Broken Printhead Carriage Latch

Hello all,

I recently took over responsibility for maintaining a HP Latex 365 and I was looking for a little advice from others who may have more experience with this machine than myself..

It looks like the latch on the printhead carriage (the blue part in the attached photo) has broken into several small, unsalvageable pieces. However, it doesn't appear that there is a replacement part for just this one piece without having to replace the entire printhead carriage itself. So that being said, just how crucial is this latch?

In the meantime, I've used a zip tie to hold the lid closed (see picture). It looks like the lid doesn't close quite as tightly as it did with the original latch, but the zip tie is doing a pretty good job of keeping it held down at least, and it doesn't seem to be in the way of any of the other components in the carriage path, either. I was able to print a couple of small things with no problems there.

This wouldn't be a permanent solution, but I'm thinking this might be an effective workaround until until I'm able to spring for the full maintenance kit/tech visit and then at that point I could get all of that taken care of at once, rather than having to pay for multiple visits. Any glaringly obvious issues with this workaround that I may not be seeing, though?

Thanks in advance for any insight!

Hi @nicolea049412728,

The carriage cover can be replaced without replacing the entire carriage assembly. It is included in the service kit B4H70-67018, carriage flex cables. We recommend replacing this part as the open carriage cover may cause jams and crashes with the media that can damage the rest of the carriage. Please contact support for proceeding with the replacement.