johnson4

If you use Cadlink it doesn’t matter at all. Better still, you can switch a violet to LLK with a $10 program. no worries, it’s fine

That sucks, but that is what happened. I did stress test the 15000, however it's just not going to last more than a few months under the best of circumstances. Right now I have two P6000s going on over a year in service, all original parts. The P5000's work well too. All of these smaller conversion printers, especially new ones you can buy from Epson today, won't last long without modification. All the Eco-tank machines included. They can be made to work, but it will never be as simple as most influencers make it seem. Right now it looks like a 22" X 84" gang sheet runs about $25-$30. The price has come down ALOT. There really isn't any reason to DIY with those prices. Even with these epson machines it's hard to compete with that. I have about $50 a roll of blank film and will use roughly $80 in ink and adhesive per roll buying in bulk. $130 per roll printed basically. Without bulk about $250 per roll printed. That is about $1,000 per roll at $25 per 22" X 84" gang sheet in return. Factor in the electric, maintenance, taxes etc, it really pushes that profit margin down, even if the entire DTF system were free to begin with. So that brings it down to about $500 per roll in profit, not including any expensive parts like printheads. After that all you really have to do is factor in the time. For example, (1) Mimaki 150 is the same speed as (1) Epson P6000. These machines can produce (2) 22" X 84" prints an hour. That is 22 hours of print time, not including startup, shutdown, cleanings, etc for a $500 return. $23 an hour profit, excluding printheads and other expensive repair costs. The problem is, you don't usually have 22 hours to print in a day, more like 5-8 hours. so this increases ALL costs and maintenance for multiple slower machines or one faster machine. Either way, it's only increasing your costs to get them made faster. Using one of the smaller conversions, it can take up to 10 minutes for one print that would sell for $1.50 or about $5 an hour in return without any costs considered other than supplies. The break even point here would be impossible to reach before the machine required costly repairs. So it always costs something additional. On the flip side, if I purchased DTF rolls, I don't have the upfront cost, the learning curve or hassle. I can focus on my business and just order what I need and plan accordingly. The cost difference compared to the time lost/wasted, when broken down logically, it doesn't make sense unless you don't expect a return and just want to tinker and have free time on your hands. I have went through so many models of machines, spent so much on user error and so much time. I could have literally instead paid off my house. The " closer" you get to figuring it all out, the further away from reality your total investment becomes, unknowingly. Learned this the hard way. It's possible, it's easy once you get it, but it's not efficient unless it's your business model. If it's your business model, you'll put more into it upfront so you can focus on your business, not just your printing so it's one of those situations. If your business is to sell DTF sheets, or if your business is to use DTF sheets. Both will require hiring employees, or pick one to make your business model. I wish you luck!

No worries. For me, at most you’d save is about $500 if you want anything that would work reliably. If they were still $4,000+, absolutely.

Hey! It’s not so bad honestly, my prototype is still working well, I haven’t really moved past it as I kind of got side tracked with other things and didn’t really get much feedback on this. plus side is, the prices of everything has come down. You can have a really good shaker delivered to your door in a week for less than $2,500 for a 24”, or $1,500 for a 15”. There isn’t a ton of headroom anymore so it’s not really worth the time in my eyes now, especially since most have a legit 2 year warranty.

Usually any cleaner than can quickly break down dried pigmented ink will also destroy the printhead. If diluted, and you take your time over the course of a few days usually you’ll be fine. Reverse flushing and soaking the head without any air getting to the input or output is necessary. That and time. the main problem here is all ink isn’t the same. Yes, they have the same working principle, but that doesn’t mean each type of ink would respond well to the same cleaner. It’s best to use the cleaner that was made for that ink. Something I’ve learned in my 8 years of this stuff, those clogs aren’t really clogs usually. It’s usually a lack of ink flow for whatever reason, collapsed ink channels internally from manually cleaning, or destroyed nozzles from a head strike. That or air bubbles/poor seals. but, I don’t believe it’s one of those things you can take by word, I know I didn’t back in the day. Fortunately I got over proving my point and started finding the actual problem and haven’t had a printhead issue since. Sooo much money wasted with these conversions and learning what to do and what not to do. my advice is get away from dye based printers like the eco tanks and xp15000. They were designed for inks without any solid pigment to begin with. They will never work long term. that will immediately solve most of the issues. After that, it takes gentle cleaning and prevention maintenance. Things like changing the dampers BEFORE there is an issue and keeping that white ink circulated and fresh. do that, with a printhead that was designed for pigmented inks, and you’ll be golden. You will only need basic cleaners.

When you print a nozzle check does the white show up?

