redna379

Hello World! Well, I assume I'm directly talking to johnson4 here, as I was looking at info in this forum that looks... strange. I'm talking about proper way to put the printer on hold. I found this thread on the matter: https://www.opendtg.com/topic/2677-storing-printer-for-long-term-storage/ In there you wrote: Ok, so it sounds like you have carts filled with cleaning solution and you replace the ink ones with them. As cloggin can happen also inside the printhead, I assume you also perform a printhead cleaning while those carts are in? That would sonds logical to prevent ink from clogging right within the printhead. However, in our thread about my latest issue (here) you had this one: So here the advice seems to be to really NOT NOT NOT let cleaner liquids stay idle into the printhead. And that's why I'm confused. At the very end, what would the best practice be? Just flush the lines and leave the ink in the printhead, or flush the printhead too with cleaning liquid which essentially means to leave the liquid inside the printhead? I might assume there's perhaps some other liquid (someone talks about "moisturizing solution") that's meant for this purpose, but here things are even more obscure. When I hear about "cleaners" or "solutions" no one really know what they actually are. I do have to different "cleaning solutions" in here, and they're simply named... "cleaning solution". One has no smell, the other one smells like a detergent. But zero clues of what they actually are. Thanks in advance for any help in trying to clarify the issue!

I'm just glad we seem to agree. Ever since I started I was not afraid of "losing" time and money. Probably more than others, if you consider I'm not even doing this to actually run a printing business myself!!!! But I love to learn and understand, that's probably the best part of my own job. And so I really appreciate peoples like you. I really feel you about peoples not reading, you can just imagine how often that happens when you build custom complex systems where 90% of audience get stuck in the first 10% of key tasks.... Can you imagine several of my customers (who are mostly PRINTERS!) knows nothing about the difference between RGB and CMYK? But they keep asking why their supernicefluorecentRGB file which is so nice on their monitor is not printing as nice on their superexpensive 12232 channels printer.... Oh well. I learned several things and I'm just happy to Thank You for that. I am a sort of guru in many other things, so I hope I'll be able to pay you back in time, in some way. Who knows? In case, let me know if you'll ever plan to pay a visit in Venice Italy, that's actually where I do live. Everyone wants to come here, at some point

As always, thanks for the detailed post. I'd say this topic could be transformed in some sort of advanced tutorial of things new DTF users might not even have considered! Especially because of this I wrote earlier: All what we're discussing here falls precisely in that realm. Back on topic, this makes perfect sense: I might really well start thinking at air as the main cause. I would think it can be a pretty common issue with cheaper converted printers. I have to say this is tingling me in thinking at possible solutions, perhaps even silly ones! Now I'm really just thinking out loud, given one of the main things is not to have air and not to suck debrees from tanks. Wouldn't be nice to have some sort of "vacuum maker" to prevent air from flowing in the tube, even in case it's sucked from the tank? Not this, but this pic gives the idea of the placement. "Something" that sits across the tank and the damper which would be responsible to avoid any air to pass through, and/or to host filters to help stop any possible debree. With something similar to "air locks" used for pipe systems, perhaps? That sort of thing could be also an easier to access part where to do the vast majority of cleaning. In general, making DTF's daily life easier in any possible way will, in time, pay back with a wider userbase and associated improvement of tools fo any kind. Even finding a "simple" answer to a silly question like "what if I have to leave my printer for 2 weeks" would go in the same direction. There are just so many opinions out there, and often conflicting ones... I'd say this is why I like posts like this. All is explained, perhaps even too much, but gives taste of real world... with pictures too! And, most important, not just ending up with "what to do", but "why doing it". Makes a pretty good difference!

