Digital BW, The Print

Jack,

I've been using MIS CIS systems for about 3 years on an 1160 that's still
going, a 1200 whose printhead died (completely, unrelated to the CIS
or the
ink). Now I'm using a Niagara III with MIS 7600 inks. I only went with the
Niagara because MIS waited too long to put out their version.

In every instance where I've had problems it has been because of faulty
filling back when MIS suggested top filling the carts and that was due
to air at the
discharge port - so called "clogging".

Way back then, I told them that a suction fill, such as they now suggest,
would be better and I described my method to them and on the web, in
detail.
The single most important thing I suggest is that you suck the ink through
the outlet port using a bottom fill adaptor on a 10 cc syringe and do it
repeatedly until you get nothing but liquid ink a couple of times - NO
FOAM,
or very little. Just squirt the ink/foam back into the reservoir
bottle, the
foam stays on top, breaks down shortly and you get a full load of
liquid ink
in the cart and the merest residue of air that is of no concern. Hold the
cart upside down as you do this to encourage the foam to float to the
discharge port so you can get as much out as possible. MIS's vacuum fill
amounts to the same thing, but I still suggest that you pull a few
syringe-fulls of ink through the cart after you've opened the ink tube. At
one time I even pumped the ink back and forth through the cart/tube
system a
couple of times to try to dislodge as much foam as possible, but
that's not
necessary with the vac-fill method.

Lastly, make sure the ink level in the cart is right up to the discharge
port - holding the cart upside-down you should see the ink right up to
the port level (move the cart
up and down relative to the reservoir and you might see some bubbles
come out,
too). When the level is up to the max, either put the cart right onto the
print head as quickly as possible or clamp the tube again to stop the ink
from draining out of the cart as you maneuver it into place and open
the clamp after it is fully seated. When I do this I almost always get
a perfect
nozzle check immediately, no purging and rarely do I even have to wait an
hour or so for the ink to flood the port. A bubble lodged in the port will
give you a "clog".

Good luck,

Frank