Digital BW, The Print

When I bought my first set of inks (the original VM inks) with the MIS CFS
for my 1160 about this time last year, I didn't have any serious clogging
issues for something like the first 6 months.  There were the occasional bad
nozzle checks, but they could usually be corrected with nozzle cleanings and
in my mind were pretty normal.  Somewhere between 6-9 months, I started
getting more major clogs that were occurring in the plastic tubing lines.  I
was not using the system a whole lot, so the ink was not moving through the
tubes that much.  These clogs were pretty easy to break loose using the 60cc
syringe to create a fairly strong pull/draw through the bottom of the cart.
One knew they had broken a clog when they would feel the syringe jump and
the ink would start flowing.  It was a 10 minute hassle to do this, but it
always worked and cleared things up for a while.  Others have reported
similar problems and most theories centered around tubing that was somewhat
porous and the co-solvent evaporating or whatever.

When the new Ultratone inks came out, word was that a new formulation
minimized the co-solvent issue.  With that said, I have had the Ultratones
loaded in my printer for the past couple of months.  Until today, there had
been a few times where I had not used the printer for a week or so and it
just required a few cleaning cycles to get decent nozzle checks.

Tonight I decided to do a preventative cleaning cycle + purge pattern to
move ink through the heads because it had been sitting for about 3 weeks.
After this, the black ink was barely pumping anything out of the black cart.
The subsequent nozzle check was totally blank for all black bars, so I
started the bottom draw/pull procedure.  Unfortunately, the clog didn't
break loose.

After an hour of trying to pull ink through the bottom of the cart, push air
back through the cart, and manually exercising the tubing (bending,
stretching all along the length) I finally got the clog to break free.  It
happened to break free as I was pushing air back up through the cart and
gave a nice pop.  I am 99.9% sure that the clog was in the tubing near the
at the bottle end.   I have never had a clog like this one before and really
thought I was going to have to throw the CFS out.

My reason for posting this is to see if others have had a similar problem
with the new Ultratone + photo black and to warn others to keep the new
Ultratone black inks moving through the system.  It would be better to use
up/waste a bit of ink each week in order to avoid the situation I
experienced which I almost couldn't fix.  This problem has cropped up MUCH
sooner than it did with the original VM inks.  The weather has been nice
here in Atlanta, so I have not had to use any type of heating or airco and
soggy spring means that humidity levels have not contributed to the problem.
My guess is either the reformulation didn't improve the shelf life and/or
there is an issue with the CFS tubing.

Doug