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Suggestions bulk ink system for mutoh 1324x

brentjosker

New Member
Ok so i bought tge mutoh 1324x. Over the past 4 months as the cartadges are "empty" according to the printer i have been opening the used ink, tearing out the foil bags and cutting and draining them into mason jars to see exactly how much ink im losing, holy cow its alot!!! The smart chips on the side of the cartridge is what tells the printer how much ink is "supposed" to be in it. The model i have does not recognize the 440 type only the 220 mil type cartridge. I need a way to reset the existing smart chips on the manufacturers ink or a working bulk inking system for this unit. Someone please suggest a system.
 

SightLine

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Not sure about the Mutoh smart card chips but I know on most other brand the standard chips cannot be reset. Once the printer writes empty to the chip its done. Permanently.

Aside from the smart card instead of a chip I believe the Mutoh cartridges are essentially identical to the ones used by Mimaki, Roland, etc. While the chip (including the smart card on Mutoh ones) does have a starting value and the machines write new lower values to the chip as ink is used, on a Mimaki at least, that value on the card does not actually trigger the machine to declare the cartridge empty (which the machine then writes empty to the chip). What actually causes the machine to declare it empty is the tab on the flat piece of plastic stuck to the one side of the ink bag inside. As it gets used the tab starts to stick out the side of the cartridge housing and eventually will push in a small micro switch in the cartridge slot. The ink bag is stuck to the on side of the inside of the cartridge housing, the other side of the bag has that flat piece of the plastic with the tab, as the bag empties, that tab is pulled to the side of the cartridge that the bag is stuck to. There are two ways you could cause the machine to further empty a small bit more of the bag. One would be to slightly trim some of that tab off. I'm talking a millimeter or less. The other would be to open the cartridge slot on the machine itself and slightly adjust the micro switch to be a tiny bit further away from the slot or slightly bend the metal pusher on the micro switch slightly inward so that the empty tab on the cartridge has to go a tiny bit more out before it triggers empty.

Both are risky options though. I know on a Mimaki, you can actually cut the plastic tab off it you wanted to and the cartridge will eventually go down to level 1 (almost empty) and then it will essentially keep right on printing at level 1 near indefinitely, even if the cartridge is indeed empty. The risk there is that the printer then thinks there is still ink flowing so it keep right on trying to print even though it is then dry firing the head. It will keep going on and on thinking it has ink when there is none. This is of course very bad for the head and you will be ruining a lot of material as the other colors probably still will have ink.

They have some variability built into the design specifically to prevent a cartridge from truly running dry which can cause a lot of expensive problems. Plus while it is generally very accurate cartridges can possibly have a few milliliters more or less ink. I think they are also slightly overfilled so while you bought a 220ml cartridge it might actually have 230ml in it by design. In the end, while it might seem like a lot of ink is left in a supposedly "empty" cartridge, is it really going to save you any money after the time and effort it takes to recover and use it? I actually did this about ten years ago. I bought a few new ink chips (you can find them on eBay etc), as well as a big solvent resistant syringe, and pretty large needle (real and very sharp). I snipped a very tiny bit of the needle tip to just ever so slightly blunt it some. I had a collection of dozens of "empty" cartridges. I then one by one used the needle to draw the remaining ink out of a bunch of the same color and inject it into one of the cartridges. I had enough to actually fill one full. To be sure I refilled it to the right amount I weighed a new cartridge on a scale and then refilled one to the same weight. Took the old chip off, put the new chip on the cartridge and viola - worked perfect. I just refilled a $120 (440ml in my case) OEM ink cartridge! The catch. The time and effort it took was really just not worth the trouble. Once I really stepped back and added the time up along with taking space to store all the empty cartridges, keeping up with them, buying the syringe, buying the new ink chip, them time it took to carefully empty each out and refill one..... my time is worth more than that. I realized I did not really save anything in the long run.

If you consider your personal time worthless than it might be different. In the end though, it was just not worth the time and effort to recover that 20 or 30 milliliters of leftover ink in each empty cartridge for me. Plus around that time we also switched to aftermarket inks which were less than half the cost of the OEM inks which made the savings even more minuscule....

Hope this helps and Happy New Year!
 

brentjosker

New Member
I have I have considered my time and I'm in total agreement with you it probably wouldn't be worth my time 2 replace chips and refill the cartridges that's why I was hoping on a bulk inking system at that point I would be willing to open up the new cartridges and pour them into the bulking system along with all the unused ink. as my machine is still under warranty I would not be able to use aftermarket ink it can only be the mutoh ink for now I do have a Roland sp300v and I'm using aftermarket inks with that I'm only using that to run stickers and my larger machine to do my banners translucent faces and all the other various jobs I have including vehicle wraps the mutoh 1324 X is an absolute printing animal love the machine 0 banding great color phenomenal outputs and the speed at which the machine runs far surpasses anything I've experienced with my Rolands.
 

premiercolour

Merchant Member
Good evening,

Selling aftermarket eco solvent ink for Roland, Mutoh and Mimaki is our focus for the past 7 years. We have tested many different inks from different countries. We have found Jetbest ink from Taiwan has the closest color gamut to OEM, least solvent smell compare to Bordeaux and Nazdar. It is by far the closest performance after market ink we found / tested in our southern California facility. It is plug and play with OEM ink.

For Mutoh 1204, 1304, 1604, 1614, 2606:
Ink - Eco Solvent - Jetbest - For Mutoh - 1204, 1304, 1604, 1614, 2606 - Premier Colour Inc

For Mutoh 628, 1324, 1624, 1628, 1638, 2638 and X models:
Ink - Eco Solvent - Jetbest - For Mutoh - 628, 1324, 1624, 1628, 1638, 2638 and X models - Premier Colour Inc

Youtube:

Feel free to give us a call at 714-668-9200. 9-5 PST.
 

premiercolour

Merchant Member
Good morning,

We have Jetbest brand, 220ml with card for Mutoh Valuejet all eco solvent models in stock to ship from S. California. Bubba06 is using our ink as customer as of today from Sep 2017. See 2nd message from the top.

 
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