Videojet Excel 170i

I have been fighting all of my videojet 170i printers ever since I pulled them out of storage. We had not ever used them prior as we bought them at auction and stored them.

In my opinion, they are TOO smart. When they are on, they work great! However, any little mishap according to the programming, and they auto-shutdown. I have been throught all the menus. I have completely rebuilt the inking systems from the reservoir to the output tip. I get my settings just as I should with alignments, pressures, and dot distances under a microscope. I constantly go through proper flushing procedures and recalibrations.

Is there any way to program (or dumb-down) these machines to auto-restart and/or to widen the boundaries of shutdown?

You may want to look at the ink you are using. We had several of these using different types of ink. By changing the ink we were able to solve a lot of our problems. We had 6-8 of these and we would try to PM one each week. By getting the ink correct and PM our problems went away.

Good luck

I am not currently using videojet branded ink. I am using InkJet, Inc. ink, only readable by black light. It is "supposed to be" the comperable type to Videojet's 16-2300 as it is InkJet 12 with 125 makeup fluid. What fluid did you start with and finally end up with? InkJet's ink is cheaper initially on a per bottle basis, but as to it's TRUE compatability...I don't know.

Its been to long I don't remember the details of the ink. I no longer work for that company. Sorry im not more help

More of the same

I also won't be much help, since it has been 6 years since I last worked on these. I don't even remember the model, but I don't think ours did the auto shutdown. They simply faulted and were a pain in the rear to get to clear of the fault. Most of our problems also were linked to ink problems, either drying up and plugging something, or something along those lines. Sorry I am not more help also.

Russ

INK is INK, do not dwell on it as a problem, it will not be. What it will be is nasty to work with, get on everything/...EXCEPT what you want it tobtain the manual for that printer and go from there.

Videojet has service manuals available which are very helpful when trying to diagnose a problem. The ink quality is important, but I don't ever recall a shutdown because of poor ink. Post the type of fault displayed on the screen before it goes into shutdown.

Sorry Ron, but ink quality does matter.

Some years ago we had a lot of problems for a few months with a particular brand (not videojet) of printer using their own inks.

After a while we stopped having problems and thought that we had just finally learnt the art of setting the coders properly.

It was a couple of years later I learnt from an ex service tech for that company that the problems were due to the ink.

Although we often use nonbranded solvents we always use the manufacturers ink.

I agree ink can indeed be a problem with these printers. Our Videojet printers were very particular about what ink we used. Videojet ink was all we were able to run and minimize our problems.

It has been many years since we used Videojet printers, but it seems like most of our problems were during the switch to non-Videojet ink. You may have to bite the bullet and try a case of Videojet ink and makeup just to try ruling that out.

The ink can be your issues, trust me...12yrs with these damn things, I only use their ink, I have tried others but I have always gone back.

If you are going to a long term shut down, get all of the ink out of the system, drain then auto prime with makeup fluid, when you start it back up, prime then refresh, 90% of the time most issues can be resolved by auto refresh but it takes 30 min to run this cycle, did you know that there was a core charge that was refundable for the print head? also if you use their ink they will give you the heads for free...you just have to ask.

They have new models now that are much more reliable, my issues are ink related but I can not change due to customer specs

They (Video Jet) offer some good classes in Atlanta GA

One more thing keep them running, park it in a place that someone will watch it, if it faults, fix it...if the ink dries in the return line that will be a pain, another thing...install a strobe alarm on the top so you can see when it faults

hope this helps

Captian2000,
You ask: "Is there any way to program (or dumb-down) these machines to auto-restart and/or to widen the boundaries of shutdown?"

Not that I know of. Once you have completed the re-fresh / cleaning and the machine is printing good, the only thing left to do is to make sure the ink stream remains stable. Sometimes this "stabality" can be hard to achieve even while using Video-Jet brand ink. The 170i model is the hardest one to deal with due to the extremely small size of the ink stream. I wish there was some "Magic" setting to do this, but there is not. Things to watch for are compressed air quality, ink viscosity. We had one screwing up a few times a week for months. Finally found out that the "Ink Out" or "Bubbler" adjustment was cranked up too high causing the evaporation of the lighter fluids in the ink jar. This left only the heavier fluids after a few days, when the heavier fluids got sucked into the system the viscosity would get out of range. On another one we found that vibration from the poorly mounted print head holder was causing the ink stream to bounce around. The holder was bolted directly to the conveyor. We had to use a floor stand instead. These examples illustrate that it doesn't take much to throw one of these things out of wack. I usually just keep pluggin away at the problen until I finally stumble upon the cause.
Good luck
BD

Videpjet issues

Hi
Yes ink can be a big issue. A stated in other posts the fluids low detection device is one of the most critical ones to set and detect. I have seen occasions when this shut the machine down for fluids out but when restarted was showing ok.
I will only ever use Videojet ink everything else can cause too much hassle.
In these machines though there is a fault display obtained by pressing the shift and help function key at the same time this gives a hexadecimal code which says why the machine shut down if there was a fault present. That is to say in the Vid jets I use which are high res units.
If you can find the hex code you will find what shut you down if the fault message that initiated it has gone.
My most recent problem for a unit shutting down was mainly caused by out of date ink and excessive fluid detect pressure.
Although I can quote many more faults I have had.
As you say when they run all is fine its when they go wrong they can be a S*D

Steveb
Steveb

Sometimes it can help to replace the ink sooner and not run the bottles too far out. The ink seems to be heavier near the bottom of the bottle. Some operators also try to make a new bottle from the leftover contents of several previously removed ones and this causes many problems. By that point the ink is either contaminated or too heavy to be deflected properly and causes high voltage faults.

Captin2000

I do not know of any way to change the program in your Videojet
printers.

However I have worked with Excel P and Excel 2000 printers almost daily for the last seven years.

The auto shutdown is a response to a fatal fault; it is designed to take the machine to an off state after allowing time for the return line to be cleared of ink, thus preventing a clogged return line which can be difficult or impossible to clear.

I will echo the advise of others as to Videojet brand ink we have always used VideoJet ink, but up until last year we were using a third party makeup fluid. When we changed to Videojet makeup fluids our problems were really reduced.

These are complicated devices if you study the theory of operation section in your manual the print head works much like the electron gun in a televison picture tube. But instead of controlling a stream of electrons it is controlling a stream of charged ink drops. So the electrical characteristics of the ink are critical to the proper operation of these machines.

When the electrical characteristics of the ink are off you will see phasing and high voltage faults, high voltage and no signal faults can also be caused by dirty print head, ink is conductive so a build up of ink can cause a short to the frame.

If you have the manuals for your machine they have excellent troubleshooting guides. STEVEBOT posted about the hex dump this is a good source of information to determine what caused the fault.

Also ink has a limited shelf life my experience has been that ink quality degrades before the expiration date on the bottle.

Barry

RIP fault

Hello,

Please,I found this thread and I am interested in putting my problem forward.

I had a "RIP" fault on my VideoJet and I cannot understand the cause. It comes up from time to time. Please, can anyone help.

Also,I need any troubleshooting guide or documents for Videojet printers.