[mclishsportswear]

We have a Mimaki GP-604D.

Recently the discharge head had become severely clogged. After going through all of the usual fixes, it was still >60% clogged. It wasn't working anyway, so I went for broke. I pulled the head carriage apart to get to the discharge lines, disconnected the line from the damper to the head, and used a syringe to push cleaning fluid through the head to push the clogs out.

It worked beautifully. The head is nearly 100% clean.

While printing, we noticed a slight yellow halo around our images. I also noticed some yellow over spray around the ink caps. I knew the yellow head was around 20% clogged and figured a partial clog was causing over spray, so I tried the same solution that had worked on the discharge head (see above).

Now nothing prints. The printer goes through the motions, but not a single color comes out of any head, not even for a test pattern.

I've rechecked every connection that I touched or came close to during the procedures. I've done head cleanings, nozzle washes, line fills, etc.

When doing a clean, ink does come through the heads. I can see it drip down where the waste reservoir sets if I take the reservoir out and put a rag down.

What am I missing? Why don't I see even the slightest hint of printing?

 

[mclishsportswear]

After working on the M/Y head, using a syringe to pull all of the air bubbles out of the dampers, the C/K head started working 100%. This makes no sense to me unless it's just coincidence.

Still no M/Y or D.

Rebooting Mimaki. . .

Still only C & K. I'll do another 99 min nozzle wash and see what happens.

***this just doesn't make sense ***

 

[mclishsportswear]

Nothing!
I did a fill wash and that seemed to help the discharge head. It seems to be working.

The M/Y head still does not print anything.

If I run it and run it over and over the same image, one that uses only M/Y, then I get a very faint blue gray haze where it should be printing, but no M/Y.

I've pulled ink through the lines and dampers with a large syringe, reseated the hoses and dampers, run clean cycles, line fill cycles, nozzle clean cycles.

Nothing comes out of the M/Y.

It was working well enough. All I did was push some cleaning fluid through the head. The EXACT same thing I did to the discharge head to clean it.

Any ideas? Please!?

I can't tell my boss we now have a $25,000 paper weight. It won't go over well. And I'm not sure we can afford the $100/hour service call. ($50 per hour travel time)!

 

[mclishsportswear]

I cleaned out the dampers on the M/Y lines. That doesn't seem to have helped so far, though the M damper was dirty.

I'm just about through. There's not much more I can do. I can't even begin to tell you how frustrating this is. It just doesn't make sense.

 

[mrbigjack50]

Maybe dampers are junked??
Seems like you been talking yourself through this ha
Them dampers are sensitive and hope you wore glove because they are sensitive to oil from hand (what I was told) Personally when I gotta get into the damper area do to bad clog, i change them out but if you are in pickle, than I suggest to run it under so luke warm water to rinse out any contaminants.
Check little holes the dampers go over because you may have dried ink build up due to not printing and exposure to air

 

[mclishsportswear]

You're right about the dampers being sensitive to clogging. It's also not a good idea to run tap water through them. Tap water has minerals and other chemical contaminants that can clog or damage the dampers, heads, caps, etc. Our Mimaki distributor/service person recommends only distilled water, and better yet is a 2 to 1 distilled water / SimpleGreen solution.

In the end we had to call in the big guns. Steve K, our distributor and service person. He's a great guy to work with on the phone and in person. He was able to diagnose an electrical failure in two heads. Once replaced and aligned, the GP-604 is back and running.

We're still having an unrelated problem with a false ERROR 120 message that comes up regularly and an occasional printer lock up, but at least it's working well enough to meet the orders.

Big thanks to Steve K.

 

[mclishsportswear]

I ended up tearing apart two pumps and cleaning them out. Steve replaced two heads and a mess of dampers, and that seemed to fix the no color issue.

We were still getting a consistent "ERROR 120" just about whenever the printer was asked to do something. Working with Steve, we had narrowed it down to a temperature sensor on the motherboard going bad. It's a sensor not used in this printer, but used on other printer models that this same motherboard is used in.

It was also locking up periodically without any pattern that would tell us why. One night it locked up on several shirts in a row, becoming unresponsive to any button press and reporting "ERROR 120". We shut it down for the night. When we came back in the morning it was working flawlessly. The "ERROR 120" message stopped showing up. We hadn't done anything different and can't explain it.

It's working like new. I'm a little concerned about the chaotic "ERROR 120" with irregular lock ups. I don't really know what it was, why it went away, or when/if it will come back. That's not a good way to keep working, but as long as it's working we'll press on.

 

[richrunn]

So I have the same problem with the Y only so we replaced the damper. The M is just fine and the damper and hoses seem to hold the ink but I can't get anything past the point of the damper (at least it appears this way). We finally broke down and have a guy coming in to look at it. Travel time charge is $180 per hour. Highway driving robbery but there seems to be only a few people that know about these machines and they want to be paid for it. I will definitely suggest an electrical problem as a possible solution to him.

 

[danben]

trying to figure out a similar problem. Maybe this is me being dumb, but what are the dampers, and how can you tell if they need to be replaced?