How to ultrasonic clean my head and is this a good idea

[xray]

Hi,

I posted some pics of my printhead and I have already dones the coffee filter on the head to soak and ran about a billion cleanings.

Someone suggested ultrasonic. Which one do I get? Harbor frieght has one for about $30.

Also do I just put enough fluid in to cover the bottom of the head and hold it there?

And finally can I make my own cleaning fluid? Someone also suggested this?

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[Jack Knight1979]

Buy a cheap-o jewelry cleaner (stainless steel basin is required). Put a half inch of flush at the bottom and give it a couple cycles. Don't let the bottom of the head touch the cleaning tank.

This procedure works best on UV heads. I've tried it on a DX4 with no success.

 

[Border]

Read this thread for the homebrew cleaning solution that Arbot suggests. I use too and it's great.

http://signs101.com/forums/showthread.php?t=79758&highlight=Butyl+carbitol+acetone

 

[xray]

Where is a good place to get the butyl carbitol?

 

[Border]

Sherwin Williams Warehouse, not the smaller retail stores.

 

[Jack Knight1979]

@Border

I tried to order some from SW and I had to buy 4 gallons of it. Could I buy some off you or order a gallon from your SW store? I'm up in Maine. The SW here barely has paint in it.

Let me know. I need some of this badly to rebuild an older printer.

 

[xray]

Cool I'm going to call SW about it..

So just to make sure with the ultrasonic...

I put about 1/2 inch in it and hold the head in the solution while its running?

Sorry for so many questions... I just don't want to screw it up!

 

[signage]

Jack look for SW commercial store! Ask your local store for the commercial stores number/location.

 

[Jack Knight1979]

Thank you!

 

[CES020]

I bought a Harbor Freight small Ultrasonic cleaner not long ago. I needed something cleaned that was small and a pain to clean. I must admit, I didn't honestly understand them, but it was on sale, so I tried it. It's turned out to be one of the coolest little things I've bought in a while. I use it all the time for a variety of things.

We don't have a printer, so I've not used it for that, but I would think it would work great for that. You can put any cleaner you want in it. Water, soapy water, cleaning solution, or anything else. You can even put water in it, then put your item in a glass container with some other chemical in it, sit that in it and it'll clean what's in the glass. I use it to clean my airbrush as well. Put some thinner in a glass jar, drop the pieces into that, then put the glass into it, no matter what other solution I have in there at the time.

I like it so much I'm going to look for a larger one.

 

[jbennett]

I used my Harbor freight ultrasonic cleaner last night. I put about 1/4 inch of cleaning fluid in bottom of it and placed head directly on bottom. I now have almost all of my nozzles back working. I am thoroughly amazed. I had been missing 20-25% of my black for a long time and one single nozzle on Cyan. All C M Y are there now. The black is probably less than 5% missing now. I almost want to do it one more cycle. I did it for about 45 seconds. I have too much printing to worry about it.

jbennett

 

[omgsideburns]

Now the question is.. who has used their sonicare tooth brush on their heads? lol.

 

[decaljunkie]

just bought the ultra sonic cleaner from harbor freight what typ of cleaning solution do i use on it? im going to attempt the clean my dx4 heads from my mutoh falcon outdoor ll

 

[MikePro]

if you can't get butyl carbitol, just go with the butyl cellusolve that SW or any chemical supplier more commonly has (along with the acetone, of course)

its been noted that cleaning solution is "better" with carbitol in the mix, but I've been running the acetone/cellusolve mix for the past two years without issue.