I was spot on with the P5000 and P6000, so hopefully I am close. It all really boils down to the pass speed and the driver creation if they can utilize dual CMYK on it.

It’s basically what I am doing too. I asked again and yesterday they said not yet. I asked over a month ago and they were working on it then. in the past they could get a driver out in a week or two, going on 7 weeks or so since I asked and they had already started, I’m just hoping they get them out before they discontinue the model.

Then yeah you are good in that aspect. So all you are waiting for is a RIP to support it. The USA P6000's you had to swap the mainboard with another board from like EU or China in order for the resets to work. Same with the 7500. I reached out to everyone I could think of, the only one that was working on it was Cadlink, however they were pretty adamant on " not making new drivers" for the foreseeable future so if the one they are working on ever gets finished is up in the air.

Yeah, it would be nice for sure. I contacted flexi and they do not support it. The 7500 does work with resetters, the Europe version. The US version doesn’t. I’m in the US so I’d have to import.

Cadlink was working in a rip for it, but they said they will not be making new drivers now or in the near future as well. Seems silly when this model has true potential. the P6000’s have been working fantastic for nearly a year. I’d imagine these would do the same with twice the speed out of the box with their similar build. if Cadlink can utilize the extra channels, this machine could print 4X faster than the P6000, or twice as fast as the Mimaki 300. if they can run dual cmyk, and 4 white on it that is. 60 foot an hour roughly X 24” isn’t bad at all for about $5,000. 12 channels with 960 nozzles per channel, it could be a literal beast, one and done type of machine. if and when they do, I’ll buy one and cut my prices in half. $20 retail for a 23”x84” gang roll is pretty cheap, but would be $80-$160 an hour gross depending on how they set the rip up at that price. That price would also be hard to beat and the quality would be hard to compete with. I would replace all my units with one of these if and when it becomes available.

There isn’t a rip for it yet, they also don’t have reliable chips for it yet depending on where you live. I am waiting on this one as well, it will print the same quality and speed as the dual head Mimaki, just $20,000 cheaper.

I would also like to mention, dampers rarely go bad. They just get clogged, mainly the white, with the same “sludge” that makes its way into the printhead. If you have ever removed a damper and looked at the white blob inside that doesn’t move, that’s what I’m talking about. They can easily be back-flushed and re-used, as it’s the white pigment causing the issues especially if you run pre filters on your ink lines. I’ve noticed the inkbank 5600 ink doesn’t do this so much/as quickly, compared to the inkbank 5603. Likely because of the viscosity and pigment load. Yeah, you use a little more 5600 for the same opaque white, but in the long run it’s like a $5 a bottle difference. the inkbank 5601 CMYK is thicker than the 5600 variant as well. I use the 5601 CMYK and 5600 white mainly.

Yes, I have experienced this. DTF printers require preventative maintenance as well as standard maintenance. You can't replace the dampers or flush the lines when it's too late. They must be done preventatively. Sounds like the white ink " sludge" or pigment filled the dampers over time, which then eventually got sucked into the printhead. If you replace/clean them on a schedule, you will be rewarded with 0 downtime/issues. After this happens you can replace the dampers, flush the lines, and do as many head cleans as you want. It won't work. You need to soak and gently backflush the printhead or replace it. The stuff that goes in there is like glue. If your old dampers had "white" stuff settled in one spot, that's what goes into the printhead. If this occurred before the filter, the filter would stop it as it has coagulated and beyond the jettable size, "soft clogging" the channels. Be aware, if you do excessive cleans you can permanently damage the printhead, busting a seal or overheating the piezo nozzles due to low/no flow. Been there, done that- ALOT. Ever since learning the above, I haven't had to replace a single printhead in almost 2 years. The problem most people will run into is the more the printer sits, the faster this occurs. It can happen is as little as a week, or as long as 6 months. It really depends on how you use/run your machine AND the ink you use. Circulating the ink doesn't help, as it's inside the damper where this is happening. Simply shaking the damper every other day would prevent this, but that increases wear and tear and creates the potential to damage the printhead via liquid spill. There are a ton of variables that go into it, but if you watch and pay attention for the pattern, you can prevent this issue outright.

It's going to depend on the RIP you choose. Almost all of them specify the recommended specs. Solid state drive at least 500GB, at least 12-18GB ram and at least an i3 Processor, preferably an i5. Personally I run (4) instances of Cadlink on one machine. It came out in 2012. I Just made sure to use an Solid state drive and 32GB of ram. it has an i7 processor. Overall it was like a $50 computer with about $100-$125 in upgrades. Works great.