move forward with the above suggestions from Dana and Kelly.

16

Hi Kelly,

I haven’t received the replacement yellow cart. I haven’t been able to do any work on the printer until I get the ink I ordered from Inkjetmall. It should be here today. I just wanted to check on the cartridge since I don’t have any tracking info. for it.

Thanks,
David

17

Hi David- My apologize, I looked up your order to see it was sitting in the system and hadn’t been sent to the warehouse yet, but it was sent today and you should be seeing it by the end of the week.

BUT for now, I thought you said you have a Yellow & Black cartridge that are filled with Flush? For a work around (which I was under the impression you were going to try) you can empty the flush carts back into the bottle, rinse with distilled water and fill with the pigment inks. When you receive the new cart you can simply use it for your flush cart again. This will get you started at least, to figure out if this is cartridge related or not.

Again, my apologize for the delay in shipping the replacement cartridge. Kindly-Kelly

18

Thanks, Kelly. I appreciate your following up on that.
Yes, I can do that with the flush carts and I will. I was waiting to get some more ink of a couple of colors that were too low to run a clean with. That ink should be delivered today.

Thanks again,
David

19

Kelly and Dana,

I got the additional ink from Inkjet mall that I needed and so was ready to proceed with figuring this out.
So, I pulled the damper box out to look at the dampers and the yellow damper had bright green ink in it as expected. I’m trying to upload a photo of it. The line going into the yellow damper had bright yellow ink, all the way to the entry to the damper. The Cyan cross contamination is coming into the head end of the damper.
I also found that the matt black ink damper was contaminated with Cyan ink. I think the rest of the dampers seemed to be OK.
I put it all back together after checking that the capping station and pump were OK and the Flush box looked OK. Remember from above, both of those are brand new.
I put in my cartridges that have Piezoflush in and ran some power cleans to fill the system with Piezoflush. That’s what it has in it now.
I’m nervous about putting the ink back in without a clear idea of what is causing this because I fear it will just happen again and this is all pretty expensive in terms of wasted material. Plus, I can’t use my printer.
The dampers I have in place are all new Inkjet mall dampers. But NOTE, when I went to put in the new dampers is when I noticed that the old yellow damper also had green ink in it. So whatever is going on, predates the new dampers, pump and capping station and flush box. I think I will replace all the carts on the right hand side of the printer with the ones that I currently use for piezoflush to rule out a cartridg causing this.
Bear in mind, that after I put in all those new parts, once I got the printer working again, it printed very well until seemingly suddenly, some days later, all this cross contamination came about again.
Please help! I need some ways to proceed.
Thanks for your thoughts!
David

20

One other possibility from experience. With a Roland large format printer using Epson print heads, the capping stations are separated for pairs of print heads. They are considered routine maintenance replaceable parts and Roland supplies their customers with a small bag of capping stations.

When these print heads are divided into two separate colors (rather than 2 x 6 color printer, it becomes a 1 x 12 color printer) - contamination of one channel into the other is the result of a worn capping station. These are extremely easy to replace on the Roland. Replacing the capping station remedies the situation. When the capping station gets worn it usually does at one location rather than completely around the entire seal. While one channel is being pumped, any leak near an adjacent ink channel causes that channel to suck up the adjacent ink rather than being pumped. Cleaning operations on Epson printers or Roland printers using Epson print heads is the result of using the capping station to seal around the print head and suction is used. How one channel sucks up while the capping station sucks down seems to defy physics - but there it is.

So, I wonder if you have a pitted or worn rubber seal on your capping station, or some small bit of matter that is embedded on the seal allowing the leak. That may be the source of the contamination from one channel to another. So its worth trying to get a closer examination of the rubber seal. If you can put an illuminated scope on it - cool. If you can shine a light on it and take a very high resolution picture to look at it that way - that can work as well. What should it look like? It should look like a new capping station seal, rather than a worn, or pitted capping station seal. The seal is the rubber type grommet on the outside of the capping station. Look for a tear, a pit mark, a tiny cut, or worn area.

Kelly and Dana will be back on Monday - but in the meantime this may help you get sorted.

21

Thank you Jon, I will look at the seal but it’s a brand new pump and capping station. I the new unit it on, along with a new flush box when I replaced the dampers a few weeks ago. So this is a new capping station. Also, the cross-contamination happened with the old pump and capping station in place before I changed the dampers and the other parts. Just the same, I’ll take a close look. Whatever it is, something is forcing ink the wrong direction because the ink lines going into the dampers are not contaminated. It’s coming from the other direction somehow.

Thanks for your thoughts,
David

22

Hi David,

I am afraid the only logical part left to replace is the print head. When there is internal damage done to the manifold on the print head, it will allow ink to cross contaminate normally between 2 side by side channels of the print head. This doesn’t always follow the same logic with every damaged manifold inside a head. Now you have experienced this with your Cyan mixing in the Yellow and Cyan mixing in the MK position, you have 2 channels cross contaminating at the head side of the ink supply system.

23

Thanks for the response, Kelly. That’s really sad news for me because I think the cost of a new print head is very high. Might mean I can’t fix the printer. Lowest price I see on Ebay is about $800.

David

24

Thanks for the response, Kelly. That’s really sad news for me because I think the cost of a new print head is very high. Might mean I can’t fix the printer. Lowest price I see on Ebay is about $800.

David

25

Would I just need to replace the Manifold adapter (about $45) or the entire print head ($800 to $1300)?

Thanks,
David

26

Would I just need to replace the Manifold adapter (about $45) or the entire print head ($800 to $1300)?

Thanks,
David

27

I have no personal experience with replacing just a manifold on a print head. It is my understanding there is a seal in between the 2 that is critical in creating a good, solid seal and once you remove the manifold you won’t be able to seal it back up effectively.

28

I too have wondered about replacing the manifold on a print head. I have a couple of misbehaving heads that I plan to try this on. Compared to the cost of a new head or new printer, wasting $45 and some time doesn’t seem to put too much at risk. If you try it first then please let us know how it goes.

29

Thanks for the thoughts. I was having trouble visualizing the membrane that is potentially causing my ink cross contamination. Now it makes more sense if it’s between the manifold and the printhead itself. Might be worth a try to replace the manifold. I need to do some more research on it. Let me know as well, if you try it.

David

30

http://www.signs101.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-89419.html

I just saw the info on the link above. Sounds like people are able to replace manifolds and there are some sources for DX5 printheads they are discussing.

31

A suggestion to David, take the print head apart to see if you can verify the failing parts inside the unit. Either way, you are going to be taking the head apart or throwing it out, so you aren’t risking anything by doing some exploratory research on the manifold and head.

32

Thanks, Kelley. Yes, true enough. Probably not much to lose in exploratory surgery. I have another manifold on order so I can try replacing it. The frustrating part is the contamination takes some time to show uo so it takes a while to know.

David