New Printers:

You may think because your printer is brand new you can place any ink into it. What you need to know is all printers are tested at the factory to make sure the heads are aligned and firing properly. Ink is drained from the printer, but not cleaned with cleaning fluids; thereby, leaving ink deposits in the heads. If you are going to use a third party ink, it may not be compatible with the OEM (Epson) Pigments, which can result in a blocked head. Even our most powerful cleaners may not be able to clear the blockage. This is why we recommend using our CLF1 cleaning fluid before placing third party inks into a new or used printer.

Cleaning:

We cannot stress enough the importance of proper maintenance needed for inkjet printers. Printer companies do not stress the care and cleaning of your printer. Just as you change the oil in your car every 3000 miles to keep it running, so does  an inkjet printer need care and maintenance to keep it running as well.

Preparation for ink change over:

Epson Printers are pre-tested with the ink designed for their printer and are not cleaned out with a cleaning fluid. You should use a powerful cleaning fluid, one that dissolves ink such as our CLF1 high potency cleaning fluid. This cleaning fluid is designed to dissolve any residue of ink in the print head and print lines. It is the strongest cleaning fluid on the market. It does not merely rinse the system, it dissolves the ink. Each ink manufacturer formulates ink with different elements that are often conflicting to the OEM ink. The cleaning procedure is of little effort, but so important. To keep your printer running longer it is advisable to run the cleaning fluid at least once a year no matter what ink your use.

Potential Problem:

All Pigment Inks exist is a colloidal suspension and are thicker than dye and water. When the printer is not used often enough the pigment ink dries out on the docking station pads as well as on the bottom of the heads. This can cause the nozzles to become clogged. This can also happen with dye printers.

Ink maybe thought of as a perfectly pure liquid, but after having performed repairs on printers using OEM ink, I have found small particles captured by the filter on the damper. One of the functions of the damper is to filter ink preventing any particles from being trapped in a nozzle. The damper sits on top of the head in all wide format printer. The more ink that gets passed through the damper, the more likely the chance for a particle build up. As the particles build up in the damper, ink flow is restricted and drop out occurs.

Remedy:

For every day handling. Get an eye dropper bottle and fill it with cleaning solution each night before shut down, place a couple of drops of cleaning fluid on the docking station pads. This will moisten the pads and break up any ink particles. Caution: Do not over soak the pads. It can cause a capillary action where the ink gets sucked back into the heads.

To help clean the docking you can soak it with CLF1 and leave the solution on it for at least 10 minutes. Then dry the pads by dabbing a paper towel or a lintless cloth on it.

Once a year or every six months depending on printer usage, it would be advisable to run cleaning fluid through the lines and dampers. If you know how to replace or clean the dampers by themselves do so.

In the near future we will have graphic instructions describing the procedure of removing dampers.

ClF1 is designed for cleaning Dye, Pigment, and Dye Sublimation Inks. It is not intended for solvent inks.

Ink Handling:

The following information may not have been made available to you, but has been defined by every inkjet printer manufacturer.

All Inkjet inks should be kept and used a temperatures around 75 degrees F. The ideal humidity to run your printer is between 30 to 40 percent. At low humidity the nozzles of the head will dry quickly causing nozzle drop out. Should inkjet inks reach a temperature lower than 40 degrees, separation is possible. The remedy is to warm the ink and shake it up. As our bulk ink cartridge bottles extend out from the printer, you can easily warm the bottles with a heater. We conducted a test where we dropped the temperature of the ink overnight and heated the ink for a half hour before using. The result was every nozzle fired perfectly.

Note: Even Epson warns you to shake their ink and prevent the ink from very low temperature.

Cleaning Cartridges:

*CF1 is a highly concentrated cleaning fluid designed to dissolve and break up ink particles. It works with most types of inks, especially pigments and dye based ink. For most applications it can be diluted 1:1 with distilled water.

**CF2 is a highly concentrated tinted cleaning fluid designed to be used with printers that have clogged nozzles. After the cleaning procedure you can perform a nozzle check and you will be able to see whether all the heads have fired or if you need to perform further cleanings. It works with most types of inks, especially pigments and dye based ink.