Answering @SpaceCobraJoe in twitter: Was the “not in the plan” A) Scheduled preventive maintenance, B) Emergency maintenance, C) It done falled off.
It was what i call ‘eventual maintenance’ - the capping station is technically a wear part, one that you can expect to replace every 3 years. The ink used in Direct to Garment printers is a lot thicker and muckier than what the printer was originally designed for, so the capping station takes a lot of abuse and harbors a lot of buildup. The assembly itself costs about $400 bucks and isn’t too hard to replace (four screws and the whole assembly comes out).
I’ve said before that owning a DTG printer is a little like owning a temperamental old muscle care - works great and can be impressive, but you are constantly working on it to keep it working smoothly. I opted to try to clean out the unit rather than just replacing it. It was a major pain, but i didn’t find any real wear or busted components while i mucked it out (and i was able to actually put it back together again and it worked) so i think i won’t actually have to replace it.
There were massive blobs of rubbery solidified ink filling gaps and coating most everything, but the thing that gunked up the works was a clog in a connector between the drain hoses leading to the capping piece (the assembly that gooses up to the print head itself). Basically, i had to take the entire thing apart just get at that stupid little adapter - but it’s nice to have the whole thing clean and working again.
So, i lost most of a day to that, which sucks - i’m really behind in getting orders printed and finished and out the door. I appreciate your patience as i catch up here.
July 16, 2011, 10:29am Comments