DTF needs no pretreat at all, that's DTG. I honestly have no idea about what happens if you apply DTF over a pretreatment, but I don't think it's a good idea

Also, both dampers takes the white from the same tank. Once more, the curious thing is still why it happens on one channel only. If debrees, I'd expect a little to happen on both, while today's test shows a huge difference between channel 1 and 2

In general I'd agree. But aside from new printhead, new dampers and new ink, when I loaded this all I ALSO did wash completely the ink tank. I tried to take a picture of it: one from the side to show it rotated, an one from the top as you can see (kinda) there really is no bottom sludge. It was there before cleaning and flushing, obviously. But not now

Another addendum: although it's the 5th time in a week, I also performed another printhead cleaning. After that, both channels were back to normal. So the revisited puzzling question is WHY it happens only on channel 1, and why so fast.

Addendum: as another quik test, I performed again the channel test by swapping the white dampers. Again, stripes were on channel 1 only, channel 2 was fine. But as the dampers were inverted, this SHOULD mean dampers are ok. Thinking at the printhead... possible, but strange. It's NEW! And even in case, how many chances of it shyowing the very same issue experienced with the previous one?

Yet another update. I'm officially going mad So, this is a closeup pic of a white only print, made at 1440x720: It kinda remembers the stripes seen in the previous 1440x1440 picture. The "good news" is that's not preventing me from using it: although not solid, the stripes are close enough to still provide proper underbase. Also, this pic is right after printing, you can see it's still wet. After giving time to evaporate a little, stripes are far less noticeable. The issue would eventually be only in case of a white only print, which in this case I'd have to perform at full resolution. And finally, it is still doing this on white only, colors are fine. So again, no issues about feeder or media, otherwhise that would just happen to everything But you can see what's driving me crazy here: now there are new ink, new dampers and new printhead. If I try to think from a mechanical point of view, I really cannot imagine what else could be causing this. Really, could it be software? The white has stripes, but is consistent. No fades. Which to me means there are no flow issues. Previously I could have imagined a clogged nozzle, or perhaps a clogged hole in the printhead's injector pin. But not now, being it completely new. Same goes for dampers: in the event of flow problems, I would expect a consistent "fade out" of white, not a consistent pattern of lines. It is like some nozzles (and always the same ones) are receiving the command to drop a little more (or less) white than others. It might be pretty complicated to debug at this point. Could it REALLY be software related? What I have here is a genuine copy of acrorip 10.1. Honestly, I don't even know how much of the "print setup" is handled by the RIP and how much (if any) by the L1800 driver. I can just say I changed nothing in settings, AFAIK. A way could be to test print with something else, but sadly in past I instealled cadlink to test and now, even by trying to remove and reinstall it, it says that my trial is expired. I'm surely not going to purchase it just for the sake of a whiteprint test. Any idea about how I could perform it in any other way? I know it might sound strange, but considering all of the new components in place I can hardly imagine any other mechanical reason.... ----------------------- ANOTHER UPDATE ------------------------ I leave all I wrote on top because it's still valid. But whilte thinking at other tests, I just thought at another one. Interesting results. So, Acro allows also to select which white channels to use. Here's a shot: So, I tried to print a small white strip by using only one each time. Results: W - O -A - H !!!! IUn some way, this is interesting but also very very VERY fristrating. On the left is channel 1 only. On the right, channel 2. So, it looks like the real issue happens on channel 1. The reason why it is still good enough when fully printing is because channel 2 provides a better solid base. So, channel 1 being the issue kinda causes the visible stripes because it "patterns" them first. Still the question remains, and now is even more complicated: again with new ink, dampers and printhead, how on hell the same channel (at this point I'm assuming this is the same thing happening before) could do somehting similar?

Update: At the end, I ordered a new printhead. Did a last test at 1440x1440 with old one, bands were visible and white was also very "washed". New printhead, tested at 1440x720... perfect! So, the good news is it actually was the printhead, and now I HOPEFULLY learned what not to do. Considering at the end it costed me around $350, I'd say this wasn't a bad cost to learn a lesson Now I have the old printhead, I'll probably make use of it to experiment cleaning methods. The hard part will really be how to check how it's doing, as the only way I can imagine is to re-install it in the printer. Would be nice to be able to refurbish it into a spare part.

