
5-8 Cleaning Clogged Ink Jets
Cleaning Clogged
Ink Jets
All printers that use solvent-based inks are susceptible to print-
head clogging. This is caused by the solvent evaporating and
leaving behind the pigments, which is desirable on printed out-
put but not in the printheads!
The printer incorporates many automatic and manual features
for preventing clogs from occurring, and for recovering ink jets
that do become clogged.
To recover clogged ink jets:
◆ Purge-n-Wipe — all sixteen heads can be purged at once, or
one color set (four heads) can be purged for increased pres-
sure.
◆ Manual cloth wipe — if repeated Purge-n-Wipes fail to
recover enough jets, you can wipe them manually with a
100% polyester, Class 100 cleanroom cloth soaked with
SolaChrome-HR cleaning solvent. A manual wipe is also rec-
ommended after uncapping the printheads (see “Uncap the
Printheads” on page 3-12 for instructions).
DO NOT USE ISOPROPYL ALCOHOL ON THE PRINTHEADS.
To access the heads for cleaning, select Access Heads from
the control panel Front Page, then after the carriage has
moved over the capping station, remove the capping sta-
tion pad by pulling it forward and out of the printer. Wipe
the printheads and any areas of the carriage that have col-
lected ink. Then press Proceed on the control panel to return
the carriage to the service station. If it appears that the ser-
vice station is not wiping the printhead properly, it may be
misaligned or too low (see “Calibrate the Service Station” on
page 5-16).