After using UV printer with Ricoh print heads, there will be a common problem, the printed products present a phenomenon of drawing, that is faults which look like wavy silk pattern. So why does this happen?

To figure out the reason we must first explain how the print head works. The print head for UV printer is consist of thousands of sophisticated nozzles, and is able to print 1 color or several colors at the same time. Take reference with Ricoh print head, each Ricoh GEN4 print head contains 384 nozzles, which is a type of grey-scale piezoelectric print head with multi-drop printing technology, min 7PL, max35PL, photo-precision, able to print 2PT alphabets clearly, it is with highly accuracy. A single Ricoh print head is able to print 8 different colors, every 38 nozzles print one kind of color. So when the print head is operating and one of the nozzles is not working or lost the ability to jet ink, the drawing happens.

Reason A: One of the nozzles blocked, lead to drawing.

Solution: Jet the UV cleaner to clean the print head, or dip the print head several hours with alcohol than use the cleaner.

Reason B: The air in the nozzle blocked the ink.

Solution: Use the ink purge function to press the ink and squeeze out the air.

Reason C: Aging print head

Solution: Replace the print head