Hi, Something sounds wrong. An Epson ET 2850... for DTF? Aside from the issue of not being able to load PET sheets, ET 2850 looks like a normal ecotank printer with 4 colors. Could work for sublimation, but it simply cannot be used for DTF if it misses the ability to add white ink somewhere.

I'll surely let you all know. In the meanwhile, I've ordered a new printhead. Just as planned I'll keep doing my tests with the current one until I'll fry. Knowing however that my biggest problem in time will ALWAYS be I'm not printing much, I think I'll try a different approach for the daily maintenance thing. Aside from shaking and syringing from dampers, printing something is needed to force some flow through the printhead. Having nothing special to print it means both wasting a little amounf of ink, but also PET film. I guess I'll exchange the daily printing with a daily head cleaning instead (still, after shaking and syringe). It will surely consume more ink, but I'll save 100% of film and in any case will be a marginal cost for me, as long as what I need to do is mostly testing. I hink this might be my best bet, for my own current situation. Shall I ever start to use that machine to print more seriously well, then it'll be a totally different approach. News soon!

"Don't let it sit". I guess that was my main mistake. When I performed the deep clean, I waited to have something to print before replacing inks. Which means I literally left it in there, without any ink, for a good coule weeks I still find curious that this affected only the white nozzles, though. But this is how you learn! BTW, just for the sake of knowledge, I was looking at this interesting short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-638bI-YHy8 Seeing how actually things are inside is always interesting. As my next step will probably be to purchase a new head, I might want to replicate that disassembly on my current one just to check if I can in any way SEE what I've done and where. Finally, I'd like to thank you for your help. Not only to me, but in this forum in general. I see how passionate you are, but also how much time you spend to write proper and exhaustive replies. For peoples like me, who rather than a "plug and play" answer prefers a deeper discussion that leads to actual understanding, more "verbose" answers are just the best. I value time a lot, and for this I want to thank you for yours!

Oh, one more. This sentence of yours made me curious. If even an Epson cleaner is going to kill the printhead, is there ANY liquid you know about that can be properly used to perform such deep clean methods? I see several peoples talks about "cleaning liquid", the "transparent one", the "cleaning solution".... but never, and I say never, I found someone suggesting something specific. Like simply telling what those liquids actuall are, for instance!

I thik we came to the same conclusion. Being a test machine, I think I'll just run it at 1440x1440 when needed until it'll die, and get a spare printhead ready to be replaced when it will happen. The Epson liquid used for the deep clean sounded the possible best culprit to me too, although I used it to clean ALL channels and not white only. But at such microscale, who knows what can happen. A couple extras from your replies. I am actually living in Italy, and this makes my research harder. DTF superstore is not really an option for me becuase of that. I know here I can find an original Epson one for about $360, cheaper versions are normally refurbished or non-original Epson ones. But although I am from here, being my duties all internet-related I have a userbase spanning around the globe. Vast majority is in the US, actually. Procolored: actually, the reason why I ended up with them was to spare some time and a couple interesting things. At the end, it's still a converted L1800. What it has different is a heated plate right after the print area (very useful to evaporate excess liquid pefore powdering) and an easier way do access dampers and printhead. Only thing is they used a sliightly smaller dampers, so L1800 originals simply does not fit in there. As also evaluating these companies is part of my tasks, I'd be curious to know which kind of issues you heard about, if it'something you can share. And at the end, yeah: usign quality inks and films is surely the goal. Problem I'm solving is finding reliable manufacturers I can find both in EU and the US, if what I want is the ability to suggest a "bundle". DTF is a world in evolution, so I'm not doubting soon more and more quality companies will join it. Until that point, accepting to live in constant "testing phase" is just a requirement, from my perspective