I'm printing again... but I still have just a couple of blocked nozzles. Not as bad as it was.
My capping station was not messed up, but rather the print head was cattywompus, and not flush. It looked flat and flush, but that was because I only had one perspective to view it. With the side cover off and the capping station removed, only then could I see the print head was not flat, but the back tilted up slightly. Obviously enough to not create suction. Did one cleaning cycle, and we're printing again!
Yeah, there's a couple of streaks... but for the few banners we've got, they'll mostly go unnoticed. It will at least buy me time to get the head cleaned properly.
About the print head being slightly askew... well, I'm pretty sure it was with the lowering the print head over the platen on some cleaning solution soaked wipes. So, next time I'll just pour the solution into the capping station, and never lower the print head onto wipes out on the platen.
I must say however, I am no longer squimish about digging into the bowels of the printer. It's actually really simple to perform a through cleaning. Removing the vacuum hoses and power flushing the ink sludge out of there really brought the printer back to life. I'm not crazy about the tiny little plastic hose barb reduction thing in between the little black hoses and the clear pump hose. That orfice is so small I had to clean it with a thin wire. Ink sludge gets clogged in there quite easily.
The black hose does however fit inside the clear hose perfectly without the barbed connector. And thus removing a potential blockage point. However, I'm sure it was engineered to fit there and the orfice size was created in a lab abord the international space station, and by removing it, the printer will never work the same again. So, as a disclaimer, don't do it. Unless the lords of Mutoh say it's fine. (Which I'm sure they won't, because they would never engineer such a foulable piece in their otherwise solid machine)
Quick question regarding the pump... Is it my imagination, or is the pump just massaging a "looped over itself" tube? From my study of it's operation, and suction power, it's almost as if the waste ink never even sees the inside of the pump or touches any vanes, rotary mechinism etc. Just a cam that presses on the tube itself in an alternating rythym, creating a cycle of air and forcing it out.
I wanted to remove it to clean it better, but how the thing is screwed in there, would be rather difficult without a real specialized screw driver, or disassembling most of the machine. So just flushing the lines with a syringe did the job.
