Mdrake2016

It's hard to see exactly in the photos, but I remember when I overcured/cured too fast with the gloss film, there would be holes in the final print on the shirt. I think that's what I'm seeing here? Happens with matte film too but not as much.

1 minute ago, Mdrake2016 said:

Can I ask if you’ve tested Acrorip enough to know if it has the ability to queue prints? I know EKPrint just used the main windows queue which was simple enough. Might be able to automate the whole process so I wouldn’t consider the fact that I have to handle each print individually a problem as long as I don’t have to see wait for each print to finish before going to the next one.
 

As far as the speed...would you say the 1440x720 with Acrorip is as fast as EKPrint’s 1440x1440? 

Double post. Can’t delete this for some reason

19 hours ago, johnson4 said:

I do the same thing, I think most of us do business wise. 
 

Like your drag and drop feature, I click open- type the file name partially-press enter. Type my width, and it’s automatically centered in the film for easily alignment in press ( for me). Takes me about 10 seconds per print, since they all need their size adjusted. 

with EK I print 39 12x12 prints an hour normally, when I do black or white in the p800. The p400 gave me around 35, so not much of a difference in my opinion. I think it’s all RIP related. 

 

 

Can I ask if you’ve tested Acrorip enough to know if it has the ability to queue prints? I know EKPrint just used the main windows queue which was simple enough. Might be able to automate the whole process so I wouldn’t consider the fact that I have to handle each print individually a problem. 
 

As far as the speed...would you say the 1440x720 with Acrorip is as fast as EKPrint’s 1440x1440? 

On 9/19/2021 at 10:00 AM, johnson4 said:

For a 10x10 color\white image this is what happened, exactly the same across all 3:

cadlink: 

rip- 11 seconds

print 6 minutes 25 seconds

total: 6.36 minutes

overall color accuracy- 9/10

Overall quality - 7/10

 

Something weird there...I just printed a 11.25 x 15 image with my P400 and it finished in exactly 5:02 with Cadlink. Is the P400 faster than the P800 or could something else be causing that?

Personally, I like Cadink the best for a few reasons:

1. Color adjustments...I don't know if Acrorip can do it but EKPrint can't. I guess it SOMEWHAT can in the gamma adjustments but it throws a lot of things off when I do it that way. With the color profile that Cadlink has loaded, it didn't work perfectly out the box but I was able to adjust the CMYK individually until I got it looking accurate. I've noticed different inks from different manufacturers have their own optimal CMYK levels in Cadlink and the ability to adjust it is real nice.

2. The ability to just drag multiple files on there and hit print. The way my business is laid out, I print items to order so it's extremely efficient to be able to do it this way. The nesting feature is also great if I have smaller images that would fit on the sheet/width of the roll that I'm using.

CADlink DOES have some editing capabilities, but I stay away from them. I just don't like them at all and I'm a photoshop person so I like to do things on there, save the file and load in CADlink and hit print.

Based off of your description, I think I can confidently guess I know which software you’re referring to in each one. Looking forward to seeing your test results. 

21 hours ago, ethanj098 said:

We ended up having to replace the print head. Nothing else was working so we had to get another head.

Can you do me a favor and take a look at the nipples on the printhead to see if there is dried ink? I had the same problem as yours and I sat there for 2 hours with tweezers removing dried ink around the nipples. Cleaned them the best I could. After I did this, my ink stopped dropping out. I also changed cartridges thinking that may have been the issue but I truly think the dried ink did it.

I'm thinking that while printing, because of the dried ink, the seal between the cartridge and the nipples releases, causing air to get into the system and give you these problems. Since I fixed this weeks ago, I haven't had any issues.

1 hour ago, chaudhryis said:

Which film from dtfsuperstore. I will order some to try out.. 

 

I just get this: https://dtfsuperstore.com/collections/film/products/a3-11-3-4-x-16-1-2-transfer-film-hot-peel

Don't get me wrong I'm sure there are some from China that work. But all of them claim to have the best quality and most of the ones I've tested look exactly like yours looks in the photo. It just seems difficult to find the ones that do supply the good film.

