Discussion, tips, pictures, reviews and peer to peer support for current and future owners of Belquette manufactured machines, including the MOD-1 DTG machine and the Flexi-Jet set series of printers.
need help with this Flexi jet, i know Roland large format printers but this thing has me stumped, have been working with Renee at Belquette but the video she sent me isn't working , corrupt file or something and i can't download it again.
the guy that used to be in charge of it is no longer with us and i think its all clogged from not being used enough and not run through a daily cycle. we originally had it set up with color on one side and white ink on the other but at some point he switched it to be color on both sides. 4 of the tubes still look full of white ink, the other 4 have the colors in them, we used the syringe on the 4 tubes that had the white ink in them and tried following the directions in the users manual, very confusing and not sure if we accomplished anything. very frustrated at this point.
Your post is a little vague. What exactly have you done thus far and what have been your results? How long has the machine been sitting unused? How do your nozzle checks looks?
nozzle check was horrible, as in the only color that would print at all was the magenta. Renee @belquette told me that i should not have used the "auto" option, that i should have told it to "print" instead when i did the nozzle check? well when i used the "auto" option it said "all nozzles still clogged"
so thats when she told me she would send the video and that i would need distilled water, the syringe and tubing, etc to clean the heads, and that i needed to read through the users manual as well for the instructions.
Well the video she sent said the file was corrupt when i downloaded it and when i tried to download the video again it had expired? she used some service to send me the file and i guess it only leaves the files on the server for a couple of days? she had sent it a few days ago and i was waiting until i knew i had a day i could devote to it to view it.
Anyways, i decided to walk through it step by step in the users manual but parts of it were not clear to me nor my helper (very mechanically inclined spouse)
it told us to start with the far left tube and do the same thing to the remaining 3 tubes, that confused me , what about the other 4? it said that after you syphoned all the ink out of those 4 tubes to fill the ink cartridges on the RIGHT SIDE ONLY with half water half cleaning solution and then run a powerful cleaning. It said to refer to the cleaning procedures on page XX, as in what page is that? well the preceding page runs through the cleaning procedures and tells you that if you hold the button to long it will ask if you want to do a powerful cleaning and you should select NO???
at that point i was too frustrated to do anything else so i emptied the cleaning solution/water out of those 4 cartridges, we had already taken all the ink out of the other 4 cartrdiges as instructed and i rinsed them all out again to be safe and left them to dry AGAIN.
so now my hope is that someone can lend a hand somehow and get me going in the right direction.
oh, and it sat unused, ON, but unused for at least 2 months i would say. the guy in charge of it just lost interest all together and as a result lost his job so now its my job to try and get it up and running again. I had been in charge of other things at our shop so i had NO IDEA that this Flexi Jet required so much up keep and maintenance until i started reading the Users Manual.
the last thing the other guy had done before he lost interest in it all together was to switch out the 4 white cartridges and make them all color, so we had 2 each of yellow, magenta, black and cyan when we started to empty them all to do this cleaning the head business. I do not know if he flushed the lines clean or what if anyting else he did after he did that. I just know he kept on claiming it didn't work and he couldn't find anyone to help him 9 which was pure BS , he just never even called anyone at all)
Sorry to hear about that. Good news is this can all be fixed in a few hours.
First you will want to thoroughly drain all of the lines. I find the best way to do this is by purchasing some distilled water and warming it up to about 90 degrees. Then pour the warm water into the cartridges. Start of with the left ink bay insert the cartridges ensuring that you leave the blue lever in the up or unlocked position. This ensures that when you unhook the line from the damper the ink does not kick back into the cartridge.
Now you will need to unscrew the line that is farthest to the right of the carriage unit (if you were looking at the machine from the front) and attach you syringe to that end. You will need to drop the levers so the valve in the ink bay opens and pull the water through until the line is clear. It may take a couple of times so having a bucket near by is recommended.
Now before hooking the line back up I would change the damper. You are best of just changing all eight now so that you will be working with a fresh set. Also there's a good chance you will need to change the print head or at the very least soak it in CPS for a couple of days. That's up to you. Soaking it can save it but it will probably take time and in the end it may just be unsalvagable.
Also note that when you reattach the lines make sure that each screw has an o-ring in it.
It is a time consuming as well as a possible expensive repair. Make sure you a very careful with the liquids around the internals as there are sensor in the areas you are working in. Also be sure not to touch the contacts on the ribbon cables that go into the print head with any liquid or even your fingerprints.
If you have any more questions or need to iron any details let me know or PM me your contact number and I will give you a call.
Do you have any cleaning solution? If you do dilute it 50/50 with distilled water and put in the empty cartridges- all 8.
The wiper blade is a rubber blade that is seated in between the capping station ( a screened square on the right where the print head parks) and the spit station ( an open square to the left of the capping station). The wiper blade is recessed between them and can get very dirty. It needs to be cleaned thoroughly as well as the capping station and the spit station. The easiest way to clean the wiper blade is to start a simple clean ( hold down the menu button three seconds) and count three seconds then power off the base. Press the blue lever in front of the print head to release it and slide it over to the left for access.The wiper blade should be visible between the spit station and capping station. Clean wiper blade, capping station, and spit station with cleaning solution and a lint free sponge tipped applicator.
Chris gave some good suggestions on cleaning the lines.
Next run two power cleans with the solution in the cartridges- Run a power clean by using the LFP panel on the utility page of the Epson 4800 ( right click on the Epson 4800 icon and click on printing preferences to bring up the utlities.)Fill the capping station with cleaning solution, let soak over night.This might save your print head if you have more time than money, rather than going directly to replacing parts. Repeat soaking until you are ready to reload ink to test the printer. Do another power clean with solution before loading ink.
It is very likely that your dampers all need replacing and the print head might as well. You can tell , i you want to try to save them, by loading the fresh ink ( straining it through a paper coffee filter, especially if it was previously removed from the cartridges) to make sure it is free of debris. Empty the cartridges and put in the ink at least 2/3 full and run a power clean to load it. At this point if you do not get a pretty good nozzle check after a couple smaller cleaning cycles you need to replace some parts ( or nozzle check use the same utilities as above, click print not auto on the nozzle check and if not click on clean)
Or you can skip right to replacing the 8 dampers and the print head for a fresh start.
This is a short term availability on sendspace to download the last verson of the Flexi manual that I am aware of.
For access to a bunch of user generated documents on cleaning and parts replacement, sign up for www.dtginks.com forum and then I can send you the links to the cleaning documents you will need and how to replace dampers and print head, if you would like me to.
thanks for the great responses. I got on the phone with Belquette this morning and they got me up to speed on the suggested procedures that these responses talked about. So i got the cartridges filled with distilled water and started trying to drain all the lines, no good, i think 5 out of the 8 are completely clogged., But i decided to plod along anyways and try to do this powerful clean. Brent at Belquette had told me how to reset the chips on the cartridges, did that, then he told me how to fill them up with Windex ( good sub for their cleaning fluid i guess) and told me how to push the buttons to get where i needed to be, never got that far because NOW the printer is telling me that i have "invalid"cartridges???
i don't even want to get into dampers at this point, i would just like to get these lines clean. I may try the warming the water trick, maybe that might help
When you get the "Invalid Ink Cartridge" quickly press the PAuse button on the printer control panel. This will force the printer to override the error and recognize those cartridges.
Also the warm water is great especially with 'gunked' white ink.
flexi jet issues, cleaning 
Re: flexi jet issues, cleaning 
