Small update

Here's just a slight update on what I did today.

Headed down to Sherwin-Williams' commercial store and picked up a gallon of Butyl Carbitol ($60), and then hit Lowe's for a quart of acetone ($8). This mixture should (as mentioned in other forums) with a 4-5/1 ratio of Butyl Carbitol to acetone, give me a similar solvent to what's in the inks themselves. Hopefully this will work well for cleaning the printer.

I thought I'd take a couple more shots of the problem areas to show what I'm dealing with in terms of ink problems.
Here we can see the fan housing, where the ink has dripped down from the mis-fitted spit cup, and caused the cover to this housing (removed, along with a foam filter) to melt. The cover looks salvageable, so hopefully that will be alright. The filter will need to be replaced; we plan on tracing it onto some similar foam and cutting it out, then reinstalling it after cleaning up the mess.

Here's another shot of the spit cup mount. The issue here is that the plastic on the spit cup is solvent-proof, while the plastic that it mounts to is not. Stupid design. Though, this printer was originally made just for pigment inks, so they probably cut corners in making it solvent-ready.
Basically, the problem here is that the spit cup slips down onto a pair of pegs, which are no longer there. One was broken off by a previous service job, the other came off when I attempted to remove the spit cup. I had a hard time removing it, because the ink acted like model cement and melted the peg into the spit cup. It also weakened the plastic here, causing it to break. I'll need to figure out another way to mount the cup back in.


Well, that's all for the moment, I know I mentioned I'd be cleaning it today, but my friend couldn't make it. I'm currently investigating some options for the FFC cable that ties the control panels into the main board, so I'll keep updating with what I find on those. I've sent out a request to a couple companies who manufacture the cables to see if I can get small quantities made, and I have a lead on another company which might be able to do it. FFC cables of this type are readily available, however, not in such long lengths. The longest I've seen on eBay is about 600cm, which is too short.

Keep checking back!