>... Is any CIS worth the effort?
I was curious about the air that gets into tubing. Is it from leaking
connections, air actually getting through the tubing, or some other cause?
So, I asked MIS (Zeiss). His response, below, may be helpful to us.
(My short version is: Keep the tubing and bottles in the dark, and don't
allow air pockets to form by using the printer often -- even if just turning
it on and off. This might stop algae growth, which appears to MIS to often
be the source of CIS failure.)
MIS's full response follows:
> It is not air in the tubing, it is gas from the ink degassing.
> This happens to all of them when they are idle for a while.
> So when there are gas bubbles in the tubes, they get pushed
> into the cartridge when the system returns to full operation.
> Over time this lowers the ink level inside the cartridge.
> It will take a long time or a lot of idle-operate cycles to
> fill the cartridge with gas. It can happen, but other things
> happen first, usually, to cause a system failure.
> The most common issue for older systems is blocked tubes.
> As gas starts filling the tube on an idle system, algae starts
> to form on the walls of the tube, like cholesterol in an artery.
> When the system starts to operate again, the algae is not washed
> away, it stays there.
(Hmm, algae. That requires light.)
> The gas in the tube will rise to the highest point in the
> tube path. That point is often exposed to light or even
> direct sunlight. This speeds the growth of the algae.
This makes it sound, again, like we ought to be keeping the tubes in the
dark.
> All the inks have what we call bug killer (we call it ink
> penicillin) in them, but if too much is added it upsets the
> ink properties and it will not print properly. We have
> sent ink penicillin to many customers that complain of blocked
> tubes. Instead of adding this to the ink in too large of dose,
> there is some simple preventive maintenance that will keep
> the system from failing from algae buildup.
> 1. Trim the tubes to eliminate any loops or unnecessary ups
> and downs. Keep the ink path as straight as possible.
> 2. Always install and run our AutoPrint Software. It will
> make a print everyday, and avoid long idle periods. Turning
> printer off and on each day is also good, because it will
> do a cleaning cycle when power comes on.
> 3. Use washable bottles with a wide mouth. Our bottles,
> 4 oz Nalgene wide mouth bottles, are perfect. Keep two sets.
> Don't top off inks, fill clean bottle, and replace the old one.
> Then clean the old one, and store for next time. Most of
> the low cost Chinese system use a tall bottle with small
> opening in top and ink exit at bottom. The use of bottles
> that can not be washed out, is going to end up causing
> system faillure, because algae builds up on the wall of the
> bottle and the bug killer in the ink can not keep up with it,
> due to the large surface area inside the bottle.
> 4. In hot dry climates, like Arizona and parts of California,
> the algae problem is much worse. Keeping the system cool and
> out of the sunlight is absolutely required to have a chance
> of long system life.
> 5. If the system fails, replacing the tubing and recharging
> the cartridges will usually bring it back to life. We have
> had many customers who try to get algae out of tubes with
> chemicals and mechanical devices, but it is not worth the
> trouble. Replacing tubing is much easier.
I hope this information is useful. I'm going to be cutting some black
plastic to cover my CIS -- no light, no algae (hopefully).
Paul
www.PaulRoark.com