Having a positive air flow in an Industrial CIJ Inkjet printhead is a good thing in any application, it’s highly recommended in all bottom coding applications, and a must in a dusty, wet, or humid environment.
Like most Industrial Inkjet Manufactures Leibinger offers an on-board air pump to produce this positive air flow and has for a long time. You can order any Leibinger printer to include this option. However the reason we don’t offer this in the Leibinger printer as a standard feature is that using an on-board air pump DOES NOT WORK when you really need it, not to mention the added maintenance, PM time and cost it can create. As you can see in the photo below the positive air pump in the competitive printer is not working.
The following information was obtained while installing a Leibinger Jet3 printer that is replacing (4) competitive printers after only one year due to the many short comings of the printers and the problems working with this major inkjet manufacture.
The perforations in the head cover do not allow for a sufficient amount of positive pressure to overcome the negative pressure of the vacuum and gravity. You can also see that the perforations have become plugged and in this real application photo the customer must clean the head cover every shift.
Having to clean the head cover means the customer must completely remove the print head cover which requires them to reinstall the entire assembly back in the line and make all of the adjustments to get the print orientated properly back into position on the product.
The customer told us they are getting numerous H.V. errors during the day due to dirt coming thru the perforations and shorting the HV plates.
The customer is cleaning the head every 8 hours minimum and sometimes 2 to 3 times on a shift.
The customer also told us they have to make adjustments to the nozzle on regular basis and when we commented that this is probably due to the fact they are making adjustments when the nozzle is just dirty, they informed us with a smile that this is what they thought as well, but whenever they call the factory service technician in for repairs regarding this problem this is exactly what he is doing. We believe they’re blaming the nozzle and the problem is really accumulated ink spray back, dirt, and debris. Just what this manufacture says their perforated printhead was designed to eliminate, claming the design reduces buildup across the entire printhead face and extends time between cleaning.
Call 856-753-8600 and ask for Ed Carter for more information.
