Smoke_Jaguar
Man who touches printers inappropriately.
So, after deleting my stupid MBIS ink cart thing on my JFX500, I am now doing one for a customer here in Louisiana. I got lucky and was able to cheat and just use the vacuum assist to load the ink, but thicker ink and maybe altitude and/or bad luck didn't work on this one. So, pumps were in order!
This is a running tally of mods to de-complicate and make the ink system much more streamlined and much less problematic.
1) Delete ink path from 2L bottles> MBIS valves> MBIS pumps> Filter station filters> Cable chain lower loop
2) Install bulk ink tanks on left side of gantry, opposite electronics bay just above the vents for the LED coolant radiators
3) Install 24V pumps (4 in this case, as printer is dual CMYK) next to bulk tanks.
4) Install power supply for 24V to power stirrers and ink level alarms on the aftermarket tanks. Wired to mains LED PSU harness since it is always on. Power supply that came with tanks looked very dodgy and I didn't want to half-ass the job. Cable run from electronics bay under carriage to other side of carriage.
5) Modify solenoid request harness from MBIS. Since the pumps are direct DC and not stepper driven, I needed a way to power them. Pumps were nice Swiss units off an EFI, so they are quiet, powerful and damn reliable. So, to do this, I took power from the solenoids near the old bulk tanks. Since the harness is clearly labeled and the channels are basically running coils anyways, not a hard choice. Bridged valve wiring into pairs, so either cyan channel request fires up the pump. Upper valves near the printheads in upper carriage left intact so if just either or both subtank requests ink, it will flow to only the tank(s) with an open valve.
6) Install 8 conductor line from MBIS to aftermarket ink tanks. The longest cable run, but also quite easy. With the cable chain cleared of old ink lines, lots of space to fish things through.
7) Install ink lines from tanks, through filters and into solenoid array in carriage. Since it was 2xCMYK the 1+2, 3+4, 5+6 and 7+8 valves were paired up with a Y fitting.
8) Removal of old ink system, minus sensors that might error out. Since the MBIS is almost entirely passive, there are a lot of parts to remove. Degassers, degasser rack, degasser pump, ink lines, peristaltic pumps, pump wiring harnesses, solenoid harness and light curtains were all removed. Ink lines were capped just after the valves, since valve removal requires nearly full dismantling of the MBIS cart.
9) Sensor bypass, bottle 'flaps' left intact, but float switches were ziptied to always show as full. If ink system cannot fill-up, it will trigger regular supply ink alarms. As all the pumps including vacuum for degasser, circulator and supply pumps are all open loop, disconnected them and removed from printer.
Those are the mods as of now, tomorrow is power-on day for testing. Still have to bolt down the pumps and the 24V PSU to keep them from banging around. Since the carriage moves pretty slow, I don't mind the tanks going along for the ride. Since the ink path is now basically that of a 7ft wide roll printer, way less stuff to go bad. Degassers are also a pain and basically obsolete, the JFX200 series mentions an optional degasser setup for the same heads/inks, but I have never seen one in the wild. At $250+ each for 16 degassers, that's a nice consumable to avoid. Shorter fill up times, smaller tanks to cut back on large quantities of ink stagnating and just less of a rat maze of parts for the ink to traverse. Not to mention some of the parts becoming pretty scarce as of late. Technically the JFX500 isn't tagged as end of production yet (and subsequently end of support), but techs that work on them are becoming stupid hard to come by. Either I was the only one willing to do it, or my amazing personality and helpful nature paid off. =D
Pics coming soon.
This is a running tally of mods to de-complicate and make the ink system much more streamlined and much less problematic.
1) Delete ink path from 2L bottles> MBIS valves> MBIS pumps> Filter station filters> Cable chain lower loop
2) Install bulk ink tanks on left side of gantry, opposite electronics bay just above the vents for the LED coolant radiators
3) Install 24V pumps (4 in this case, as printer is dual CMYK) next to bulk tanks.
4) Install power supply for 24V to power stirrers and ink level alarms on the aftermarket tanks. Wired to mains LED PSU harness since it is always on. Power supply that came with tanks looked very dodgy and I didn't want to half-ass the job. Cable run from electronics bay under carriage to other side of carriage.
5) Modify solenoid request harness from MBIS. Since the pumps are direct DC and not stepper driven, I needed a way to power them. Pumps were nice Swiss units off an EFI, so they are quiet, powerful and damn reliable. So, to do this, I took power from the solenoids near the old bulk tanks. Since the harness is clearly labeled and the channels are basically running coils anyways, not a hard choice. Bridged valve wiring into pairs, so either cyan channel request fires up the pump. Upper valves near the printheads in upper carriage left intact so if just either or both subtank requests ink, it will flow to only the tank(s) with an open valve.
6) Install 8 conductor line from MBIS to aftermarket ink tanks. The longest cable run, but also quite easy. With the cable chain cleared of old ink lines, lots of space to fish things through.
7) Install ink lines from tanks, through filters and into solenoid array in carriage. Since it was 2xCMYK the 1+2, 3+4, 5+6 and 7+8 valves were paired up with a Y fitting.
8) Removal of old ink system, minus sensors that might error out. Since the MBIS is almost entirely passive, there are a lot of parts to remove. Degassers, degasser rack, degasser pump, ink lines, peristaltic pumps, pump wiring harnesses, solenoid harness and light curtains were all removed. Ink lines were capped just after the valves, since valve removal requires nearly full dismantling of the MBIS cart.
9) Sensor bypass, bottle 'flaps' left intact, but float switches were ziptied to always show as full. If ink system cannot fill-up, it will trigger regular supply ink alarms. As all the pumps including vacuum for degasser, circulator and supply pumps are all open loop, disconnected them and removed from printer.
Those are the mods as of now, tomorrow is power-on day for testing. Still have to bolt down the pumps and the 24V PSU to keep them from banging around. Since the carriage moves pretty slow, I don't mind the tanks going along for the ride. Since the ink path is now basically that of a 7ft wide roll printer, way less stuff to go bad. Degassers are also a pain and basically obsolete, the JFX200 series mentions an optional degasser setup for the same heads/inks, but I have never seen one in the wild. At $250+ each for 16 degassers, that's a nice consumable to avoid. Shorter fill up times, smaller tanks to cut back on large quantities of ink stagnating and just less of a rat maze of parts for the ink to traverse. Not to mention some of the parts becoming pretty scarce as of late. Technically the JFX500 isn't tagged as end of production yet (and subsequently end of support), but techs that work on them are becoming stupid hard to come by. Either I was the only one willing to do it, or my amazing personality and helpful nature paid off. =D
Pics coming soon.