With the matte film, on the actual image, I'd still say the quality is pretty good (7.5/10). You only really notice imperfections when looking up close. But film like DTFsuperstores where white does not mix at all with the color is a 10/10. Near perfect all around.

I get great prints out of cadlink and the P400. What I see on your photos is a problem with the reds and I have the same issue there, but that is a film issue and not the software. 

With DTFsuperstore film, I don’t have this issue at all. I got other film from China and the ink tends to mix with some colors, red more than anything else. This seems to happen with the matte films the most. 
 

What I did notice however is I had to reduce the “max ink” to 380-385 to reduce the color inks. And I had to play around with the white underbase in that color adjustments window you have attached anywhere from 55-70%. 
 

When adjusting the settings, be sure to remove everything out of the the queue first. Then add them back in to test the updated settings. 

53 minutes ago, johnson4 said:

Best way to tell- print a CMYK test page- at the settings you normally use on film. It will show you which channels can or can’t  handle “full” demand in the form of lines. Works good for white too, since it’s four “shades” consuming varying ink amounts in white mode.

Just to be clear, CMYK with no white on film?
 

I figured it would be easier to see on plain paper but I guess I can just print it on the film and lay it over a white sheet to see more clearly. I’ll have to give that a try tomorrow. 

1 hour ago, johnson4 said:

best is to print white only and cmyk only- hold it up to a light and see through it. If you see lines- that ones the issue. 

This is more difficult to figure out than I thought. On regular paper, yellow looks perfect, no lines, but I don't know if it's because of the paper absorbing too much ink or if it actually the white causing an issue. Even with less ink coverage, it's difficult to see.

Either way, I'm thinking I will spend sime time cleaning the ink channels and we'll see if that makes a difference. 

31 minutes ago, johnson4 said:

Well, coincidentally I am facing the same thing and diagnosing things. 
 

what printer are you using, inks, carts/dampers? 
 

A few things cause this I have found : 

1. poor ink flow- the head creates a small suction to print, when doing a nozzle check it’s much different than printing, so a very small amount of available ink works just fine, but when printing, if ink isn’t available quicker than it’s using it- this happens. In essence, it’s ink starvation. 
 

2. a weak or dying printhead. Printheads die in various ways, usually clogged nozzles well before they have other issues.

the micropeizo nozzles can become weak, overheated, overall just deteriorate for various reasons. All in all- it’s not able to withstand the continuous use, because it’s weak. That “suction” becomes weaker as the nozzles weaken, causing poor ink flow, or, “suction”. It affects full channels, but not necessarily the entire printhead. 
 

3. the printhead/cartridge/damper could have air within it. “ air lock” is a form of ink starvation, since it can block the flow of ink.   That’s why most printers, when doing a head clean “ suck” from the capping station, then release the nozzles so it has a “pull” to move any air lock along. Think micro bubbles.
 

4. Multiple things can aid in the above, including poor maintenance, poor capping station sealing or suction.
 

I am still in the process of learning about this myself, but overall it’s going to be some sort of ink flow issue for one reason or another.   
 

also- don’t miss it potentially being the white. The white may look fine- until you hold it up to a light. When color sits on white, the color can appear to have the lines in it due to the varying opacity in the white. 
 

best is to print white only and cmyk only- hold it up to a light and see through it. If you see lines- that ones the issue. 

I'm using a P400 with carts. Originally, I had issues with the white ink slowly beginning to develop lines after a few prints. I did 2 things: cleaned the spikes that go into the carts and I used new carts. I'm not sure what fixed it but the white no longer does that. I'm thinking too much dried up ink on the spikes didn't allow a good seal with the carts.

Then immediately when the white seemed to be fixed, I noticed my yellow having the lines as you see in the pic. It could very well be the white which I have to try today but I only see it on yellow and just a bit on a basic red. Other colors seem to be mostly fine, other than my grays being a bit off since this began happening.

