I’m sorry to hear of your continued frustration. Jon forwarded me your email thread from this weekend, so I know what the two of you discussed. To clarify, the R2400 cartridges ARE vacuum filled model carts, to be filled thru the hole next to the exit valve on the bottom of the cart, as you explained you did. The circular exit chamber of the cartridges should be about 1/2 filled with ink, and air vent hole open for proper ink flow. The bottom fill hole plug and top colored plug should be in the cart. After filling/refilling, carts should be tapped a few times exit valve down on a folded paper towel to force ink down and air up.
Did you carefully clean ink off the points in the cartridge chamber, that pierce the bottom of the carts, before installing the set of refill carts?
Are you doing back to back cleaning cycles and nozzle checks when you see missing nozzles? If so, about how many have you done in a row?
If you don’t see significant improvement in your nozzle check after 2-3 cleaning cycles, then you should stop doing cleaning cycles, and try something different.
I recommend following our instructions for cleaning the printer’s capping station, wiper blade and bottom of the print head, using PiezoFlush and high quality (not linty and don’t tear easily) paper towels (such as Bounty White). Our cleaning instructions can be found here: http://www.inkjetmall.com/tech/content.php?133-Printer-Cleaning-and-Preventative-Maintenance
Look inside the cartridge chamber to make sure there’s no build up of ink gunk around the points (if there is, gently clean it off using Q-tips and PiezoFlush or warm distilled water).
Make sure the capping station is flat and horizontal after cleaning, and paper towels come out whole after cleaning the bottom of the head (so you know a piece of paper towel didn’t rip off and get lodged under the head).
The temperature and humidity levels in the printing environment play an important role in how well the printer, inks and papers work. Too low of humidity (especially with high heat) can cause drying and clogging, whereas too much humidity can cause swelling of the printer pads, and lead to wicking of ink, as well as effect how paper takes ink. Even in the summer here in Vermont, we generally don’t get over 60%, though keep our AC’s running 24/7 to keep humidity (and temp) levels down more around the 40-50% range.
I hope this helps. Please keep me posted, and let me know if you have further questions or there’s anything else I can help you with.
Warmly~ Dana
The circular exit chambers are all full, or close to full.
I cleaned the ink off the points before installing the carts
I have done back to back cleaning cycles with no improvement. I don’t remember how many, probably two. I have also been doing all sorts of pattern prints as per your nozzle cleaning post.
I will go back and do a complete cleaning following your instructions. Unfortunately Bounty doesn’t exit in Australia but I use the best paper towels that I can find.
I’ll be back soon. At least this set of carts hasn’t dropped its contents in the printer. There is ink in the foam across the width of the printer. I assume that I need to get that out as well as I can.
I think that’s the general idea. This “Bounty” thing has always intrigued me. When my son was living in Montana recently he couldn’t find that brand either. If you Google it, it just seems to be a normal, quality brand. I think you have to take price as a sign of quality on this occasion. I did buy a cheap “home brand” packet once (for kitchen use) and it was easy to see the difference between that a better brand. It was thin, less soft, and more prone to break-up. I’ve also use clean, unused, flat Chux Super Wipes, since they’re soft, porous and even less likely to leave fibres on the print head. But Dana had no idea what I was talking about and there was no sign of them in Montana either, so I gather they’re an Australian speciality. The main issues are that you don’t want to scratch the head or leave fibres behind. For this reason it’s best to be very gentle, and be prepared to do it gently several times rather than have one big, hard scrub.
I was able to find Chux online, and it does specify Australia as the location. Visually, they look similar to a thin woven kitchen wipe available here in US, though I have no experience using them, so can’t offer any feedback, and hope they work well. As Brian pointed out, the wipes must be soft, don’t have loose fibers, and are strong (ton’t tear easily).
another thing- yes, you will want to blot up the ink on the long foam pad. I removed this foam pad from one old R2400, as we had an old style carts several years ago that did have a problem leaking, and that printer was used to test all the different cartridge styles we could find (surprisingly, all the different carts had poor ink flow, except the style we’ve been selling for the past few years), so it really got saturated while testing all the different carts. Even after all that ink mess, I’m happy to report that R2400 is still in good working condition (and has been safely stored with flush carts).
After a full maintenance, including two goes with the head cleaning kit, and three head cleans, it looks like I am perilously close. What now? More head cleans or clear patterns? I’m assuming that LLK and Y are working. It’s impossible to see on the nozzle check.
Hard to tell from a low res scan, but what I’d do at this stage Jeff is leave it and try printing. At least print a purge pattern or two. I can only see one missing nozzle in shade 3 and one in shade 4. I use a 10x loupe to examine shades 6 & 7 for gaps. You can see what’s going on a little more clearly in the lighter shades in a 720dpi calibration pattern, although you may not pick a single gap that way.
