cartierusm

Looks like it resets the ink when you turn off the printer. I'll double check tomorrow.

Is the only way to reset the inks is by the maintenance menu, replace ink carts, on the epson front panel?

Cool. Thanks. Ok new problems, as you said I would have LOL After 2-3 large, 13x19 Not full sheet but big graphics, it stops half way and spits out the sheet and says to replace the cartridge. Well that sucks. Is there a way to tell it to ignore cartridge changes or not spit out the sheet? Also, it's not printing borderless 13x19 from CADLink, it's set to 13x19, but it's clipping very large images where it's close to the edge?

Interesting. So CADLink has some quirks. Or I don't know how to use it. As Johnson4 said, either here or in a PM, the Max Ink doesn't change how much ink gets laid down, just the intensity of the print. So when I first fired up the printer and printed the ink ran like crazy so I figured the max ink setting was what was wrong because when I changed it to 250 instead of 400 it printed great. So it applies the settings to the graphic as you import it. It doesn't change the settings if you import the graphic in and THEN change the settings which is really not good. So I was doing some testing and kept it at 400 and it printed fine. So no idea when I printed for the first time the ink ran. Well it prints great now, aside from some pixelization in some of the colors.

Perfect. Thanks.

LOL sorry for being obtuse, but suck the liquid out of where? The side of the cartridge that doesn't have the sponge? Just the damp sponge, meaning the other side of the cart with the sponge? Just making sure because there's that little cleaning pad under the carriage that the carts clean themselves off in.

I agree, but I'm afraid that if I use my cleaning carts it'll take the Maintenance tank below 15% and then I can't reset it. If I do decide to do a cleaning with my cleaning carts should I leave them in until I get my chip resetter? Some posts say not to as it'll leak into the printer. What say you?

Ok got my first clog. Yellow I think. My Maintenance Tank is almost full so I gotta wait until my chip resetter gets here, but thanks to Johnson4 I made a lot of progress today. 1. I was getting pin holes from too much heat when curing my print as per Johnson4's suggestion I let my print sit for 25 minutes as I was doing something else and then powdering it. 2. I didn't end up using the griddle contraption I made. I know, from using these things in other projects, that they have one element running in a U and doesn't heat up evenly. So I used my Heat Press. I have a Hotronix Fusion, so not a clam-shell press. I made two HDPE Plastic 3/8" spacers for top and bottom of the platen. I then set the pressure to almost nothing. Luckily with this press when the pressure is almost nothing it still touched the bottom platen. I then turned it on. The set temp is what I press these transfers at, 320F. Once up to temp I heated up the bottom platen by closing the press for 1 minute. Then I opened it up and put my transfer on with the spacers and closed it for 1 minutes. CAME OUT PERFECT. No pin holes at all. Powder looks perfectly cured. Now if I was doing this for a living I would by the mini shaker curer. Good price for what it is.

LOL No worries, I appreciate you taking the time. Max Ink does affect how much ink comes out of the nozzles. When I first fired up the program and printed the ink ran like puddles. It's stock set at 400, which makes absolutely no sense. I turned it down to 200 and it printed great. Then I bumped it up to 250 and 50% for white underbase and it's printing great now. I think I have only one last problem with CADLink and that is getting the color correct and I'm getting close. And you can adjust each of CMYK as well as saturation and other options. For me it seems like all the options are there, but I'm not counting my chickens just yet. All the prints I have done so far, 6 or so, the image on the screen in CADLink and printed out look washed out. No idea why, I didn't know anything was wrong until I was messing around and printed one that isn't washed out, also not washed out on the screen. Not sure what I did, but I usually delete the file from the lower "finished" queue and I didn't for some reason so I have that RIP. I'm going to go through it right now and see what I changed.

