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HM-1 Not Printing White Ink

2746 Views 17 Replies 5 Participants Last post by  equipmentzone, 
M
Hi All,
I feel like this topic has been beat to death, but let's see if we can do this!

My white ink quality has been fading in quality for about a week, so even now if I do a heavy ink output on 1440x720 I am still getting a "ghost image". It seems that the white prints later in the process, like the back of the head is not printing any white ink

I have an Hm-1 With WIMS, with new white ink. I print at least 100 shirts a week. I clean the machine 2x a week. I clean capping station daily. Nozzle checks show perfect color, with white having only 4-5 rows of noticeable lines. I have the machine on all day when I am here.

The temp has been 100+ for a 4-5 day period. And my DTG is in a warehouse which is not air conditioned. I have fans circulating air, but no temp control. I have replaced the wiper blade on Friday, and rand distilled water through the system for the weekend. is it the head? Or capping station? Thanks!
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IYFGraphics
Max746 said:
The temp has been 100+ for a 4-5 day period. And my DTG is in a warehouse which is not air conditioned. I have fans circulating air, but no temp control. I have replaced the wiper blade on Friday, and rand distilled water through the system for the weekend. is it the head? Or capping station? Thanks!
Click to expand...
Chris, I'd have to say your environment is a contributing factor with that much heat your bound to have white ink problems, do you have any idea what the humidity in the print area is? if your in a dry climate it's also effecting it.

One solution would be to build a free standing room big enough to house the print area and try to control the temp & humidity in it with a small AC unit and humidifier.

On another note have you looked at the bottom of your print head, cleaned it? if your wiper was bad you may have a build-up of ink on the bottom of the print head effecting the seal on your capping station, when you do a ink purge do you see all colors in the capping station and does it flow to the waste ink tank?

Hope this helps.
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M
IYFGraphics said:
do you have any idea what the humidity in the print area is? if your in a dry climate it's also effecting it..
Click to expand...
The Humidity in my area is 65%. The print head is clean, I am picky about there being any ink build up on it. It seems that the white does not uniformly coat the capping station. Almost like not a lot of white ink is being circulated. Right now only colors are being purged no white. Thanks
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spiderx1
I would back up to the dampers then the lines / tubing. How long since the dampers changed. Also sounds like u did this but the small holes on the top of the ink channel nipples sometimes get clogged. The two ckoke points for build up in the head are the nipple where the dampers connects to the printhead and the screen on the bottom where the ink exits. U may need stronger cleaning solution than water. Or remove the head and soak the bottom 1/8 inch of the head in cleaning solution.
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M
looks like it is the dampers, thanks for the help guys you rock!
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spiderx1
Max746 said:
looks like it is the dampers, thanks for the help guys you rock!
Click to expand...
Keep fingers crossed.
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M
Hey Guys,
So I changed the dampers, primed them, and I can see ink charging in the capping station and through the tubes. i can see just traces of white ink in the waste tank though. Any ideas? Still doesn't print white ink...
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spiderx1
Max746 said:
Hey Guys,
So I changed the dampers, primed them, and I can see ink charging in the capping station and through the tubes. i can see just traces of white ink in the waste tank though. Any ideas? Still doesn't print white ink...
Click to expand...
Had similar problem, do you have two waste ink lines to the waste tank, one for CMYK and one for White?? I had a pinched line in the white would not let the head prime well. The pinch was in the connector at the waste tank, might try sucking some ink thu the capping station via the waste ink line. Remove the top to the waste tank and suck via syringe some ink thru the line. This is all done with the head in the park position on the capping station. should be relatively easy, you can check against the other line. Careful can be messy. Note I am not that familar with the HM1 setup so you may want to check to be sure that doesn't mess anything else up. Worked for me.
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M
So I cleaned out the lines, but no luck. No white in on nozzle checks but the white ink does prime. The white capping station is dirty with other ink, but it does flush through the capping station it looks like.
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spiderx1
Ok. Next. Stupid question but u are doing nozzle check on clear overhead
Slide material or plexi where u can see the white. Next do u have printer jockey program if not its on sale for 40$. Then u could run a flush on each channel seperatly.
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spiderx1
Ok. Next. Stupid question but u are doing nozzle check on clear overhead
Slide material or plexi where u can see the white. Next do u have printer jockey program if not its on sale for 40$. Then u could run a flush on each channel seperatly.
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M
Yes, Im doing nozzle checks on overhead transparencies, and no lines of white show.

And no I don't have the printer jockey program.
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spiderx1
Time to pull the head and clean sounds like. If u have not done already.
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M
Looks like that is what I need to do. I print a ton of shirts, so it is hard to rationalize taking it apart. Is there any online documents that I can use as a guide other than the mesa print head replacement guide?
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spiderx1
Swfeast has some videos.
Also there was recent activity on
The forum under cleaning stratagies.
The videos are for the removal and
Replacement of the head. Cleaning is
Not without risk. Remember suck and soak
And suck more. Pushing fluid
Should be last. Pm to follow.
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N
i purchased a hm1 wims, about 18 months ago and it was nothing but a nightmare. there wasnt a single day of printing that was without hassle. in that time i literally spent more time trying to get it function correctly than i did printing.

i learnt alot though about how to unblock certain parts in that time though.

it came to the point a couple months ago where i just had to disable the white from my machine and now im just using cmyk. its a bit dissapointing, but life is so much less stressful and i have not had 1 single hiccup in a couple months, its been such a relief.

some things i found helpful:

(others might warn against them, but thats what i found effective, when everything else suggested failed)

the 'cleaning solution' doesnt clean very well at all ..is it just expensive water?? who knows....so mixed with it a small amount of isopropyl alcohol which works wonders.

filling the capping station and soaking the head overnight in the cleaning solution/alcohol mix helped.

i cut a small piece of the clear tubing and put it on the end of a syrine so it was only about 1-2mm longer than the syringe tip, i used this to suck along the white ink lines on the surface of the print head, this was something that helped quite alot at getting blocked nozzles to fire.

the drain line that runs from under the capping station is very poorly designed. the tube is so incredibly thin and at a couple points it changes in diametre and is prone to blocking up, the reult of this is the capping station doesnt suck as well as it should and doesnt clean the head very well. you need to take off the machines blue cover and you will be able to see the tubes, its a bit tricky to identify, you can trace the lines back from the waste ink container and from the capping station. unplugging this and sucking or poking can unblock this. it took me quite a while to identify, but this helped a lot keeping these lines clear and sucking efficiently.

i hope that helps some, :)

be very carfeul with every step though because everything is so fragile in these machines, which im sure you already know....:rolleyes:

im sure i have other tips about specifics, but they were the main helpful things i found.

any other questions dont hesitate to ask.

and good luck :)
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M
Hey Guys,
Looks like it was the print head. Just replaced it this morning, did a few head cleans and it is good to go. So in All I replaced the white ink dampers, capping station and print head. All was worth it though. My only question now is when I was changing the print head, there was only 2 screws holding it down the the carriage assembly. One tightened and the other looked loose. Are these screws that important where I need to bug Mesa for a few of them. They have really spaced thread so I would have to get one from them I think
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E
The screws are specific for that location on these printers.

Harry
Equipment Zone
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