Digital BW, The Print

Hi John,

I think by the time you're through with this head maintenance, you're
definitely going to be one of our resident experts on the 7000 ;>) 
Sorry to hear it's being so uncooperative and giving you such grief,
though. The "school of hard knocks" is definitely a rough course, but
in the end, it's a good one.

Couple of things:

1. I wouldn't spend any more money on inks or cleaning fluids until
you've gone through a couple of more steps and you see something
happening on paper that tells you the heads are firing. You've had
some good advice on this already from others -- what you can use for
substitute cleaning fluids, not putting your Piezo inks into the
breech yet, etc.

2. Glad the capping station alignment seemed to solve part of the
problem for you. However, I wondered if you followed that process
through to completion -- have you actually observed the system pulling
ink from the capping stations and dumping it into the waste pads
during your init and KK2 cycles?

It's not that I think a problem there would prevent your heads from
firing even a dot of ink onto the paper during your nozzle checks if
your feedlines are actually clear, your dampers filled, screens clear,
etc. Rather, it's more in the spirit of knowing that fluid is freely
flowing "end to end" through your system and under its own steam. 

You can test this by wetting the capping station and seeing if that
fluid is being pulled down through the pump and dumped onto the pads.
Initially, you don't necessarily have to pull ink through the heads,
and you can even actuate the pump manually -- then, if that looks good
I'd park the heads and make sure you're seeing the same free flow.

Given how stubborn this system is acting, I'm just suggesting it's
prudent to make sure that the entire path from "cart to waste pad" is
clear, unobstructed, pumps working properly, etc. This shouldn't take
too much time.

3. If that all looks good -- and you can definitely ascertain that the
fluid in your carts (whatever that may be) is being pulled through the
system and dumping onto your waste pads, then you're back to the
question of the heads themselves -- but not until then.

4. All this may seem like overkill -- but you're not reporting any
error messages on your control panel, so electronic failure isn't at
the top of the list. Not that the self-diagnostics rule out every
possiblity there, but you just want to be sure that less complex
mechanical systems are doing their part first.

5. Last question here -- and my apologies if I missed this info from
an earlier part in your posting, but it's very important:

Exactly what was the printer doing -- or not doing -- before you
embarked on the head replacement process? Was it printing at all?
Please describe a bit about it's "pre-maintenance state".

Hang in there, John! You'll get this puppy printing beautiful Piezo
prints before long...

Regards,
Richard

 

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "john dean"
<deanwork2003@y...> wrote:
> 
> I've installed the heads and brought the Epson dye  ink into the new
dampers. There is 
> plenty of ink in the carts and lines and dampers.
> 
> Then did the initializing of the head numbers. Then did initial
fill. Then cleaned etc.
> 
> There is plenty of ink in the lines and dampers but I can get NO
nozzle check at all. Not 
> even the hint of a nozzle line. This has gone on all day.
> 
> I sincerely don't think the pump would choose this particular time
to go out. When I do a 
> head cleaning the pump sounds like it is working fine. Something in
the head is not right I 
> guess. Checked it three times.
> 
> Any suggestions?
> 
> John