I have been taking extremely good care of this P400 since it was pretty costly. I also ordered carts from a different supplier which will be in next week and I will see if that makes any difference. The thing is I would be extremely surprised if the head is failing after just 1 month of using it. I haven't had a ton of orders (maybe 500 prints on this so far) so I'm thinking there is some clog on the yellow, but good idea on printing CMYK alone.... it will help me determine if the white could be the issue since that's what gave me issues initally. 

I suddenly have an issue with my yellow channel. Nozzle check for some reason looks perfect but I'm getting lines on my yellow which naturally affects other colors a bit as well.

Any idea what could be happening here? Doing a search on the forum and throughout Google has been tough because most people have some breaks on the nozzle check while mine looks fine.

I tried cleaning and changing cartridges but neither made any difference.

On 8/16/2021 at 6:55 PM, johnson4 said:

Nice, glad you were able to sort it out to your liking. 
 

overall, how do you like doing it that way instead of unplugging it?

Way better for sure. I honestly think nobody knows about this...why else would anyone do the unplug method if it can be done this way?

On 8/9/2021 at 6:06 PM, johnson4 said:

Yea, mine does that sometimes too, however it only does it randomly, possibly right after I boot it up. I just push the ink button again, reload the cap and press the ink button again when it does that. 
 

I know when I use it normally it doesn’t do it, like printing and at the end of the day it never does it. I never power cycle mine though, might make a difference. Still, in my opinion beats the method of unplugging it, but that’s my opinion. 
 

ive been doing them this way for as long as I can remember, the p600, I used the turn screw in the right side and melted the “plastic” turn slot with a hot “fat” Phillips when it stripped out, never had a problem after that. For the P800, I used the adjustment program, just left it open and press F11/F12 to move the head out of the way. I was never a fan of constant unplugging them( plus on the p400 I leave the roll film loaded for ease), to top that off you still have to turn it back on for the capping station to reseat to the head, or else your letting your head air dry if you don’t so all it was really good for to Me was cleaning the wiper anyway. 
 

  

I'm thinking there is some timer in the printer causing it to do an ink charge (or cleaning..whatever it's doing) if I take too long cleaning. Cleaning the wiper takes me a bit of time. So what I did the past few days was clean the wiper, hit the ink button to send it back. Then hit the ink button again and then clean the capping station. So far, doing it this way hasn't done an ink charge

On 8/7/2021 at 9:06 PM, johnson4 said:

I gotcha, sometimes what I do, when I do a head clean I keep a syringe filled with water nearby, as it moves the head to the left and sucks the ink out, I squirt water in the cap, moving it around ( the needle) to flush out the old ink. I had done that the last time it was used, so probably why it’s cleaner. This one has been sitting a bit so I don’t remember.
 

yea, don’t worry about it, it has a bit of resistance at first, but once it’s moving it’s fine. It’s just the DC motor holding the head from moving- doesn’t hurt anything as long as you don’t quickly force it, just push it over in a smooth semi slow motion.

the wiper, just out your swap down there and press against it and pull up, should pop up pretty easily. 

So I pushed the printhead fine after hitting the ink change button. Surprised no one ever says to do it this way. 
 

The thing is, the printer is STILL sometimes doing a quick ink charge or cleaning when I hit the button to send the printhead back to park. I cannot figure out what is triggering it to sometimes do this and sometimes not. 

2 hours ago, johnson4 said:

 

Oh no let me clarify about the ink in the capping station. What I meant was when I inject cleaner in there, a bunch of old dtf ink from the sponge comes up and mixes with the cleaner. So the pool looks very contaminated with ink. Looking at yours, your pool looks very clean compared to mine after you inject the cleaner. 
 

As for the way you’re moving the head to the left, you did it so easy with just your thumb. I’m going to try again tomorrow. I may have just been scared to force it when I tried earlier. 

2 hours ago, johnson4 said:

the site was acting weird, it might work now. If not I can upload it elsewhere.

Ok the video loaded now. So it looks like I may be unnecessarily overdoing the cleaning. I literally clean the wiper for a couple minutes alone and then dry it off lol. 

