Never had it happen, but here's what I would do. install a cleaning cart, and use a syringe to draw from the damper side... or if you have an empty ink cartridge, you could force the clog the other way into the empty cart with distilled water. Once it has passed you should probably leave some cleaning fluid in that line. also think about how this happened.... did it sit, is it a channel that gets used less. You may have built up some plaque or settled pigment.
Ian is right. If the needle is really clogged, then you want to prevent the dried up ink from going to the print head or dampers. So here would be the steps that I would do:
The key is that you don't want to break up the clog and have it go to the dampers or the print head. So if you are sure that there is a clog before the damper or the print head, then you are going to want to look at doing the following steps:
1. Disconnect the ink line from the damper.
2. Remove the ink cartridge and put in a cleaning fluid cartridge (or best case - put in a refillable cartridge with a mixture of warm cleaning fluid and distilled water. The warm mixture can help break up the clog).
3. Attach a syringe to the end of the ink line and draw the remaing ink in the tube into the syringe. You may have to do this a couple of times.
4. If you experience resistance, then you will need to get a refillable cartridge so you can push the ink in the opposite direction. I don't recommend pushing ink back into a closed cartridge because then the clogged ink particles will be in the ink bladder the next time you use that cartridge and you could put air into the cleaning cartridge. You could use an empty ink cartridge if you have one as well.
5. Once you get a good flow through the ink line and needle, inspect the ink line to make sure that there is no build up through it. If there is, you might want to consider replacing that ink line at this point.
Just be becareful to make sure that the syringe does not disconnect from the line and the cleaning fluid spills into the printer if you are going to let it sit in the ink line / on the needle for a period of time. If you talk to Dan at DTGInks.com, he makes a special cleaning tool that will allow you to hook up a syringe to a print head, damper or ink line. It is only around $5.00 and is well worth it. I have never heard of anyone having to go through the steps of replacing the needle (which I believe is part of the ink bay).
Might be best to speak with Tech Support on the phone why you do this as well. They might know a trick that Ian or myself is missing. Best wishes,
Thanks guys for your input. Anajet says to take a small wire, i used several strands from a picture hanging wire to feed into the hose side of the needle, kept reaming until i saw the wire and drops of ink coming out of the needle hole. Then i took a hose with a syringe at one end and pulled alot of cleaning solution through until i got a steady flow. The trick here is the tightening of the nut on the hose side of the needle, that really has to be tweaked until you're not crimping the hose and on the other hand not sucking air.
Well thats what seemed to work for me.
I will call dan too. He's a really nice guy. He took a head that i purchased from him, that i quickly clogged, and cleaned it up for me at no charge. Where doo you find that kind of service these days, cudos Dan
Just to clarify, Anajet had you remove the ink line from inside the printer that connects to the needle and then push through the back side of the needle a small thin wire to clear the blockage, correct? Did you still have a cartridge in the bay or did you remove it? Sounds like you must have had a really bad clog for it to get that bad. Glad to hear you are back up and running.
Rick, since you are familliar with this part of the machine now... the little brass piece that is in the tubing and that fits in the recepticle behind the needle, can be a "bottle-neck" if you happen to get any blockage. About a year ago, I had some serious starvation issue in my yellow channel. I had been printing Royal blue and black prints for about three weeks and no yellow was being used at all. I had some sludge form in that little brass sleeve. I used a .009 guitar string to clean it out. Mark, when you work on this end of the ink system, you end up taking off the ink bay (liitle scary at first, but only like 5 screws(?)) but you have full access to the cart bay. There is a video on the Anajet site.
Hey thanks for the guitar hint. Just where on the site is this video, coulndnt find it. Anajet says the ink bay is glued in. Not true?
Glued!....say it aint so. I can say that in my older machine, that is not the case. Also, I would have to have very tiny hands an finger to get the nuts without removing the bay. Perhaps the newer machines have more clearance where one can get at the right area. The video used to be in the support area (havn't checked lately), where you can download drivers and updates on the software and such.
anajet needle clogging 
