I am currently extremely frustrated with my HM-1. I bought it used and immediately replaced everything involved with ink flow. I replaced dampers with bulk ink carts, new print head, new ink line harness, and new V02 ink. The machine actually ran great for about a week. Then I started having white ink issues. When I print a nozzle check my CMYK is perfect and my white is hit or miss. I find it hard to believe that my white ink nozzles are this clogged after a week. I have now been trying to fix it for about a week 1/2 since. I thought I had figured out through advice here that the problem was humidity. The week of great runs was during a week of rain and so that would explain why it naturally ran great. I now have four humidifiers surrounding the table that my machine is on so that I can hit 40% and sometimes 50%.
I have put literally every dime I have into this and now I'm going from pay check to pay check and waiting on my next one to come in from my day job. I am very frustrated with this machine. Is this how the HM-1 lifestyle really is? I can't afford a new print head every two weeks.
My machine will either be on ebay shortly or i'll chase all my customers away and start from scratch again when I get paid next thursday. If it doesn't go out the window first.
My issue almost seems like ink starvation but I can't print a clean white nozzle check. If I do a head cleaning or few, I can print like a shirt to a shirt 1/2 worth of white underbase before the underbase fades away into banding again.
Maybe my humidity issues caused me to ruin my dampers and/or printhead before I could correct it. And now that the humidity issue has been addressed I'm still suffering from its results?
Someone please help me...BobbieLee where are you? LOL
Ok I think what will help you is if you flush your machine with distilled water and cleaning solution. The reason for this is that while you were trying to get your printer back up, the ink in the dampers and printhead may have settled a bit. To do this you would need to get some distilled water from the grocery store. It has to be distilled as other waters have minerals in them and are bad for the machine.
Once you get some distilled water, fill your ink bottles with a mixture of 50/50 distilled water and cleaning solution. It also helps to warm the water a bit before hand as the warm water breaks down ink better. Flush your system using ink charges until you are getting clear water fluid into your waste ink bottle. I have a feeling you have some white ink buildup from in sitting.
Once you get your machine running properly, really they work great. its just frustrating getting it down at a first I flush my machine once a month as part of my routine maintenance, and it really helps from getting any buildup.
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Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest. ~~~Mark Twain BobbieLee www.brightlittlebeginnings.com
Nice, thanks for the help and advice. I just flushed my machine when we spoke on here about humidity. I went through a whole bottle of flushing solution (the green stuff) and I'm having a hard time finding distilled water for some reason. I find a lot of distilled with minerals added which is like WTF. I guess I will flush again tomorrow with flushing solution. I do the same things over and over again and they don't seem to help. Thats when I drew the conclusion that I guess I need a new printhead and dampers and lines and just start all over from scratch again. I don't really know though. Do you filter your white ink as you add it to the white ink bottle? What about the other colors, do you filter those as well?
I dont filter my ink at all. Your first problem was probably the humidity, but it sounds like you may have gotten a bit of buildup. Also have you tried soaking your printhead with solution in the capping station? If not, let me know and I will explain how to do it. It only takes about 15 to 20 drops of solution, but it needs to be put in there correctly for it to work. Heck I will just explain it
To soak the printhead in cleaning solution via the capping station :
Make sure to have a syringe with cleaning solution ready
Do a regular head clean and wait til the end of the cleaning cycle
for the printhead to go over to the left hand at the spit station.
Once it goes over to the left hand side, quickly fill the capping station with
cleaning solution. It usually takes around 10 to 20 drops.
Then when the printhead comes back over and homes itself on the capping station,
turn off the machine from the emergency power on the front of the machine.
Let the printer sit for at least an hour.
Also you might want to clean the face of the printhead with a foam tip cleaner and solution, as sometimes just residual ink on the face can clog the nozzles.
Once you have done this let me know if it prints any better. You can try this first before flushing, as it is much easier then flushing the whole system, and might work if the problem is just with buildup in the print head and not in the dampers.
side at the spit station. Once it is over
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Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest. ~~~Mark Twain BobbieLee www.brightlittlebeginnings.com
Yes, I was doing this method of soak each night since the flush. I am also doing it right now. I suspect my dampers are clogged. When I flushed I sprayed cleaning solution through each nipple/nozzle-set with about 95% successful open nozzles. So now that I step back and think about it, its probably starvation in the dampers.
It does sound like it could be the dampers. I am not sure if it works the same with the cartridge dampers as it does for the regular ones like I have, but you can flush those too. its kind of a pain, but if you dont have extras it can be done. I have not dealt with the cartridge ones though, so I am not sure. Those are what you have right?
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Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest. ~~~Mark Twain BobbieLee www.brightlittlebeginnings.com
Yea I have the cartridge ones... I was told they were an upgraded version of the dampers, but I think the dampers have filters in them right? I can't really see if there's a filter in the cartridge but it doesn't seem like there is. It almost seems like the dampers are better? I dunno...
I will be honest here I had the option of upgrading to the cartridges after they came out, and I chose not to. I noticed on the cart system that it required smaller ink lines, and that did not make sense to me to make the lines have less ink flow. I also can get the regular dampers at many other places, and sometimes for alot cheaper then they sell them through the dtg distributors, since they are the only ones that sell the carts, but the regular damper is the same ones used on any R2400 printer. Those are the reasons I chose against the cart system. There are people that like both, but for myself I decided to stick with what I had
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Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest. ~~~Mark Twain BobbieLee www.brightlittlebeginnings.com
So which dampers do you use if you don't mind my asking? I know a lot of people like the 'high performance' ones but they're still like $20/ea. or so... The carts are only like $7 plus I would definitely have to get new lines if I went back to the old dampers.
I use the regular epson dampers I have used the cheaper ones, and still do from time to time. The cheaper ones run about $12 a piece. They are more expensive I guess then the carts. I had no idea how much they cost. That is not a bad price though. Since you already have the carts I would just work with that, and see if you cant get printing better You just need to get a rhythm down as far as how your machine runs and what it needs.
It is frustrating at the beginning learning everything, but once you figure it all out and get a maintenance routine worked out, it does get easier. I always say I make my machine happy, and it makes me happy its just alot to learn in the beginning.
I will help as much as I can too. that is one of the great things about this forum, is there are so many here who are able to help.
Its funny when I first got my machine 2 years ago, I think I definitely learned more here then from the distributor
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Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest. ~~~Mark Twain BobbieLee www.brightlittlebeginnings.com
HM-1 inches a little closer to the edge.. 
Where are you located?
