 | Quote: |  | | |  |
Originally Posted by XYLisa |  | | | | | | | | | this is exactly what is happening I have fought with this machine since 2004 and finally have let it sit for a while. I'm going in tomorrow to work on it and planned to drain it. How exactly do you get to the needles? I appreciate all your input. | |  | |  | |
To flush the lines, there is a carriage where you insert the tube into the unit. When you have the carriage down, it opens up the lines. When it is up, it closes the lines.
Open the carriage and pull out the tube from the unit. You should have a separate set of short needles on the same type of tube that would fit into the unit. Close the carriage and then take a syringe filled with water and connect it to the short needle and push the water through. Do this several times until the water is clear. Then push air through it to get the excess water out. You can flush each of the lines this way and it is good to do anyway.
If you have print quality problems, you might need to clean the encoder strip off. To find the encoder strip, it's usually directly under a flat metal bar that runs the length of the printer. You can clean it off with distilled water, on the top and bottom of the strip. It's flexible and is probably black/grey in color. There will always be build up on the strip, so cleaning it once a month helps your print quality. Just be careful with it. If you damage it in any way, you will not be able to print and will have to replace it. It is forgiving, but don't push too hard on it.
As for the needles, they are the ones that are inserted into the printer cartridges. If you unscrew the cartridges, there should be a long needle. If you have only a short needle that is your problem. The short needles are designed to prime and flush the ink lines. The new cartridges do not have the long needles in them, only the short ones. So you would want to replace the short needle (and hose) from the new cartridge with the long needle (and hose) that should be with the unit. After thinking about it, this would be my guess as to what is happening. The needle will probably be about 2" long. The short needle is probably only about 1/4" long. If that's the one you are using, then it will only print with the ink in the cartridge but will not draw any more out of the ink lines since you will never be able to get a proper prime.
Problem with Encad Vinyl Jet 
