Hi Folks. I'm new to this forum, but I can see there's a lot of knowledgeable people here.

I just fitted a DIY system to my HP5940 and it's working. I'm now looking for information on how I can improve it.

I started with a tri-color cartridge that was already full and glued on the three tubes going off to the reservoirs. As I started to print, the ink was drawn though the tubes and it all worked fine with no mess and no leaks.

On the forum several users have said how important it is to get the right height difference between the printhead and the reservoir, as this affects the pressure. What's the best approach? And how do commercial systems achieve this? I believe some have a reservoir with two chambers to keep the level constant. Can anyone tell me how to do this?

Thanks in advance.

tenbob

tenbob wrote:

Hi Folks. I'm new to this forum, but I can see there's a lot of knowledgeable people here.

I just fitted a DIY system to my HP5940 and it's working. I'm now looking for information on how I can improve it.

I started with a tri-color cartridge that was already full and glued on the three tubes going off to the reservoirs. As I started to print, the ink was drawn though the tubes and it all worked fine with no mess and no leaks.

Good going...

Quote:

On the forum several users have said how important it is to get the right height difference between the printhead and the reservoir, as this affects the pressure. What's the best approach? And how do commercial systems achieve this? I believe some have a reservoir with two chambers to keep the level constant. Can anyone tell me how to do this?

There's some discussion on here about that already but the keyword to use is probably marriott bottle or something close to that...

In this instance though you shouldn't worry too much about this unless you start to hit problems with your ink feed. The one thing that is important though is to avoid too much pressure on your printhead so try to keep the ink level of your reservoirs to about the same height as the bottom of your printhead or slightly lower. This stops freeflows that empty your reservoirs into your printer (never good!).


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Printers: (Canon) MP500/830, MX700, iP4000/4200/4300/4500/5200, iX4000(A3) (Epson) C84/86, D88, CX6600, R285/800/1900 (HP) K550, K850, K5400, L7680

Hi Martin.

Thanks for the info on marriott bottles. I have now found some some useful stuff via Google.

My cartridge has just failed. Not sure what's wrong, but the printer says it is a faulty cart, so I'm transferring all the tubes to a new cart.

I found a good supplier for tubing at http://www.altecweb.com/ I used their "miniature barbed connectors" and "AlteVin™ Industrial PVC Tubing" part number 01-98-1958. They only have single tubes, not multiway ribbons.

Bob

tenbob wrote:

My cartridge has just failed. Not sure what's wrong, but the printer says it is a faulty cart, so I'm transferring all the tubes to a new cart.

It's probably built into the cartridge chips or monitoring.. The printer is probably deciding that the cart should be empty and reporting it as a fault which is not a great surprise unfortunately.

Quote:

I found a good supplier for tubing at http://www.altecweb.com/ I used their "miniature barbed connectors" and "AlteVin™ Industrial PVC Tubing" part number 01-98-1958. They only have single tubes, not multiway ribbons.

You can get ribbon tubing but it's the kind of thing that requires a MASSIVE investment up front from someone and not many application require the investment so you won't find too many around.

At present I'm only aware of one company who now have the ribbon tubing available to buy but I'm sure you could contact a few other CIS manufacturers to get some.. My own supplier has decided not to invest in any more until they see sufficient demand so we're talking over £5k in orders before they'll go there...


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Printers: (Canon) MP500/830, MX700, iP4000/4200/4300/4500/5200, iX4000(A3) (Epson) C84/86, D88, CX6600, R285/800/1900 (HP) K550, K850, K5400, L7680