Refill Workflow Question on 3880

[3dogs]

Most often I only refill one cart at a time, this time I elected to do ALL at once prompted by the OEM PK cart finally reaching empty after two years of printer use.

On completion I did a basic menu manual nozzle check to confirm that the printer had returned to full service. VM showed MANY fail to fire nozzles, around 15-20%! I am stunned, assumption no.1 was existing ink in the supply lines would be good (no air bubbles) and no.2 that the nozzle check would only tell me that the entire colour was A OK, not individual nozzle performance, that I thought would not show up till ALL the existing ink in the lines had purged. ARE THESE ASSUMPTIONS CORRECT?

OR>>>IS THIS PAR FOR THE COURSE WITH REFILLING - JUST ANOTHER DAY AT THE OFFICE??

My workflow
Gently, agitate ink supply bottle ( pigment ink) and cart, refill, check weigh for correct volume and reinstall. Once refilling is completed, close cover and allow the printer to return to PRINT ready status.
As soon as its back on line run a nozzle check. (SHOULD I BE WAITING ??? HOURS BEFORE DOING THIS?

This is the second time VM has presented with 15-20% misfire in a month. Once cleared 100%, or so it has been in the past!!

Cheers,

Andrew

 

[jtoolman]

Wait a minute. Are you talking 3rd party refillable carts or refilling Modified OEM carts?
Either way you should have NO air introduced in the lines. As long as you are careful in your refilling process.
With refillables, you NEVER wait till they are empty so you do not deplete ink from the priming chamber. Doing so will definitely introduce air in your ink lines which would be a bear to purge out.

Will modified OEM carts you fill to capacity and aspirate a few ml which the cart sitting with the exit port UP and that way remove all air you may have injected into the ink bag.

PRO3800 / 3880 DO NOT run an ink purge which you replace a cart with a full one like on printers with carts that ride on the head carriage. So even if you do introduce air, it wood need to travel through the whole length of the ink line and into the ink damper on the print head carriage before it would even enter the printhead nozzle plate and appear as a clog.

Joe

 

[3dogs]

Ok
First yes I am using Cone, and they are doing just fine refill I top up at 80g and take them to 125g. All but VM have no issues EVER.
VM History for the last 4 weeks. 4 weeks ago showed 20% misfire - did multiple manual nozzle checks, no change, did an AUTO
The print out shows 3 tries from memory first reduced misses to 5 or 6 nozzles next 1 nozzle, next 1 nozzle.
pulled the offending cart, gave it a damn good shake and put it back in the machine. Left it overnite and it did a 100% manual check next morning

Coupla days ago the PK (only remaining OEM cart said replace ink low) so filled the Cone cart, removed the chip from the OEM and put it in place under the Cone chip as per......reinstalled it and almost immediately did a manual nozzle check to confirm 'normal' service achieved with the new Cone PK. It was fine BUT the damn VM was out of its mind again with 20% misfire??????????

WHAT is causing THAT, I thought.... hence the question,

Note manual nozzle check did nothing, waste of time. Got back to all firing via AUTO again.

Cheers,

Andrew

Added: I am thinking that you have answered my question elsewhere!

I think what I am doing is refilling TOO SOON after agitating my BULK ink stock. I think I need to give it a good mix a couple of days BEFORE refilling.

Do you agree?

 

[jtoolman]

OK. All I am going to tell you here is that I have a friend in another forum (dpreview) who is a devout CONE ink user. Has a R2880 and aR3000 and guess what color CONE ink he has a problem with? Wait for it!!!
Yes. VM!!!!!
CONE VM ink is apparently more viscous than the rest. He has discussed it with JON and DANA but they sort of tried to say that it was his problem except it was occurring on two separate K3 VM printers and both with CONE carts.
That's all I am going to say about this.
Check to see that your VM cart is fully primed so you know it is not your doing and contact CONE!

 

[3dogs]

Thanks Joe,

I will give the VM cart a PRIME tweek just to be absolutely sure.

Based on history, VM (for me) seems only to play up after I refill.....so that IS a possibility - however remote, as you said above any air would have to travel the line so should not show up for a while - thanks.

Andrew