Optimizing Memjet Printhead Life Leave a comment

Ready to Become a Memjet Printhead Ninja??

Memjet printhead technology is amazing. Millions of tiny drops of ink get sprayed at precisely the correct time at high speed resulting in vibrant, high-resolution imagery to give you the most professional-looking labels possible.

This is just a very simplified snapshot of the power or Memjet printing. Memjet printhead technology allows you to print your own professional labels quickly and easily while avoiding some of the less desirable aspects of ordering your labels from a third party like minimum order quantities and wasted inventory.

However, as wonderful as Memjet printing is, it can be equally frustrating.

As with any situation, problems seem to pop up at the worst possible moment. Usually when you’re in the middle of a large print job for a customer or you have a huge order for your products that needs to be shipped… yesterday.

Our team has even encountered these types of things just as we’re preparing for a customer demo in our showroom. I usually prepare our demos 30 minutes before “curtain time” only to find out I’ve forgotten to use my printer for a couple of weeks and now I have streaks on the sample labels I’m about to show to a new or potential customer.

We approach every sale of a Memjet printer with an “Eyes Wide Open” approach. We love Memjet technology and we think you will too. But, it’s important that each of our customers not only understands the many positive aspects of Memjet printing but more importantly, all of the best practices that can help you to get the most out of the technology and keep your printer performing at its peak, especially when you need it to most.

Memjet Printheads – Optimizing Quality and Printhead Life

I stumbled on a webinar video the other day that is published by Memjet themselves. This video outlines in great detail, all of the things you can do to ensure the best performance and life from your Memjet printhead. If you have the time (roughly 20 minutes), I highly recommend that you watch the entire video!

Learning this content and implementing as many of these tips into your label printing workflow as possible, will pay dividends over the life of your printer. At $400 or more for a replacement printhead, imagine the money and frustration you’ll save yourself by improving your Memjet printhead lifespan by only 20% by following the information in this video.

Before I summarize some of my favorite takeaways from the video, it’s important to keep in mind one thing:

The “Car Analogy”

The car analogy used in this video is excellent. First, I LOVE using analogies so this is right up my alley. Second, it should be the first thing you consider when diagnosing a print quality issue. The car analogy is used frequently throughout this video. One of these analogies describes worn tires that can lead to other issues such as sub-optimal braking and steering and even poor fuel economy. Just because your fuel economy gets worse, doesn’t necessarily mean your engine is performing incorrectly. You need to look at the car’s health holistically and determine the root cause (or causes). In this case, your badly worn tires may be the culprit. Or, it could be a combination of worn tires and your wheels being out of alignment. Neither one means you should replace your engine.

1. Maintaining Recommended Humidity Levels

Memjet printers are wet ink systems that rely on VERY tiny nozzles to produce high-resolution color labels. When humidity levels are low such as in the Midwest during the winter, southwest parts of the country or even higher elevations, it doesn’t take much for these microscopic holes to seal up with dried ink droplets. This is why it is recommended to keep your printer area maintained with a humidity level between 40% and 80% RH. Low humidity levels are a primary cause of severely shortened Memjet printhead life.

2. Microfiber Roller (aka MFR or Wiper Roller)

This is one of the first places you should look when encountering print quality issues. Think of the MFR as a washcloth for your printhead. The MFR moves into position during every printhead servicing cycle to remove excess ink and clean off any dust and debris that may have collected on it which can clog one or many of the very tiny ink nozzles. As with a washcloth, if you use it for a long time without replacing it with a fresh one, you will begin transferring dirt and debris back onto the surface you want to clean. It is recommended to change the wiper roller along with every printhead. This may seem like an additional and unnecessary expense, but we’ve found that we replace fewer printheads over the lifespan of our printers when this recommendation is followed.

3. Print frequently and randomly

I’ll explain what we mean by “randomly”, but first a general explanation. This goes along with the first item above. The more you use the printhead, the happier it will be (generally speaking). If you are using the printer once a week, you will gradually degrade the life of the printhead as it slowly dries out. Our customers who use their printers daily or every few days at least, tend to have the best experience and life from their printheads. However, it isn’t quite that simple.

If you are printing every day but are printing the same 2×2 inch single row label design all of the time, you may still have issues. This is due to a couple of reasons. For a 2-inch label, your only using 2 inches of the full 8.5-inch printing capability of the printhead. The other 6.5 inches of the printhead is not getting used so those nozzles are not getting any love. Thanks to the KWS (referred to as Keep Wet Setting or Keep Wet Spitting) those unused nozzles will still fire a tiny amount of ink to attempt to keep them healthy, but it’s no substitute for actual printing.

The second problem is due to the fact that your artwork is the same, so the same exact nozzles are firing every single time. This inevitably leaves some of the nozzles left out – even within that 2-inch zone of the label. Again, the KWS does its job to keep those nozzles hydrated to some extent but what they really want is full usage. This is where the “random” thing comes in.

Ideally, you’ll want to ensure your printing different artwork of varying colors and saturations. If you print on small labels, it’s recommended that you fit as many of those labels side by side on the roll as possible. You’ll benefit by engaging more of the printhead for each print job and it will also improve your cost per label (a roll of single row 2×2 labels will be more expensive than the same size label with 4 labels per row).

Other Maintenance Suggestions

1. Keep your printer powered on at all times so the printhead maintenance procedure can run at regular intervals
2. Be sure to use new Memjet printheads within 1 year of the manufacturing date printed on the end of the box
3. Save the orange printhead cap. It can be used to rehydrate the printhead in situations where the normal printer cleaning cycle doesn’t work

Proactive Maintenance is Key

There are many more variables and things to consider and many more best practices mentioned in the video above. But if your new to Memjet printing and find the recommendations in the video too numerous to implement, the 3 items mentioned above I feel are the most important and have the biggest bang for the buck. You can always revisit the video and add to your list of good Memjet print habits at a later time after you’ve mastered these three things.

Finally, it is essential that these (and others mentioned in the video) be done from the beginning and throughout. If you wait until issue arise before you start printing more frequently, raise the humidity levels, replace your MFR or shield your printer from airborne contaminants, you may have already done damage to your printhead or other parts of your printer. It’s important to employ these best practices proactively instead or reactively.