Some Reassembly

So firstly I need to apologize for the lack of photos here. When you have a friend over spending their time on helping you out, the last thing you wanna do is stop to take really detailed photos of everything because, well, it's their time too. So, I went through afterwards and tried to do my best to take good pictures of what we did.

So, to start where I left off on the other post, we reassembled the ink pump and capping station onto the frame. It's really easy, and it truly is the reverse of disassembly, everything just pops back into place and screws together.

My friend cleaned out the head area and really got it sparkling! You can see just how it came out!

Here's a closer picture of the pump/capping station, mounted up and attached to the frame.

Something else important is how the ink lines work with this replacement pump. The original lines had about 3 different types of hose and multiple (more than 3) connectors along the way. This new pump lets me simplify a lot. Mainly because the drain hoses coming from the unit are really long!

We cleaned out the thin tubing running to the ink tank and then I attached the hoses right into the silicone tubing, no connectors needed. These then feed directly into the waste ink tank. Here's how the hoses on my machine are currently routed. (I may need to change this, but not sure.)

Here's a shot of how my external lines are run. I may need to modify the large drain line, but the others should be alright. I know the holders are slotted to let you slip the line in and out, but they just destroy the hard plastic. If your lines are hard plastic, just pull them out of the waste tank and through the holes.

The spit cup has been cleaned out, and the important part: the drain line has been cleaned out as well. My friend spent a good 15 minutes squeezing huge long globs of solid ink out of the line. It looks like the large ink spill occurred due to an overflowing spit cup. There was at *least* 8 inches of solid ink in the line when we cleaned it. It's now clear, and hopefully will be routed in a fashion that promotes drainage. (once we figure out a way to attach it. The cup is still broken)

So, I went to install my new bulk cartridge into the printer, and found that it didn't go in! Well, I compared it to the cartridges that came with it, and found that the two little nibs on the top of the cartridge were to blame.

To properly install the cartridge into a Falcon 1, you have to cut off the nib shown on the left. The nib to the right stays.

After this, it went in fine.

The technique I used to clean the lines was the easiest that would (hopefully) get the job done. It involved filling my bulk ink tank with the cleaning solution that I made up, and then using the syringe I bought to draw the solvent through the lines, hopefully pulling all the old/dried/precipitated ink out of the lines and into my syringe, which I would then empty into the jar you see in the upper right.
In order to do this, I left the tip on the syringe hose, and slid it up onto the metal pipe, then pulled steadily and slowly on the syringe, to draw the solvent into the line. After about 20 seconds of vacuum on the line, solvent would pour through. It would take a couple syringefulls to get the solvent running clear.

You can see the lines on top are showing signs of being cleaned by the solvent.

It seems that some of the solvent drains back into the tank when the lines are disconnected from the syringe, or when there is not a constant vacuum pulling the ink into the lines. I'm curious if this will be the case when I attempt to print, or if the ink pump will take care of this. I'm not sure how much of a difference there is. Perhaps the dampers will help by providing a small reservoir of ink near the head, or a check valve.

I wanted to show a little more about some of the electronics inside the black box at the bottom. They look intimidating, but they really aren't that bad. Here we have the ink pump connector for the wires from the ink pump stepper motor. They go into the slot marked "INK PUMP" and it uses the same type of connector I showed previously on the control panel, the pull/push ZIF connector. Be gentle with it. The blue band on the wire and the small white arrow near the bottom of the connector indicate pin 1. Align these two when you are inserting the cable.

Here is the heater control connector, the large socket at the top. It is not a ZIF, so you will need to push the cable in as you did on the other side of the heater controller (shown in a previous post). Be careful, and make sure you match the silver side of the cable with the side containing the pins (also showed how to tell in a previous post).
The large black components with "CRYDOM" on them are solid state relays, which allow the unit to turn the 110VAC heater strips on and off to keep the temps up.

This is the socket for the control board. It is also a non-ZIF socket, so you'll need to carefully push the cable into the holder. It's the opposite direction from the heater cable, so make sure you pay attention to which side the pins are on!

Looks like someone at the factory forgot to pull the sticker off of the beeper after they washed the flux off!

Here's the head as it is currently. The O-rings and nuts have been removed, and the lines cleaned. I have let solvent rest in the lines to try and get it to break down more of the solidified ink, Magenta was the hardest to clean of all of them. It had grown quite thick and required a long time with constant suction to finally pull the solvent through. It's cleaned now though, and with the slow-drying properties of the solvent, leaving it in the lines should be good, even if it drains back.

I'm pretty forgetful, and in my excitement and rush to get this thing back together, I forgot about inks. Now, while the printer came with some, and they're somewhat full, they are over three years old. I'm not going to take the chance of messing up all the brand new stuff in here with some old ink, so I need to get some new ink. This was somewhat of a disappointment, as I had hoped I would get to start calibration and testing today, but alas, I'll need to wait for a bit so I can afford a new set of inks. Hopefully I'll pick them up the end of this month.

My plans are to run a bit more cleaning solution through each of the lines before installing the new inks, to clear anything else freed in the lines during the week-long soak. Then, I'll install the dampers and heads, and begin pulling inks through them. I'm investigating using only 4-color printing to save a bit, as I'll be buying the genuine inks.  Lots of questions about it on the forums, but no real 'how-to' style answers. I'll figure this one out and get something definitive put up about it.

For now, things are gonna go quiet for around a week while I relax and make money to pay for the rest of this.

Feel free to comment if you find this helpful or would like more info! I love feedback!