Digital BW, The Print

Richard, Ernst, etc,

Thanks for the long detailed commentary on my printer changeover.
To make this one short, I answer, yes, I thoroughly cleaned the 
capping pads of the Lyson ink three times with Windex before even 
installing the cleaning carts and Piezzo inks. After the Piezzo inks 
clogged I flushed out the lines from head to carts thoroughly with 
Windex also. Now that the heads and dampers have been replaced, I can 
get no suction at all to the heads. When I did the initial fill with 
the Epson dye carts nothing is coming up in the lines at all. I also 
removed the heads and checked the ribbon connection again. The only 
reason there is ink in the dampers is because I brount it there with 
the syringe.Now I see with with the side and head covers off that 
there is no suction into the dampers either at all. 

What I am attempting to do today is to tackle the pump and overflow 
lines situation somehow. However,I don't understand how to do this at 
all. I did find Ernst's description below but do not understand how 
this works. I will try to evalute the condition of the pump if I can 
figure that out from the manual. The one thing is for sure, there is 
no ink moving out of the Epson carts to anywhere now and there is no 
ink moving into the overflow pads below. Nothing is happening with 
the initial fill or KK2.

John

Ernst's previous comments below. Is this what you were refering to:


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> You can use a syringe on the dampers to pull ink in the dampers 
> too but that doesn't fill the heads + the waste ink pumps.
> Normally that wouldn't be a problem if the pumps are new and the 
> head capping adjustment is done, the pumps + heads will pull in 
> the ink without problems. If you changed the capping station but 
> didn't do the head capping adjustment you will not pull the ink 
> through with a cleaning or air stays in the damper etc.
> 
> There must be a description of a waste bottle addition to 7000's 
> etc on the wide format lists archive. I've done that within two 
> months after I got a 9000 5 years ago.  When the heads are on the 
> capping station you can apply a vacuum on the waste bottle tubes 
> and pull the inks through. There's some mixing of inks at the 
> head as a result but printing a CcMmYK waste area will get them 
> back to normal.
> 
> A nice trick to empty ink lines is to place the head carriage in 
> the middle of the printer and insert a special cart in the cart 
> slot that has a tube to the seal (bag removed) which is connected 
> to a wine bottle where you have a vacuum pump on (or one of those 
> special wine bottle caps where vacuum can be applied to preserve 
> the wine). The ink in that line is completely removed especially 
> when you let it suck for 10 minutes and move the head carriage a 
> bit to change the ink tubes bending. Air gets in at the head 
> nozzle of that line.  Don't do that when the head is at the 
> capping position as it will suck all the other inks through the 
> line you want to empty !!!!
> The cart's tabs have to be cut to use the same one for all color 
> slots.
> 
> Ernst