Designjet 1055CM - Defective Print Heads

[bronsonferri]

Hello all,

I'm in an office environment and I have a DesignJet 1055CM. My company won't approve funding for a new plotter, so I've been tasked with getting this one back online. Everything seems to be working properly except the print heads. I replaced the yellow, magenta, and cyan printheads and printhead cleaners. Still waiting on the black printhead to come in the mail (GUI is telling me it needs to be replaced and it doesn't print well at all). 

The new cyan printhead I put in is missing lines on every print. It's always the same lines, too. If I look really close on the magenta, the lines are a little sloppy and I can see very tiny white gaps. Are these two print heads defective? New Magenta; New CyanComparison New v Old

[bronsonferri]

By the way, the new print heads were purchased sealed from Staples.

[meat1820]

even new printheads can get clogged nozzles just from sitting on a shelf to long,,,

put hot water in a bowl, not much 1/8", just enough to cover nozzles of printhead. Let it soak and loosen the clog up for 3-4 minutes and try iy again. that usually works for me.

there is a printhead  flush & refill kit you can get from ebay that works real well too.

[pbrooks259]

You can probably calibrate the printheads, do an accuracy calibration with the paper you will be using, and your prints will probably turn out fine.

You can do the steeping in hot water for a bit as noted above and dabbing on a paper towel (I prefer damp towels) to see if you can create continuous printhead lines--no or not many clogged nozzles.

Furthermore, you can create a damp folded paper towel to a thickness of about 1/16 to 1/8". Squish the printhead down and up on it. This creates a bit of suction when you pull the printhead up. Do that until you have created continuous printhead lines by dabbing on another paper towel. Sometimes it seems you just can't seem to unclog any more nozzles. Then maybe you can resort to what the last poster suggested.