L1800 Procolored Need help identifying the cause of this black ink contamination

[Jeff C]

I recently had to replace the 10 fuse on my mainboard and finally tracked down an OEM Epson printhead.  I had shorted the original. Transitor pairs appeared to test properly from following Kevin at BCH's tutorial. The new print head doesn't seem to have any issues except blacks seem to be ?¿dripping? into adjacent colors. My capping station head seal is clean, wiper blade is clean, printhead is very clean along with the metal frame on the head face. This seemed to get a touch worse after doing a printhead alignment. The Procolored build has suction from below the platten to keep film flat and there appears to be fair bit of clearance from head to material. I cleaned encoder strip and belt. I haven't ran a ton of jobs through this head yet and have been being conservative on head cleanings. I did see improvement when I switched back to my old capping pad head that doesn't have a sponge in it (came from Procolored that way) and it seemed to improve some. Also it seems to be more prominent further away from capping station. In the examples attached, I was doing bidirectional. It is still happening in unidirectional 0to80 and 80to0 column.  Any help would be appreciated

[johnson4]

11 minutes ago, Jeff C said:

I recently had to replace the 10 fuse on my mainboard and finally tracked down an OEM Epson printhead.  I had shorted the original. Transitor pairs appeared to test properly from following Kevin at BCH's tutorial. The new print head doesn't seem to have any issues except blacks seem to be ?¿dripping? into adjacent colors. My capping station head seal is clean, wiper blade is clean, printhead is very clean along with the metal frame on the head face. This seemed to get a touch worse after doing a printhead alignment. The Procolored build has suction from below the platten to keep film flat and there appears to be fair bit of clearance from head to material. I cleaned encoder strip and belt. I haven't ran a ton of jobs through this head yet and have been being conservative on head cleanings. I did see improvement when I switched back to my old capping pad head that doesn't have a sponge in it (came from Procolored that way) and it seemed to improve some. Also it seems to be more prominent further away from capping station. In the examples attached, I was doing bidirectional. It is still happening in unidirectional 0to80 and 80to0 column.  Any help would be appreciated

That’s usually a faulty damper, Improperly/I’ll fitting/seated damper, or if the damper is a “ free flow” damper too much positive pressure on the ink side. 
 

if all that checks out it’s possible the head has a seal broken. 
 

usually has to do with damper/ink pressure. 

Edited September 15, 2023 by johnson4