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UJF-6042 MKII & MK1 Projects & Rebuild, Hacking, Etc.

Smoke_Jaguar

Man who touches printers inappropriately.
Managed to get ahold of a retired UJF-6042 printer and am currently having a helluva time getting the thing back up and running. The unit was left in storage with ink still in it for a couple of years and finally have most of the gelled inks cleaned out. Had a heck of a time getting more than 1 head to drop a nozzle pattern, so needing to check up what's up with that. Main thing I need now is a set of wash cartridges to get it out of the ink loading state it's stuck in. Thankfully after surfing the MSDS on Mimaki's site, it seems ethyl acetate ($40 for a gallon, sure beats $30/100mL) is the chemical used. Works great on ink and seems safe on anything but body plastics. I've seen mentions of a deflate process, but not sure that will help prime the heads. Since they have ink ports on the side of the head carriage, it's not hard to bleed and prime the system. Installed new dampers, and a low pressure hand flushing with ethyl acetate is promising, looks like a nice curtain of flow and low restriction. The Ricoh Gen4 heads are pretty easy to source and I had some in the scrap bin from another project, so I was able to test solvents on those without risking good ones. Might convert the system to tanks, as cartridges seem to be a pain in the butt to get at a decent price (especially compared to bulk ink).

The MKII on the other hand was a purchase. Got a decent deal on it, but it seems the first head is toast. It was originally set for primer/clear and was left empty for a good chunk of its life. Replaced the cap on that station, but learned that cap 1 and 2 are on the same pump. Thankfully, neither seemed to leak and getting the extra connector out of the deal came in handy. The solenoid valve on the primer channel was completely toast. Seems the primer caused the little tube gasket to swell to the point of ripping a locking tab off the plastic housing. $30 part for the valve, so not bad compared to the $8 slice of tubing they call a gasket. The coolant was a fun mystery orange substance, so flushed that all out. Just grabbed Sierra PG antifreeze from the local Napa and mixed it with water at recomended concentration. Lifetime supply of coolant for cheap, but it's simply green instead of pink. The wipe tray had its pad removed, and the 20 hour drive with the printer in the back of the truck resulted in a helluva mess. Next big job is the filters (M022219), as they're looking pretty swollen and there are splits and cracks in the foil caps. Been doing some printing with the unit as-is and had some really good results. Got some cheaper $120/L LH-100 type aftermarket ink and seems to work great. Primer channel is about 80% working, and it seems to do a great job on metals like aluminum. Probably going to put Lc/Lm in those channels, since both the primer and clear are somewhat cursed when it comes to clogging heads. Oh, dang table isn't level, need to find a service manual to see if I can shim out the 1.2mm of play.

Another fun toy that came with the MKII is an InkControl chip simulator. Interesting little gadget, but the software is rough. After messing with the virtual chips and figuring out the software, I couldn't help but laugh when it asked me to buy more magic ink refills. For some reason the serial number is tied to the old account. Just loaded up Cheat Engine and found the 'remaining charges' field and gave myself a few thousand magic ink tokens. Not sure the price on the unit, but, seems like a pain. Totally functional, but a silly business model. The Mimaki chips are super simple 1-Wire chips and I just started interrogating and copying them with a Bus Pirate chip reader. Since the hashes the DS2430/DS2431 chips Mimaki uses are well-cracked, I am just using an Arduino Mega to play chip emulator. Lacking some keys, like from the 440mL cleaning carts though.

Anyone else messing with these much? Pretty cool bastards, and, in spite of the project status on both, I am loving them. Probably going to try and find a bad MKII CE4N head or two to mess with and get a flushing solution working out for them. Used to do Epson heads, and if you can fix a TFP, you can unclog anything.
 

Smoke_Jaguar

Man who touches printers inappropriately.
I just changed my clock on the printer and it worked great. Also, since de-hashing the ink chips, I just flash a new code on the chip if needed.
 

COPYCENTER

New Member
I just changed my clock on the printer and it worked great. Also, since de-hashing the ink chips, I just flash a new code on the chip if needed.
I change too the time in the service mode xD now im getting a error when the machine go to local again while printing, and have to push remote over a over again till the print ends, is so anoying
 

Smoke_Jaguar

Man who touches printers inappropriately.
Hoping to have the Arduino Mega based chip emulator finished pretty soon. Going to post the build guide and code for everyone to have, and, if there is demand, sell the adapter board and cables for cheap. Mutoh, Roland and Mimaki ink chips are some of the least locked down in existence, but still annoying.

Also, if anyone works on these printers on a regular basis, still on the hunt for clogged/bad heads to experiment with.
 

Smoke_Jaguar

Man who touches printers inappropriately.
No luck recovering a head, dang electrical failure in the unit. Thankfully the slider board is ok. On the down side, no used heads or cheap donor printers for sale. The search for junkers continues.
 

chrisify

Entrepreneur. Computers and graphics since 1980.
Got a few messages regarding the ink chip hacking thread, seems it's delisted or something.


Not sure what's up, and seen no messages from admins about it. Weirdness. Archived everything though.
Thank goodness Smoke_Jaguar you saved this. I was just going to say where did that thread go?!? I didn't have time to go through it and was looking for some downtime to archive it and experiment. Had a strange feeling this would be removed before I could catch it. Will inquire soon. Thx. CHRIS
 

Smoke_Jaguar

Man who touches printers inappropriately.
Working on a github page, so we can have a public repository there. Gotten a lot of pushback from 2 chip resetter vendors based in Europe (won't say who) about the thread, wonder if they've reported the threads.
 

Smart Ideas

New Member
Working on a github page, so we can have a public repository there. Gotten a lot of pushback from 2 chip resetter vendors based in Europe (won't say who) about the thread, wonder if they've reported the threads.
Yeah i figured. I think it's best you shift it to github coz am stuck from where we ended with our solutions and definitely need to progress. If you may, keep me posted once it's on github. Thanks
 

Smoke_Jaguar

Man who touches printers inappropriately.
Will be around, just finishing up some other work at the moment. Might have some hacked firmwares for the UJF MKII stuff, completely bypasses the chip system in the first place.
 

Smoke_Jaguar

Man who touches printers inappropriately.
We have a UCJV300-107 coming some time next week, hope to start hacking that thing as well pretty quickly. I think I have a good chunk of Mimaki's firmware structure figured out, seems to be pretty modular to allow it to be adapted across all sorts of printer models.
 

btxmedia

New Member
Wanted to add some of my notes about the UJF-6042 I learned from fixing one up:

* The 3042 and 6042 seem to be the same internally, the daughterboard/sliderboard in the 6042 says 3042 on it even though it has 4 head ribbon connects. I guess the motherboard has a ROM or firmware that sets the 6042/3042 flag.
* White channel in rasterlink doesn't do well printed 100% saturation. 60 or 70% works fine.
* Head 3 with it's Primer/Clear channels seems finicky. Mine was clogged when I got it, and most I've seen for sale have it clogged out too. Would be cool to have it prime jobs as needed.
* I use AP3155 as an adhesion promoter instead. It stinks horribly but isn't too bad when cut down 1:20 ratio in 95% alcohol.
* When I first got it there were many problems with "reset a switch" error being displayed. It has 2 big brown switches that need to be closed/pushed in, and a leaf switch on left one needed a shim in it, to detect guard in place. Had to reset the panel switch with some cardboard filler it was loose.
* "work too high" even when the bed is leveled ok was fixed by the sensor on rcving end needed leveling instead. Took top case off and leveled it, the led changes color when it's rcving the beam. So I got it working after about a few minutes of moving it.
 
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