How do you just move the printhead to the side like that without unplugging the power cord? I tried that earlier and I feel like I’ll break something if I try pushing it over with the printer still on. 
 

Also I noticed that when you filled your capping station, you had very little ink mix with your cleaner. Night and day difference with how mine looks. How is that possible? Mine is filled with my DTF ink when I do that, even if I spend a few minutes cleaning the sponges off with paper towel.

24 minutes ago, johnson4 said:

I sent a PM, see if that works if you don’t mind.

Unfortunately same issue. Takes me to an error which says "We could not locate the item you are trying to view."

1 minute ago, johnson4 said:

the site was acting weird, it might work now. If not I can upload it elsewhere.

I think it took a day for my video on another thread to start working on here.

1 hour ago, johnson4 said:

Do you want me to send a video on how I clean my p400? I seriously think it would be a ton easier than unplugging it and all that stuff you mentioned above.  
 

Man that would be a ton of help if you can send me a video. There’s videos for so many printers but can’t find any useful ones for the P400. 
 

It’s funny you mentioned Arizona. I actually plan to move out there in the next year or 2. So living in a dry area like that, would wet capping be needed for the P400?

6 hours ago, johnson4 said:

Printers with ink cartridges on the head shouldn’t be wet capped, at least filling the capping station. You can however put some in there, enough to wet the sponge. If you want to fully wet cap the p400, get a tube lock, whatever they are called. It pinched the waste ink tube so it doesn’t siphon the ink. I don’t have this problem because my waste tank is about the same height as my capping station. 

Isn’t the point of wet capping to keep the printhead wet? Won’t it dry out with the DTF inks if we don’t wet cap?

1 hour ago, anum11 said:

Pull USB lose. Then power off printer and on again.Then do your thing. However wet capping p400 May drain your inks be careful.

That's what I do...but when I power on, it sometimes does a cleaning automatically so my fluid on the capping station gets sucked in. That's what I'm trying to figure out how to prevent.

I did come here a few times and all my ink was drained...but that hasn't happened in a few weeks. So I shouldn't be wet capping a P400? How do we know which printers we should or shouldn't wet cap?

So I do the basic turn on the printer, let the printhead move and then unplug it to freely move the printhead. I then clean the wiper blade, capping station and fill it up with the solution. Park the head back to the capping station and then turn the printer back on. Randomly, the printer sometimes does a cleaning when I turn it back on. Yesterday it happened 3 times before it finally just turned on and parked itself the fourth time. Does anyone have a way to prevent this from happening? Every time it does this I have to go through the whole process again.

Also while on the subject of wet capping. I just have a couple of other questions.

1. I've seen some videos where people soak the sponges and spend a few minutes trying to get as much of the ink out as possible, and some videos where they just remove a little bit before parking the printhead. It's pretty difficult to remove much. Does it matter if I'm unable to remove most of the ink?

2. When the printhead moves away from the capping station the next day, it doesn't really look like the liquid on the capping station was actually touching it. I may be misunderstanding how it all works...does the printhead actually touch the liquid? 

On 7/28/2021 at 9:17 AM, johnson4 said:

That’s because of the ICC profiles they made for Cadlink. You can easily download the trial and extract/ use the profiles in EKprint from Cadlink, does Cadlink support the 15000 now?

 

thats the biggest difference between the two, Cadlink profiles are made for each printer, by the “supplier”. When I bought mine the profiles SUCKED in the p800, but I hear they have since fixed that, I haven’t tried in several months though. 
 

If Cadlink supports the 15000, it is an overall better rip, but more to learn from the get-go. While both are the about the same price, once all the kinks get worked out in Cadlink, if they haven’t already, i would  call it the best out out there. 

I tried what you said here and used both the same exact input and output profiles, taken directly from the Cadlink folders and for some reason the colors are even worse. I don't understand what's going on here. EKPrint does something else that affects the colors. And it's definitely not the ink density...the colors are simply still VERY off regardless of what I adjust in any setting.

On 7/29/2021 at 10:28 PM, johnson4 said:

Are you in the USA?

Yes in the Chicago area.