How To Use A N Ultrasonic Printhead Cleaning Machine

Today, we are going to talk nearly a topic that is a little controversial: should we utilize an ultrasonic cleaner to unclog a printhead?

An ultrasonic cleaner works wonders in unclogging printheads, especially the printheads chock-full by paint ink. The cleaner is extremely useful and very affordable. It tin can be found on eBay for nearly xxx dollars. However, many people are maxim that ultrasonic cleaning will eventually destroy the printhead. So, let'south take a expect at the ultrasonic cleaning process more carefully.

Ultrasonic cleans a surface by cavitation, through which the ultrasound creates microscopic bubbles. When the bubbles burst, they create a petty vacuum. Millions of these bubbling will create a cleaning forcefulness and dislodge clay and droppings from the surface of whatever we are trying to make clean. This process sounds very harmless, and then how could it destroy a printhead? Information technology turns out the vibration during the procedure is detrimental to thin membranes. Therefore, although the ultrasonic cleaning is widely used in automotive, sporting, press, marine, medical, pharmaceutical, electroplating, disk bulldoze components, engineering and weapons industries, nosotros typically don't clean microphones, speakers, buzzers, accelerometers, and gyroscopes.

Movie one. Cavitation Bubbling

I way to test the ability of cleaning is chosen the foil test, which an ultrasonic cleaner that will destroy a piece of aluminum foil in a thing of seconds. Many people are scared by the appearance of the destroyed aluminum foil and conclude that the process is very harmful to the printhead. The aluminum foil examination is unique because, in addition to the concrete forces of loftier-frequency vibration and audio-visual cavitation, there is also a sonochemical issue occurring that causes the molecular bond cleavage of water molecules releasing powerful oxidizing hydroxyl radicals. Considering of the nature of aluminum, the issue is dramatic. The ultrasonic cleaning is very safe for electronic parts equally long as we know what can be used and what can't.

Picture two. Aluminum Foil Test

For printing industries, ultrasonic cleaning is widely used on printheads such as HP, Canon, Epson, Mimaki, Konica, Seiko, and Nova. Even so, some of the printheads have sparse membranes to divide ink colors. Therefore, there are specific printheads shouldn't receive an ultrasonic cleaning. When we determine we desire to effort ultrasonic cleaning, we need to practice enough of inquiry and just work on the kinds of printheads that we can afford to lose. Here is an instance of ultrasonic cleaning destroying a DX7 printhead. If you lot don't know, DX7 is about $1,500 new and $500 used. Information technology is clear that the vibration destroyed the sealing membrane.

Picture 3. The report that an ultrasonic cleaner destroys an Epson DX7 printhead.

Even so, don't believe everything you run across on the Cyberspace. For instance, we volition give less weight to this information because the poster didn't try it and merely provided some speculation.

Picture four. An opinion based on speculations.

Finally, we need to determine what kind of ultrasonic machine to use. Let'southward accept a look at our plan here. If we use the following configuration, then the ultrasonic strength will clean the surface of the printhead. Also, if we fill up the printhead with liquid (ink or otherwise), the vibration volition knock off some of the droppings within the nozzle. Therefore, the outside cleaning is done by vibration and cavitation, but the inside cleaning is only done past vibration.

Picture show 5. Pocket Air. The white region is non getting cleaned considering of a pocket of air. Therefore, nosotros should fill up the cartridge for the cleaning.

To make the inside cavitation, nosotros want to have smaller bubbles as in picture 6.B. Then if pigments stick inside the nozzle, nosotros can utilise both sonic waves and cavitation bubbling to dislodge them.

Effigy 6. Bubble Size

The ultrasonic frequency determines bubble size. The higher the frequency, the smaller the bubble size. Delight see the figure below. Most printheads' sizes fit in the red band. Therefore, if we use 48 kHz frequency, we can create cavitation in the largest nozzle. To brand the cavitation work for all nozzles, we demand 75 kHz and above.

Figure vii. Frequency and bubble size

However, most ultrasonic cleaners are xl kHz and below. To become a 75 kHz cleaner, y'all will be expected to pay at least $1,500. Don't be discouraged by this information. Nosotros are talking well-nigh cleaning the nozzle pigsty. Although the nozzle opening is tiny, it immediately connects to a larger funnel. Therefore, the less expensive cleaners can still do an excellent job on the printhead. BCH carries some loftier-frequency cleaners, and you lot can check them out here:

Figure 8 A printer nozzle under SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope)

Then nosotros take decided to buy a regular 40 kHz cleaner. Adjacent, we volition need to decide how powerful we want it to be; do we want to buy a 35 Watt cleaner or a 350 Watt industrial course cleaner?

Fortunately, neither the bubble size nor the cavitation power is determined by the power of the cleaner. More powerful cleaners will take more than bubbles and thus clean the surface more quickly. Therefore, we can choose a lower wattage cleaner. If you are selecting a larger one, then you may be overcompensating for something.

We are going to utilise a Canon cartridge PG-245. This cartridge is integrated, which ways it doesn't have membranes or foils. Nosotros will alter the original cartridge and make it a spongeless refillable cartridge. We cleaned the cartridge twenty times with a low-power ultrasonic cleaner then nosotros used a powerful 6500W cleaner to clean it 20 more than times. After twoscore cleanings, the cartridge is as adept as new. Because most cartridges won't go through xl cleanings in their working life, we concluded that it is safe to use ultrasonic cleaning method on Catechism integrated cartridges.

For a detailed result, please watch this video: