humidity

[woody49548]

i run a ricoh 9210 and 9500 im in an enclosed room but cant seem to get the humidity past 30 percent and with this having print issues....most is on the 9500 and getting (what i call) chicken scratches and the techs all say nothing they can do have to get the humidity up.....i have 4 humidifiers in the room running at all times with no change any suggestions...thank you

 

[Stickman42]

Humidity, like HVAC is affected by the load (how much moisture in the air your space needs to get to the humidity percentage you want) and the capacity of the equipment (your humidifiers). I see from your profile that you're in the cold north? Low humidity is normal this time of year, so you're already behind the curve.

There are suppliers with very comprehensive humidification systems. Your approach seems simpler, and may be insufficient.

I am right now in the midst of my own humidity "quest". I picked up a decent hygrometer and am researching water pre-treatment options. Running tap water through humidifiers can cause issues with sensors and charge wires. I do have an ultrasonic humidifier with good capacity that I'm intending on starting with.

 

[ReproElectroProspero]

Highly recommend searching for "industrial humidifier" on whatever shopping platform you use. Pictured is one of the 5 gallon humidifiers we run in our 1600sqft shop. We have a couple of these going at all times, and despite being in a big room we are able to get the RH to 40% whenever we need.

We had a similar issue with "evaporative" humidifiers in the past. They don't do jack squat. You need ultrasonic humidifiers to make a dent in a large room. Ours puts 1 gallon of water per machine into the air every hour. One problem we're having now though is the dust from the minerals in the water. Our techs hate it. Want us to use only distilled but that's quite a pain. So far using demineralization cartridges in the water has helped a lot..

**edit: i am also from the cold north btw**

 

[woody49548]

Humidity, like HVAC is affected by the load (how much moisture in the air your space needs to get to the humidity percentage you want) and the capacity of the equipment (your humidifiers). I see from your profile that you're in the cold north? Low humidity is normal this time of year, so you're already behind the curve.

There are suppliers with very comprehensive humidification systems. Your approach seems simpler, and may be insufficient.

I am right now in the midst of my own humidity "quest". I picked up a decent hygrometer and am researching water pre-treatment options. Running tap water through humidifiers can cause issues with sensors and charge wires. I do have an ultrasonic humidifier with good capacity that I'm intending on starting with.

thanks

 

[woody49548]

View attachment 293622

Highly recommend searching for "industrial humidifier" on whatever shopping platform you use. Pictured is one of the 5 gallon humidifiers we run in our 1600sqft shop. We have a couple of these going at all times, and despite being in a big room we are able to get the RH to 40% whenever we need.

We had a similar issue with "evaporative" humidifiers in the past. They don't do jack squat. You need ultrasonic humidifiers to make a dent in a large room. Ours puts 1 gallon of water per machine into the air every hour. One problem we're having now though is the dust from the minerals in the water. Our techs hate it. Want us to use only distilled but that's quite a pain. So far using demineralization cartridges in the water has helped a lot..

**edit: i am also from the cold north btw**

thanks im on it

 

[Stickman42]

Here is the page for the humidifier I bought. I got the MHS15 model which puts 4 gallons of water per hour in the air. My space is about 4,000sqft and somewhat open.

Definitely at least consider treating your water. I had a big issue last winter with running straight tap water.

 

[woody49548]

View attachment 293622

Highly recommend searching for "industrial humidifier" on whatever shopping platform you use. Pictured is one of the 5 gallon humidifiers we run in our 1600sqft shop. We have a couple of these going at all times, and despite being in a big room we are able to get the RH to 40% whenever we need.

We had a similar issue with "evaporative" humidifiers in the past. They don't do jack squat. You need ultrasonic humidifiers to make a dent in a large room. Ours puts 1 gallon of water per machine into the air every hour. One problem we're having now though is the dust from the minerals in the water. Our techs hate it. Want us to use only distilled but that's quite a pain. So far using demineralization cartridges in the water has helped a lot..

