Digital BW, The Print

Hi Group,
About a half a year ago I took my one year old 1280 and converted it to 
CIS MIS UT.
The results are wonderful... but...
Even though I purge the inks printing the supplied purge.tif once in a 
while, from time to time
my K black line became clogged.  In the supply tube close to the 
cartridge (for about an inch and half)
there is a kind of a jelly which I have to blow out in order to have the 
tube operational.
Afterwards, I connect the tube back to the cartridge, tape the bottom of 
the cartridge and vacum-fill the cartridge.
It works every time with no problem.  Today I had to do it also with the 
LC inks.  The same occurrence
with the jelly like substance.  
I did it already 4 times (in half a year).  As I noticed the jelly 
substance doesn't go into the cartridge but forms in the tube.
It's relatively easy to clean and charge again --- but it takes about 
two hours every time.  
---
My only question is WHY IT HAPPENS.  As explained some time ago - there 
is a separation of the solvent or something within the ink. But why it 
happens only in the part of the tube connected to the cartridge?  Is 
there any way to prevent it?
It looks to me that it virtually doesn't matter if I use the printer or 
not - the frequency of clogging is the same.
---
I would gladly hear some advice.
Thanks,
Jack

_________________________________________________
Jack M Kucy
JMK Gallery (www.jmk-gallery.com)
917-991-2096     jmk@...
Member of ASMP (www.asmp.org)
_________________________________________________
...a riveder le stelle

I suspect the clog has to do with the permeability of the tubing to 
the solvents in the ink, that is, the solvents diffuse through the 
tubing leaving behind the ink goop.  The warmer and/or drier the 
environment, the greater the diffusion rate.  Also note that the 
tubing has a very high surface area to volume ratio, therefore it is 
not suprising to see the problem here, rather than, say the ink 
reservoirs.  

My experience has been that the MIS tubing is more permeable than 
the Tygon brand tubing used by NoMoreCarts.  This result is based on 
almost three years of side-by-side comparison with a CFS (MIS) and 
CIS (NoMoreCarts) on system on two 1160s and the same MIS FS inksets.

Jeff Randall

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Jack M Kucy 
<jmk@j...> wrote:

> About a half a year ago I took my one year old 1280 and converted 
> it to CIS MIS UT.
> The results are wonderful... but...
> Even though I purge the inks printing the supplied purge.tif once 
> in a while, from time to time my K black line became clogged.

>About a half a year ago I took my one year old 1280 and converted it to 
>CIS MIS UT.
>The results are wonderful... but...
>Even though I purge the inks printing the supplied purge.tif once in a 
>while, from time to time
>my K black line became clogged.  In the supply tube close to the 
>cartridge (for about an inch and half)
>there is a kind of a jelly which I have to blow out in order to have the 
>tube operational.
>Afterwards, I connect the tube back to the cartridge, tape the bottom of 
>the cartridge and vacum-fill the cartridge.
>It works every time with no problem.  

I have the same problem, but have managed to speed up the line-clearing
by using a MityVac vacuum pump (at auto-supply stores, about $35). I just
pull the tube off the cart (leaving the other end submerged in the ink
bottle), stick the pump nozzle in the tube, and give it a couple of
pumps. If the tube's not really solidly clogged, it will pull a whole
bunch of ink through it into the pump chamber (careful, if you keep
pumping, it'll ALL come out). Then just pour the ink back in the bottle.
Takes about 15 minutes. If it's REALLY clogged, I run a wire through the
tube to get things moving, then do the pump routine.

Harry