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Purging ink out of Roland
- Thread starter anozira02
- Start date
CS-SignSupply
New Member
I believe you will need 3. Just be sure to NOT mix the aqueous cleaning fluid with the solvent ink... Instant GEL!
You will need both aqueous and solvent cleaning cartridges.
45 minutes to do the entire process or so.
You will need both aqueous and solvent cleaning cartridges.
45 minutes to do the entire process or so.
sfr table hockey
New Member
As was said to do a pump out you need 3 carts. You would do one head side at a time or the 3 colors on that side.
You could do this also:
Have this on hand before you start ( min 2 refill carts ) waterbased cleaning solution and a solvent cleaning solution. A syringe with a tube that will fit over the ink line.
If you don't have 3 carts but do have 2 you can do each line manually. What I did was get one cart filled with hot water and pull the first cart out and install the refill cart with water into the slot. Remove the damper from that color and unscrew the line from the damper and have a syringe ready to stick over the line to draw out the remainder of the waterbased ink. Once you see the ink is gone through you will see how much residue is left on the walls of the tubing (as long as you have already taken off the main cover of the printer) You can keep drawing the hot water through till it's as good as you can get. Keep the syringe on the line and remove the cart, then pull the last of the water in the line out with the syringe. Once drained then remove the syringe. If you pull the syringe off the line while the cart is out and you still had water in the line, it might run back out by way of the empty cartridge slot.
Do the rest of the lines till all are clear and drained. I then used the same cart filled with the aqueous cleaning fluid and drew some into the line and left sit a bit and then remove the cart again and draw the remainder of the solution out. (You use a lot less cleaning solution by starting the process with water and then the final flush with propper cleaning fluid).
Once all lines are flushed with aqueous cleaning fluid then you can run a new clean empty refill cart with solvent cleaning solution. You do the same thing but you will notice the first bit that comes into the syringe will have a gel look to it and balls of gel with be mixed in the solution. By doing this from the main line you don't contaminate a new head or a damper with that gel mix that flushed through. Keep drawing the solvent cleaning solution till you get no more gel balls in it. Do all lines.
You might want to let things sit and do one more flush with solvent cleaning solution.
Once satisfied that the lines are clean you can put on new dampers and heads and set your solvent ink in place. I would attach the new dampers to the lines and draw ink throught the damper by way of a syringe till the ink fills the damper ( you get about 1/2 full normally )
You might want a new capping station but if not you can buy the filter that goes in the cap tops and start with at least clean filters. The mix of the waterbased and solvent may gum up the filter in the captops.
Put in the new heads ( you can try to clean the heads but that gel will plug them if any residue was left from the water based fluids. Heads are only $100 so new is not so bad for us.
Once heads are in and the head rank is changed for each head then draw ink into the heads by way of the cap tops and a syringe. Then you might need to do about 5 - 10 cleanings to get all heads to fire. It did take more than I thought it would but they do eventually all fire. Don't do the powerful cleaning as all it does is clear all ink from the lines and flush it to the drain bottle.
** One thing you want to do also**
If your pump lines are long enough to remove from the thin drain line tubes ,that come on the CJ 500, and just bring your drain bottle to the front of the printer, right under where the pump is, and secure it there so you can put the pump lines directly into the drain bottle. Reason for this is that the very thin waterbased drain lines will plug easily with the solvent ink and will cause major issues. If the lines are too short to reach into the drain bottle you could do what I did. Go to a automotive parts place and buy some brake hose tubeing ( it's black and sort of ridgid) . There is one size that fits nice inside the pump tube and its solvent resistant. Make sure you use some type of tie to get the pump hose secured to the brake hose or when you flush your pump lines you might get enought pressure to blow out or blow by the added tubing.
Just remember, the better you clean the line the less trouble you will have. You might get the odd drop out of the heads that had a bit of the cleaning solution mix and will look like a fish eye look on the vinyl so do a bunch of test prints to start with before a big print job.
Hope this is as clear as mud......
anozira02
New Member
Thanks a bunch sfr. This might even better than the manual explaining it! I intend to install all new solvent parts, just one more question if I may.....do they make thicker pump lines to install on the new pump? Also I just bought 16 new refillable cartridges, so I will us 3 at a time! Thanks again.
anozira02
anozira02
sfr table hockey
New Member
The regular solvent lines should be good to use. As for thicker lines, do you mean so they don't plug up? If so, what I meant was that the drain line that goes to the bottle right now on the CJ is very thin. It is connected to the white pump lines. Also to feed thicker lines from there through the printer base would be a pain, thus moving the drain bottle is a better fix. The pumps usually have enough extra line running out of them (when new) to reach into the drain bottle if you move it to the front. Its also easier to see how full it is and see when there is ink draining when doing cleanings.
Now if you just wondered about thicker line in general then you have to watch out how thick of heavy duty you would use as the pump arms (whatever they are called) may not be strong enough to compress a thicker tube and might not work in the pump. You should be able to just order solvent resistant line and re feed the pump. I don't think the actual pump ever touched the solvent ink, it just rubs against the tubes outer wall.