Cleaning Carts

[AlienSteve]

The ammonia, once in the printer, will also aggressively attack metals.

It really does take barely any ammonia. The only reason I use 1 part in 10 is because I mix up a lot, and clean a lot of printers, and every time I open it more ammonia evaporates.

My cleaning/purge mixture in cartridges is half that mixture, half ink. Sometimes just a little of that mixture and the rest ink.

 

[ghwellsjr]

I had tried to vacuum fill an empty Epson cartridge with straight ammonia and because I wasn't having much success, I left the ammonia in a glass which was inside the plastic jar I use as my vacuum chamber. I left the cover on the plastic jar. A few days later I was horrified to see that the plastic on the inside of the jar was melting from the fumes of the ammonia and it was all gooey. Before this happened, I could see into this jar but now it's all frosted. From now on, I am just going to use Windex.

There's a happy ending to my story about the ammonia fumes melting the inside of my plastic vacuum jar. I decided to take it outside and see if it would still hold a vacuum without imploding and some of the oil from the vacuum pump got sucked back inside the vacuum jar. So I placed it in the kitchen sink and soaked it with an organic cleanser to clean up the oil. Several hours later, I discovered most of the mess from the ammonia fumes was also cleaned up. After a few more applications, the plastic vacuum jar is completely restored. It appears that the mess actually came from the white plastic cover. Apparently the ammonia fumes melted a thin layer off the cover which deposited on the inside of the clear plastic vacuum jar.

Still, I'm not ever going to use ammonia--diluted or not--around my printers; Windex with ammonia is good enough for me.

 

[OoIaT]

I have made my own cleaning carts using any empty carts I have available and filling them with straight ammonia which was recommended by the following site: [WARNING: don't use straight ammonia--just use Windex--read the rest of these posts for more information.]

http://www.outofinkandtoner.com.au/articles/article37.htm

Glad some of these articles are coming in handy for people, I was begnning to wonder how much they got read!!