Need to make a cooling box
June 29, 2012 6:49 PM Subscribe
Is there a way to keep 8 bays of ink cartridges cool without air conditioning?
A friend of mine is running a home business printing shirts with the Anajet printer from Sprint. The room the printer is in must be kept at a minimum of 45% humidity so the printhead does not dry out; that nixes the possibility of using a window AC.
The technical manual suggests the ink be kept at temperatures below 90F. Since this upcoming week will have several days of triple digits, I need to help him keep the 13 by 4 inch area where the cartridges sit cool. Each in cartridge extends out 1 by 4 by 5.5 inches.
I was considering sandwiching the top and bottom of the ink rows with water blocks or Peltier modules, then topping with heat sinks. I don't think they make heat sinks that large, or water blocks for that matter.
If I aim a fan at the inks, I'll just be blowing hot air onto them, not keeping them cool at all.
I pretty much need to make a cool box that will drop the temperature by 20 degrees.
A friend of mine is running a home business printing shirts with the Anajet printer from Sprint. The room the printer is in must be kept at a minimum of 45% humidity so the printhead does not dry out; that nixes the possibility of using a window AC.
The technical manual suggests the ink be kept at temperatures below 90F. Since this upcoming week will have several days of triple digits, I need to help him keep the 13 by 4 inch area where the cartridges sit cool. Each in cartridge extends out 1 by 4 by 5.5 inches.
I was considering sandwiching the top and bottom of the ink rows with water blocks or Peltier modules, then topping with heat sinks. I don't think they make heat sinks that large, or water blocks for that matter.
If I aim a fan at the inks, I'll just be blowing hot air onto them, not keeping them cool at all.
I pretty much need to make a cool box that will drop the temperature by 20 degrees.
Response by poster: I forgot to mention there is a 9 gallon humidifier in the room already. We both watched the appliances duke it out with each other over the span of 8 hours in 93F heat in the room. We shut the AC off when the humidistat reached 43% and declared the humidifier the loser.
posted by ayc200 at 7:16 PM on June 29, 2012
posted by ayc200 at 7:16 PM on June 29, 2012
I have some experience with keeping print heads from drying out (youre on your own with the temperature). Think creatively about how to make a very confined environment for the print heads. Tape some plastic around that portion of the printer and find a way to enclose a wet paper towel in there. This is much more effective than trying to humidify the entire room but maybe do both. If youre using the printers often and daily then simply dont turn them off as this encourages saturation and dry out cycles and also wastes ink (most printers do an automatic cleaning cycle on start up. Save the cleaning cycles for when the image quality dictates it). Also rather than doing a cleaning cycle at first visual indication try undocking the carriage as if you would for a cartridge change. Locate the ink heads' docking pad which is usually a little foam pad of dome sort and spray just a tiny bit of some very diluted household cleaning solvent like Mr. Clean in there to keep the print heads flowing. I learned all these tips making high end digital fine art reproductions in a very dry desert climate.
posted by No Shmoobles at 7:32 PM on June 29, 2012
posted by No Shmoobles at 7:32 PM on June 29, 2012
How about using a swamp cooler instead of an air conditioner? Cooling plus humidity?
posted by xedrik at 8:18 PM on June 29, 2012
posted by xedrik at 8:18 PM on June 29, 2012
I would just get a second humidifier. As well as sealing the room as well as possible to keep the dry air out.
You might want to use distilled water in the humidifier, as most humidifiers just atomize the water, which allows the dissolved minerals to go airborne. This is annoying in a home, but it could be disastrous to a piece of expensive machinery.
posted by gjc at 8:53 PM on June 29, 2012 [1 favorite]
You might want to use distilled water in the humidifier, as most humidifiers just atomize the water, which allows the dissolved minerals to go airborne. This is annoying in a home, but it could be disastrous to a piece of expensive machinery.
posted by gjc at 8:53 PM on June 29, 2012 [1 favorite]
No Shmoobles is right. You don't want to build a "cooling box"; you want to build a "dampening box". Cool the room while running the humidifier in a confined space with the printer.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:58 PM on June 29, 2012
posted by mr_roboto at 10:58 PM on June 29, 2012
You don't want to confine the humidifier and the printer too closely, because you don't want the water to condense/dribble onto the printer. That can ruin electronics and machinery pretty quickly.
Are you sure your humidistat is correct? Cheap ones are mostly always wrong.
Finally, you might need more power in both units. Cooling humid air takes a lot more BTUs of cooling power because the machine uses up a lot of its capacity condensing the water out of the air.
More finally: the cooler the room is, the easier it is to maintain the correct relative humidity. When you did your experiment, and the room stayed at 93 and the humidity dropped, the humidifier wasn't the loser, the AC was. Double up on AC, plumb the condensate drip tubes back into the humidifier and you should be good.
posted by gjc at 7:42 AM on June 30, 2012
Are you sure your humidistat is correct? Cheap ones are mostly always wrong.
Finally, you might need more power in both units. Cooling humid air takes a lot more BTUs of cooling power because the machine uses up a lot of its capacity condensing the water out of the air.
More finally: the cooler the room is, the easier it is to maintain the correct relative humidity. When you did your experiment, and the room stayed at 93 and the humidity dropped, the humidifier wasn't the loser, the AC was. Double up on AC, plumb the condensate drip tubes back into the humidifier and you should be good.
posted by gjc at 7:42 AM on June 30, 2012
Response by poster: Got this less than a year ago . It is stuck to the printer near the ink.
posted by ayc200 at 11:27 AM on June 30, 2012
posted by ayc200 at 11:27 AM on June 30, 2012
Response by poster: This humidistat is the one used. It is less than a year old.
posted by ayc200 at 11:30 AM on June 30, 2012
posted by ayc200 at 11:30 AM on June 30, 2012
« Older Where Should We Live in North Chicago / Waukegan? | Invasive, external banner ads that won't budge are... Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by jon1270 at 6:52 PM on June 29, 2012 [2 favorites]