Typical Maintenance for UV Printers

We preform routine maintenance on our cars, on our homes and our bodies. In other words, we are constantly investing back in the areas that matter the most. Your UV printer should be no different. Routine maintenance will make for a smoother printing process and increase the lifespan of parts.

Machine up time is of the upmost importance on a production floor. Greatly increase up time by preforming routine maintenance on your UV printer, both cylindrical and flatbed. Maintenance is required daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly and yearly. Ensure your production output remains consistent by caring for your machine to the best of your ability in the following general areas:

Areas for Maintenance for your UV Printer

Within and around your UV printer there are key areas to pay attention to. The following areas are vital for good maintenance practices.

Maintain a Clean Environment

Let’s begin by looking at the big picture. A clean work floor in essential. The print quality will be affected if the air quality is poor and saturated with dust and debris. Proper ventilation and a daily cleaning routine will vastly improve your long run operations.

UV Printhead Cleaning

There are two methods to clean the print head. Print heads are advanced pieces of technology and therefor are expensive items to replace.  Print heads can be cleaned manually or with a specialized print system. By cleaning the UV printhead one can both save ink and see the status of the nozzle better. A print head recovery system will restore printheads that have clogs and will increase the longevity of the printhead. Regardless of whether you prefer a manual method or with the help of a machine, printheads need to be regularly cleaned.

Print head cleaning is a necessary part of every shift. For specifics regarding your machine visit your Standard Operating Procedures for the best practices.

Clean UV Lamps

The UV lamp needs to be cleaned much like the print heads. To ensure that your inks will be properly cured the lamps need to be cleaned regularly. UV inks will not dry on their own, and if UV lamps are obstructed, they will not cure the ink. Therefor this is an important area to pay attend to regularly.

Additional Areas to Clean

Other areas to carefully watch and routinely clean include: sensors, filters, and any integrated systems. For instance, the Helix® can have integrated Transparent Pin Curing (TPC) and therefor will require additional maintenance on that feature. No two printers are the same, make sure you’re caring for your printing machine to the best of your ability by making sure to service them regularly.

Where to find Maintenance Information?

While this blog post provides a generic overview we highly recommend sitting down and reading from cover to cover your manual as well as any additional information that your manufacturer provided, such as Standard Operating Procedures. Additionally, any UV printer from Inkcups comes with a built-in reminder calendar to remind customers of the recommended maintenance to perform and when to perform it.

Inkcups Service

Inkcups’ customers can access the Support Hub, which is a wealth of knowledge including FAQs, Standard Operating Procedures, Manuals, and more. This is an incredibly beneficial resource and a great place to start.

If you need a more personalized answer, Inkcups offers immediate support for UV printers, typically within 10 minutes. Between phone calls and TeamViewer (screen sharing program) Inkcups can solve 90% of service requests from afar. For the remainder of service calls that need to be addressed in person- Inkcups is a global operation with service readily available worldwide. To view our global footprint, visit our Contact Us page.

Additionally, listen to Gregg in a podcast, Digital Service Expectations for additional maintenance and service insight. This podcast is only 16 minutes long, and is a wealth of knowledge. If you’d prefer to read the transcribed podcast, visit it here.