Question Is there a trick to keeping a print head from drying out?

[David40]

I have a Mutoh 1204 and I am curious if anyone has found a way to keep the print head from drying out for an extended period? If I do not have any print jobs I exercise the head once a week to keep the ink flowing. I would like to take a three or four week vacation but I am concerned about leaving the machine idle for that long without any ink flowing through the print head. Is there anything I can do to prevent the head from drying out and being ruined?

Thanks

 

[damonCA21]

Really with any solvent printer they need to be printing something every couple of days, or preferably every day. Do you have anyone who can go in and run off a simple print job every few days for you ? Just one inch squares of each colour across the width of a sheet is enough to keep them cleared out

 

[David40]

That's what I was afraid of. I was hoping I could discover something I could place in the cap that would rest against the head and keep it from drying out. In the past I have unclogged nozzles by cutting out pieces of microfiber cloth about the size of the inside diameter of the cap, soaking them with solvent, and parking the head on that. I was thinking if I could use a gelatin like substance that was harmless to the head on the top of the cloth it would seal the nozzles from any contact with air and prevent the ink from drying out. The trick would be what substance would be harmless to the head and easily wiped off with a swab when ready to print again?

 

[damonCA21]

I dont think anything like that would work really. The nozzle holes are so small in solvent print heads that you would never be able to wipe something off them, it would more likely push the substance into the heads and block them.

The printers have never been designed to be left not in use for long periods of time

 

[Solventinkjet]

If you keep your maintenance parts clean and the bottom of the head where the head seals with the cap top clean, it should be able to sit for about a week or 2 and be easily recoverable when you get back. If you want to be 100% sure, run the longstore function which flushes the entire machine and cleans it out. Then when you get back you just fill it with ink and you're good to go.

 

[David40]

I hate to spend the money on flushing cartridges and the wasted ink to recharge it but that appears to be the wisest thing to do. The worst part is I had four flushing cartridges sitting on the shelf for years, but I happened to check them not long ago and the solvent ate right through the cases melting them so I had to toss them out. What a waste.
Thanks

 

[unmateria]

I have a Mutoh 1204 and I am curious if anyone has found a way to keep the print head from drying out for an extended period? If I do not have any print jobs I exercise the head once a week to keep the ink flowing. I would like to take a three or four week vacation but I am concerned about leaving the machine idle for that long without any ink flowing through the print head. Is there anything I can do to prevent the head from drying out and being ruined?

Thanks

On 1204 you can setup the machine to do autocleanings every 1440 minutes if i remember ok. Is very little ink waste.

 

[tulsagraphics]

Oh, I didn't know you could adjust auto clean intervals -- makes sense though. I wonder if that's available for the 1614? Time to hunt down a manual.

 

[unmateria]

I have 1204, 1324 and 1641 and its nearly the same firmware, so i bet is in 1614 too

 

[David40]

I believe the auto cleaning is On but it's tracking the amount of time in-use not not idle time. When I am using the printer I will notice in the middle of a job it will do a cleaning on rare occasion but I have never seen it go into a cleaning while just sitting there idling. Besides that, if I have any print jobs or not I run a manual Strong Cleaning once a week, plus I squirt an eyedropper full of cleaning solvent into the cap during the last cycle of the cleaning so it gets sucked into the maintenance station pump and out the discharge lines into the tray. That helps keep the maintenance station lines from clogging up as they have done in the past.

 

[Solventinkjet]

Something people tend to forget on Mutohs is that you need to put it in sleep mode for the auto cleans to work.