Genuine Roland Wiper Blades or Generic?
When it comes to wiper blades, it can be all to tempting to buy generic copies. One of the main reasons been PRICE! Yes, jheeze are those tiny little bits of rubber expensive for what they are… We all think it let’s be honest, especially when you can buy copy wiper blades at 10% of the price of Roland wiper blades. However, talking from experience out in the field, the cheaper copies just do not work.
We get called out to repair clients printers regularly and soon discover they have generic wiper blades fitted that they ordered from Amazon or eBay, ( occasionally fitted the wrong way too which never helps 😉).
Now, by no means are we “rubber experts” and we’re not going to convince you otherwise, the truth is… we don’t know why the genuine wiper blades work and the copies don’t, it’s just how it is and probably has something to do with the price difference. We tend to find that the copy wipers “smear” the ink across the bottom of the printhead rather than “wipe” the head, this giving you a poor nozzle print on your machine.
Moving forward… A Roland wiper blade for a BN-20 for example, would cost you around £24.99. This is generally something you would change once a year on a yearly service. A new printhead for a Roland BN-20 is now £1750+vat from Roland. Your wiper blade is the only thing that should EVER touch the underside of your printhead keeping it fresh and clean.
Taking all this into account, we recommend asking yourself… “Is it really worth taking the risk of damaging my printhead to save around £20?”
“I hope you’ve found this quick blogpost helpful”
Oliver - Field Engineer
Hinkler Group