One more question that I guess answers itself. CADLink right off the bat put down way too much ink. It had max ink at 400. I turned it down to 200 and now I'm trying it at 250. So my question is should I keep bumping up the ink until it gets runny? I guess that makes a thicker print. So I'm thinking keep testing the ink levels until I get a good solid print with no show through, but not too much ink? I guess the carts are bleeding into each other, not a ton, but a little. I'm assuming I should use a different brand of replacement carts or use the starter carts that came with the machine, clean them out completely (soaking in water to remove all the ink) then refilling them with DTF Ink??

Ah ok gotcha.

"For Epson conversions you are in for quite a bit of learning." In what regard? So far I've got it printing pretty good, just a few things that seem to be the RIP.

Ok great. Good to know. Print quality is most important to me. I'll try some of the others.

Thanks again. What RIP do you use? I'm not tied to CADLink I could probably get a refund. I've only had it less than the free trial period anyway (I did purchase it though). I got it because it seemed like most people thought Acrorip was not good and CADLink seemed professional. I've been doing graphic design for over 30 years so I would never use all those built in features. What causes head strikes? Also what is wet capping? I heard the term before, but not in relation to this printer. Thanks, sorry for all the questions.

Don't think those pics came through. It's the new apple format. Here are jpegs.

Cool. Thanks for the clarification. What RIP do you recommend? So far I haven't had any issues with CADLink, it rips an Illustrator file 13x19 in about 30 seconds. It prints pretty quick too. I do have some new questions now I've printed quite a few pages and cured them. I'll post them below. Previous questions to which I figured it out: 3. did some research and the View Raw Data is NOT a representation of what's going to be printed. I'm guessing there has to be some kind of preview of the graphic of what it should look like before printing so you can change settings and see the results. The main window on the right show the image of what you add to the queue, mine is pretty pixelated. I bet there is a function to increase the resolution. 5. I had to fill the white ink today mid print and both carts needed ink, so that answers the question about using both white ink carts. New Questions: 1. When refilling the white carts today I noticed one had some cyan bleeding into it. The cart sponge had a little blue in it. On the other side the other white cart had a little yellow bleeding into it. Is this normal, how do I stop this? 2. If you look at pic 1 you can see that I'm holding up the cured print up to the light. You can see a ton of pin holes. Is this from curing the print with DTF powder? If so what am I doing wrong? 3. Look at the next pic this is the print backside after curing. it looks like the grain is rather large. Does this look OK for after a cure? I mean if not do I need more heat, less heat, more time, less time? Next pic is my griddle that I put a stainless piece on to keep the heat in like an oven. I also put a calibrated thermocouple reading the air temp inside. Once it's warmed up it stays pretty consistent at 244-250F. 4. Look at the green stem of the graphic. It's kind of grainy like you see the dots from the printing. This is the same graphic I had professionally printed. Theirs is a solid green as all the other colors are. Now is that normal as the pro is probably using a way better machine or is this just a function of using the RIP software correctly? Also here's a pic of the output tray I made out of acrylic. Not the best design but works for this cart. IMG_1337.HEIC IMG_1336.HEIC IMG_1338.HEIC IMG_1340.HEIC IMG_1334.HEIC

