Discuss the various aspects of direct to garment printing. DTG printers include Brother, T-Jet, Flexi-Jet, DTG Kiosk, Kornit, Mimaki, Tex-Jet and others! Discuss and learn about this up and coming printing technology.
Here's an interesting/strange problem we're having with our BlazerPro ....
Our print head was starting to show signs of permanent clogging on a couple of channels, so to save time we ordered a new one. I installed it without any problems, but when the printer was booted up it showed a Service Req. 0001001B, which I think translates to a print head driver temperature error. For some reason, resetting the printer firmware cleared the problem (which I would not have expected, but tried anyway).
After that, a power clean worked well, but when I did a nozzle check absolutely nothing was printed. Same for PrinterJockey. It would appear that no print pulses are being sent to the print head, so I'm assuming a fuse has blown somewhere. I have a support request in to US Screen but won't be able to chat with them until Monday.
In the mean time, I double-checked all of the connections and cleaned the ribbon cable ends with a bit of alcohol just to make sure. I can see no evidence of any physical damage or connector problems. The printer boots up ok and gives no error messages, it just doesn't squirt ink.
I'm hoping it's simply a blown fuse, which I could easily replace even if I have to solder in a fuseholder.
BTW, when this printer is working, it produces excellent results. We're both pretty happy with it and with US Screen support.
Just a shot in the dark, but I know that on the smaller Epsons you need to rank the head when you install a new one, it might be that this needs to be done on the 4880 as well. Just a thought!
Hi,
You do need to rank the head to get proper colour, but that won't stop it printing.
There is no fuse specific to a head AFAIK.
Sounds like you may have blown a chip?
Is there ink in the dampers, you might not be getting ink through?
Well, it was a blown fuse. The 4880 main board uses those teensy soldered-on surface-mount fuses which aren't much bigger than a grain of rice. Rather difficult to repair, but I've worked with surface-mount components before.
I bypassed it with a fuse holder and a new fuse of the proper rating, but that didn't fix the entire problem. The yellow channel was permanently stuck "on" and laid down yellow ink no matter what other colors were being called for.
The support folks at US Screen sent me a new main board which I'll install today. That should fix the problem, since my gut feel is that a driver chip on the board has gone wonky. I'll know later today.
I think it's time to replace the print head ribbon cables as well, since the fingers are starting to look a bit worn from all the head changes I've done over time. They're still ok but I don't want to risk more problems down the line. Cables are pretty cheap so it's worth the investment.
Blown fuse in 4880??? 