**edit: i am also from the cold north btw**

1 more question are you placing these behind the machines or just general location

 

[TJPrinter]

I don’t like ultrasonic humidifiers and have had good results using free standing evaporative humidifiers. The evaporative humidifiers won’t dump the same volume of moisture into the air as a larger ultrasonic, but you won’t have to worry about the fine white particles being left behind on everything. You didn’t say what size space you were trying to condition but if you’re using larger evaporative humidifiers now, then fill them with warm water and you’ll get better results in raising your humidity. You can also use the larger ultrasonic humidifiers with a demineralizer filter to help eliminate the pesky white dusk. I just prefer the simple evaporative humidifiers.

I have a small shop, it’s only 1,500 sq feet and I run one 6 gallon Aircare console humidifier and have no problem keeping the humidity over 40% in northern New York. The thing has been running for years with no issues. I just buy a case of pads and change them a couple times in the winter.

Not that any manufacturer cares about the health of your building, but if you’re in a very cold climate and you keep your humidity level too high in the winter, you’ll eventually end up with moisture in your wall cavities.

 

[woody49548]

I don’t like ultrasonic humidifiers and have had good results using free standing evaporative humidifiers. The evaporative humidifiers won’t dump the same volume of moisture into the air as a larger ultrasonic, but you won’t have to worry about the fine white particles being left behind on everything. You didn’t say what size space you were trying to condition but if you’re using larger evaporative humidifiers now, then fill them with warm water and you’ll get better results in raising your humidity. You can also use the larger ultrasonic humidifiers with a demineralizer filter to help eliminate the pesky white dusk. I just prefer the simple evaporative humidifiers.

I have a small shop, it’s only 1,500 sq feet and I run one 6 gallon Aircare console humidifier and have no problem keeping the humidity over 40% in northern New York. The thing has been running for years with no issues. I just buy a case of pads and change them a couple times in the winter.

Not that any manufacturer cares about the health of your building, but if you’re in a very cold climate and you keep your humidity level too high in the winter, you’ll eventually end up with moisture in your wall cavities.

right on ty

 

[kslight]

I have a single aircare unit like above in my smallish print room with a Ricoh 7210 and other stuff. It is adequate for us.

 

[Stickman42]

Great responses coming in. Related question - how would you describe the effectiveness of whatever humidifier you're running? I'm curious to know if any print quality issues are definitively resolved with the proper amount of humidity or does it help with static in the paper.

My situation is slightly different in that I'm running high speed continuous inkjet (black only), and with low humidity comes more frequent white streaks in my print. I'm hoping once we get our humidifier up and running this problem will at least be minimized.

 

[EZPower]

i run a ricoh 9210 and 9500 im in an enclosed room but cant seem to get the humidity past 30 percent and with this having print issues....most is on the 9500 and getting (what i call) chicken scratches and the techs all say nothing they can do have to get the humidity up.....i have 4 humidifiers in the room running at all times with no change any suggestions...thank you

We have our recohs exhaust heat venting to another room. That helped maintain humidity and temperature.

 

[ReproElectroProspero]

1 more question are you placing these behind the machines or just general location

We run 2 of the models I pictured, set up kind of like this:

Works fairly well for us - but we're just trying to raise the RH to a minimum of 40%, we aren't targeting anything higher nor attempting to maintain a steady RH...we're mostly looking to ensure that our repair techs can't just blame humidity when they need to replace parts lol.

 

[narseman]

My situation is slightly different in that I'm running high speed continuous inkjet (black only), and with low humidity comes more frequent white streaks in my print. I'm hoping once we get our humidifier up and running this problem will at least be minimized.

My Canon inkjet won't even start up, unless humidity is over about 35% or better.. That is still low, and it has additional humidity conditioners internally. Definitely better for production inkjet printers. Better for static control. Better for your skin. Better for your sinuses. I keep it in the 42% range.

 

[cqb1988]

my ricoh runs ok even @ 20% or under, parts like transfer rollers need to be replaced when humidity and temp are low, when was the last you replaced them?

 

[LeGerbs]

We run two 9210s in a very arid climate so hitting the targeted 40% humidity is a real challenge. What we did is instead of using humidifiers which typically only allowed us to reach high 20 - low 30's we bought a portable swamp cooler for around 300 bucks. We refill it every morning keep it running all day and we're seeing about 45-50% every day.

I do know chicken feet are almost 99% due to humidity rather than internal components going bad.