Qimage improvement

[enduser]

There's a new addition to Qimage - you can set to halt printing after every page or any number of pages, and the length of the halt, as an aid to keeping heads cool, (not the human ones.) This and the infinitely variable un-attended nozzle exercise is an unbeatable maintenance routine for us.

[Ernst Dinkla]

I asked Mike if he had a specific printer in mind that needed that solution. He gave some examples, piëzo and thermal heads. For the HP Z's I have, there never was a case that I thought the heads failed due to overheating and they are thermal. Prints up to 6 M² without issues.  What I read about HP thermal heads failing is a lack of ink in the head buffers, I guess either a failing sensor or the sieves in the heads blocking up over time.

Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

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[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I asked Mike if he had a specific printer in mind that needed that solution. He gave some examples, piëzo and thermal heads. For the HP Z's I have, there never was a case that I thought the heads failed due to overheating and they are thermal. Prints up to 6 M² without issues.  What I read about HP thermal heads failing is a lack of ink in the head buffers, I guess either a failing sensor or the sieves in the heads blocking up over time.

Hi Ernst,

I don't know what triggered Mike doing the effort of adding this feature, but he also mentions that parking the heads will wipe the heads and that can avoid unwanted drops being deposited on subsequent prints. Maybe these two (heat and spurious drops) are related?

Cheers,
Bart

[Ernst Dinkla]

Hi Ernst,

I don't know what triggered Mike doing the effort of adding this feature, but he also mentions that parking the heads will wipe the heads and that can avoid unwanted drops being deposited on subsequent prints. Maybe these two (heat and spurious drops) are related?

Cheers,
Bart

Given the rudimentary wipers in some Epson maintenance stations I tend to agree that ink building up on the surface surrounding the nozzles may bake to that surface when the heads get hot enough. And cause head failure over time. Drops that fall from the heads usually indicate filthy maintenance stations and again bad wipers. Hardly happens here and when it happens I know its time to take off the right cover and wipe away excessive ink build up in the maintenance station itself. The funny thing is that that issue usually is caused by too many cleaning cycles done by the user. On my Z's there's one small vertical wiper too near the droplet checker, at the level of the paper transport clamp rollers. I recall the smudges made by similar rollers on the Epson 9000 where accumulated ink on the heads was transferred to the rollers.

Maybe the Qimage feature is a remedy but I see it more as a cure for a bad design than an inherent problem of thermal or piëzo heads. That was why I asked whether it was related to certain printers.


Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst
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