While you’d really like a perfect nozzle pattern, in my experience you won’t see these two single gaps in a print at 2880. Of course you’d want a perfect pattern in order to print a 21x4 pattern in order to create a soft-proof profile and do a linearity check, but that may have to wait. I think those gaps should clear by printing. I would not do any more head cleans for a while. Not at least until you’ve done a modest amount of printing. When I was trying to resuscitate my R2400 for ConeColor, I got to roughly this stage, but needed a perfect check to create ICC profiles in order to use the printer, and so did more head cleans and things got worse and never recovered. Perhaps you didn’t want to hear that.
Re Chux vs paper towels, I’m actually using paper towels at the moment. I can’t see the harm in Chux, but I’m guess I can’t be 100% sure. I use it sometimes as I think it cleans off a little more. It’s often therefore good to use last to be sure that you’ve got all the gunk off. You’ll have to make your own decisions based on common sense and the principles in my previous post.
Thanks Brian. I took your advice and did a couple of prints. The nozzle check now looks good in all channels, and my prints are looking very good. I’m wrestling with how I managed to get a complete set of dud carts. I did exactly the same in loading set 2 as set 1. I’ve also done more cleaning on the R2400 than seems reasonable but I have my fingers crossed.
Oh Jeff, I am pleased and so relieved. I bet Dana will be too. Based on my recent experiences, I think you need to keep your fingers crossed for about a week. Check often. Twice daily. If you see gaps re-emerge, print a purge pattern on just that channel to clear it. Especially if it’s a couple of rows. If that one channel repeatedly behaves like this then I’d be suspicious of that cart and would replace it. That’s essentially how I debugged the R1900 and what I’m going to do with the R2880 when time permits. Your experience gives me a little hope and I may even have one last go on my own R2400.
I’ve been following your journey closely and we’ve exchanged a lot of email. It’s be hard to follow exactly how and when and what you cleaned and ditto for filling. It’s possible that you’ve had a dud set, but I’ve not seen that before, at least not from a reliable source. One or two perhaps. I’m a bit agnostic about what caused your issues, based on what I’ve read. If you don’t get the cleaning and filling right, and some printers seem to be very fussy, then it leaks again and you have to clean again, etc. But then I’ve had a few bad carts recently, about which I will post once I’ve come to an end point.
Now we might be able to get back to debating some of my heretical ideas about how to print piezo …
Brian, a little heresy sounds very pleasant. I will check often as I started off this way before. These carts don’t appear to be leaking, and they’ve been in there for a couple of days. I did nothing different in filling this set than the first. I find it hard to fathom how I got a complete set of duds. It just doesn’t compute.
I really hope that it is resolved. If I don’t see the inside of a printer for a while, I won’t be complaining. Getting all of that ink removed was not fun.
Thanks for the update, I’m glad to hear you’re having good results with the second set of carts, and hope it continues! Yes, it is very puzzling that you had suck troubles with all the carts in the first set, and I’m not sure why that happened, as it’s highly unlikely that all 8 carts ere defective, based on our personal experience and sales history of these carts.
If you have a few individual nozzles missing, then it’s best to do some printing rather than doing more cleaning cycles. Printing will often bring the nozzles back, and a single nozzle may not be visible in your print output (depending on what shade).
Please do keep me posted, and let me know if you have questions or there’s anything else I can help you with.
Best regards and happy printing~ Dana
I’m not out of the woods yet. Everything was going well until I got one print that had lines etc through it. A quick check of the inks and the magenta is empty but the Supply Levels says about 30%. The cyan is also empty and the supply level says about 35%. I checked the capping station a little while ago and they looked clean, now the right hand one is full of ink.
I don’t have time to do anything else now. Is the supply level accurate? I pray that I don’t have more leaking carts. I will fill all the carts tomorrow morning and reset them and see how it goes.
I’ve been a silent online observer to Jeff’s problems in this thread, and we have communicated privately. Therefore, I’ll not jump into this thread since Brian and Dana have Jeff well covered.
I’ve been using PZ printing since it was first offered, and I’m a big fan. So, when someone says that he has heretical ideas about how to print PZ, it catches my attention. Since I have a fondness for heretics (throughout the ages) I’d like to hear more. Either here or at hflockwoodATverizonDotNet.
Jeff mentioned your helpful emails in his correspondence with me. I gather that Jon gave Jeff my details as a piezo guru who lived in the same country and who was therefore easier to interact with. Jon was half right - we’re in the same country, and only a few hours drive apart.
The piezo orthodoxy is that you must always, always print in Grey Gamma 2.2, and never, never convert to the soft proof profile for printing. To do otherwise is heresy. Sometimes I follow the orthodoxy but not always. I’m pragmatic. The heretic has to be extra careful with shadow detail, but there are more ways to open the shadows than simply converting to GG2.2, and converting to the profile can have some benefits, albeit minor ones.
I’m not sure if I have the courage to be a heretic on these forums, because I know the reaction. And we should not hijack this thread. You can always start another, better located one, and I’ll check my courage levels.
I don’t think anyone has Jeff’s 2400 well covered. I think he’s come to the end of the line with it, at least for piezo.
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