I've always made shirts, mostly for fun, but also a lot for business. So I decided to go this route instead of others. Here's where I'm at so far. XP-15000, easy to covert to DTF. Here's what I did with a little explanation as I had questions, but lots of the tutorials out there are petty good. 1. Get your printer, your supplies and unpack it all. This includes RIP software and two sets of chipless carts. 2. Turn your printer on > don't plug into computer > don't install carts just select English on the printer don't worry about anything else > install Epson software > disable Epson Monitor and updates - don't use wifi > end process for any Epson stuff running in Task Manager > go to one of the chipless software places listed here > buy a license > run through their instructions - Make sure when you're updating the firmware when an error message pops up at the end don't click try again just click NEXT, then it'll hang up as well on the last part or go real quick, but the button FINISH will be able to be pressed just click it and you're done. It's a little confusing, because those errors and hang ups are normal. Then turn the printer off with the cart carriage moving so it's not docked and you can move it by hand. Unscrew the roller assembly and remove it. There's tons of tutorials out there for this part. 3. Install your RIP software > add your printer > install an ICC profile if you have one for your ink. I'm using Kingdom DTF and they have an ICM profile for their ink in a XP-15000 > go back to the printer and follow instructions on the screen to setup the carts, don't do calibrations as you shouldn't have any carts in there yet. It'll act like it's cleaning and charging the system. I mean at this point you could stick in your DTF ink carts. I didn't have mine yet so I did that later. When you do put in your carts do so through the printer menu for changing carts that way the printer will go through the setup process and charge the system. 4. I built an output tray from a 13" x 19" x 1/4" Acrylic from Tap Plastics and a piece of 1/2" Acrylic 13" long. I then super glued this to the bottom of the other piece to make sure it stayed flat and I also put a hold in the brace to hold it to my printer cart. I'll post a pic if people are interested. I printed some parts on my 3D printer. 5. I'm using CADLink and it seems great so far. Complicated, but not too bad. The best thing to do when doing all this is have a graphic you created printed by a professional to have a reference. This helped me a lot. Before I decided to print my own a week ago I had some made from a pro shop on Etsy. I loaded the same file I had printed by someone else into my RIP. I then printed it, well tried to, I ran into the sheet not feeding (this is a common problem with this model) I turned the printer off, unplugged it, held the power button down until the light turned off (drained the power) then plugged it back in and hit print again. It took two tries of clicking try again on the printer screen. Then it loaded the film. The film I have is from KingdomDTF and is frosty matte, so not clear, but the printer had problems at first. The second print so problem. The first print was using stock settings in CADLink for the XP-15000. WAY too much ink I mean it was flooded. If you load a graphic you want to print and click in the bottom right area there's a button Color Adjust. Stock say Max Ink at 400. I turned mine down to 200, then white to 20% from 50%. That worked. Print came out pretty good. Colors were not like the professional one I got, but that's the software and my settings not the printer. Also you can't print on the last 2" of a sheet as the roller assembly you removed it usually used to hold the media in place and feed it as it's still printing. 6. After that I wait a few minutes and then powdered the print. I'm using a Presto Griddle, large one, from amazon to cure the prints. This worked and didn't work at the same time. The temp controller on the griddle is off by almost a 100 degrees so I'm adding a PID and temp sensor to it and a cover so it's basically a cheap oven, but the print is flat the entire time. I got it to cure then pressed it on a shirt. Not bad for a first time. 7. When refilling or filling your carts the first time use a gram scale if you have it and put everything on the scale, the cart with it's bottom cap on and both plugs. Then fill with ink until the total weight is 28-30 grams. Gently roll your ink bottles back and forth to mix the ink before filling. I still have lots to learn with the RIP, but it's working I just need some questions answered. Some of the questions I have: 1. The max resolution built into the CADLink RIP 1440 x 720, but the resolution of this printer is a lot higher. 2. There is a setting in CADLink about how many nozzles to use. Default is 64, but there is one higher, 80 nozzles. Not sure what this is or how it works. 3. When I bring in the graphic that I've had made by someone as a reference and RIP it and look at the raw data (these are terms in CADLink for showing a preview of what the image will look like printed) It looks washed out, this is using 1440x720 Color mode. I can see the image in the view raw data, but if I change the substrate (meaning what color the shirt is going to be.) to black then the graphic I'm trying to print doesn't even show up. If I use 1440x720 Black (where CADLink will automatically knock out blacks) and RIP it and view raw data nothing shows up. If I change to black substrate I still see nothing. Kind of weird. 4. I still have some testing to do to see how much ink to use and how to get the color I want. 5. From all the advice on here you only run each color once including white in the RIP. So how does the RIP use white if there are two white ink carts? Does it use some of each during a print? 6. Will this ink work on regular paper so i can go back and do a print hear alignment? I ask cause normally when setting up this printer for the first time you're supposed to do that.