Digital BW, The Print

Jon,

" I believe Epson instructs the customer to gently shake the desktop cart
before installing. "

Yes and at least the Epson R1900 carts, actually have a loose ball bearing
inside them to aid agitation when shaking. You can hear it rattling about.
Not that I actually use Epson carts of course :) But I shake the inks from
new printers, before I sell them off on ebay. With set of new carts fetching
about $90 it sure helps to reduce the cost of printer acquisition.

Mike



On 7 May 2010 17:36, piezobw <jon@inkjetmall.com> wrote:

>
>
> Shaking is usually done to re-suspend pigment. The carts we sell for large
> format hold about 350ml of ink. Epson recommends discarding a 220ml cart
> that has not been used up in less than six months. So pigment settling is an
> issue with pigment printers. Intermittent shaking therefore is a
> preventative to settling. Rather than wait six months to try and breath some
> more life into the ink, the idea is to not allow the pigment to settle at
> all.
>
> For desktop carts, the biggest problem often is that an air pocket forms at
> the port. OR in initial filling that is not done with the vacuum method, it
> is possible that the air in the port does not get displaced by ink. Even
> vacuum filling often will not displace this air lock.
>
> The port get's pierced by the ink stem of the printer head carriage and the
> tiny holes in the stem sometimes encounter the air. The piezo crystal acts
> like a little tiny pump in the print head and its not strong enough to
> counter the air pocket and get ink. Likewise the capping station which is a
> very strong pump sometimes can't either...
>
> Shaking gently can work, but often does not dislodge air pockets. It's best
> for resuspending pigments. I believe Epson instructs the customer to gently
> shake the desktop cart before installing. They arguably have the best
> filling procedure in the industry. So if they have the occasional air pocket
> - one can imagine that the third-party carts will have more occasion to have
> air pockets.
>
> For a cart with a nuisance air pocket, I usually put some folded paper
> toweling on a table, and then sharply rap the cart port side down directly
> onto the table. The paper towel will absorb any ink that might otherwise
> mark the table and provides some cushioning to the cart. The rapping seems
> to force the ink contents to replace the air pocket through the magic of
> gravity! Imagine being on an elevator when the cable snaps.... That is what
> rapping the cart is trying to do... not a pleasant thought, but trying to
> illustrate what gravity is trying to do... making the ink above the air
> pocket suddenly hit the bottom of the port...the air bubble is forced out
> and rises quickly to the top of the ink cart.
>
> Give it a go...
>
> Jon Cone
> Piezography
>
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com<DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>,
> "mojojones2001" <mojojones@...> wrote:
> >
> > Not sure if this applies to your particular cartridges but Inkjetmall has
> a video that shows how to use the 220ml refillable carts. Towards the end
> they demonstrate several methods of shaking the cartridges. My favorite is
> "agitate the printer". ;-)
> >
> > video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyjI4tIGQ4Y
> > J.
> >
> >
> >
> > --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com<DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>,
> John Beeching <johnbeeching@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Dear All,
> > >
> > > I have recently replaced my Epson 2100 with a 3880 and am greatly
> enjoying
> > > its possibilities and its more economical cartridges. Whilst one shakes
> > > them in installation I would imagine that the pigment may settle with
> time
> > > in the cartridges, which could cause altered tones on the prints.
> Should I
> > > remove them periodically to give them another shake and, if so, should
> this
> > > be every week, month or whenever?
> > >
> > > Yours,
> > >
> > > John
> > >
> > > --
> > > John Beeching
> > > http://johnbeeching.com/
> > >
> > >
> > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> > >
> >
>
>  
>


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