Mdrake2016

11 hours ago, johnson4 said:

I think overall, The mini shaker is well worth the money though. I'm waiting for more to come back in stock so I can try and purchase a 2nd one. While my cart build works great, I like the convenience of the auto powder. Don't get me wrong, it's also a learning experience and takes trial and error. However, once you get it down, it works great. I like that I can walk away and do other things while it prints. The longest I've had it printing in one single " run" was about 14 hours. The only thing I don't like about it really is the Powder tray at the bottom, but that's me. I can't tell you why I don't like it, I instead use a disposable  Reynolds " turkey' pan. You still need to make sure the roller's stay in line, and keep the powder in the machine, but other than that after it's all " tuned" it's actually one of the easiest processes I have ever used. My customers prefer it over DTG by far ( so far, we'll see a few months down the road). the auto machines are able to remove more powder, and make for a perfectly cured transfer with the lightest possible "hand" ( the way it feels). 

Do know though, It needs to be on a 15A outlet at least, and you for sure need to ventilate it. I used a 6" variable speed fan on it's lowest setting, works great. you will get some " stray" powder so I would use it somewhere with a hard floor, or put some sort of mat down under it. 

So I've been looking at the mini shaker and trying to figure out how the take up reel works. Does it somehow sense the film moving and start rotating it it as the film moves? Or is it a speed adjustment knob that controls the rotation speed? I would think a knob controlling it would cause problems since every print speed is different.

11 minutes ago, johnson4 said:

I haven't, It could be the ink has sat overnight or something like that. I use new carts every day.  Someone with experience with this particular issue might chime in though

Yea I refill my carts (I just leave them in the printer) at least 8 times a day. Colors probably 3-4.

I'll get this all figured out eventually. I don't give up lol. I am going to get the powder shaker machine and hopefully that will help me dial things in.

On 6/3/2021 at 1:03 AM, johnson4 said:

I ALWAYS get banding, with DTG or DTF with anything under 1440x1440, perfect nozzle checks. 

the way this works, is it’s 1440 ink droplets per inch. So 1440 is the printheads full resolution. For the feed direction, you can use 720( lowest setting) which prints at half the vertical resolution ( the printhead). This causes the banding, since it leaves a 720 droplet gap per inch. The 1440 resolution, equally matches the printhead, creating an equal resolution both ways. 
 

anything more in the feed direction is pointless, it just adds more ink per inch, and more time. since to get 2880 resolution, the printhead must pass twice before the feed direction advances once( which is why underbase plus color is so slow, it prints white and color at 1440=2880). 
 

people can achieve decent prints at a lower resolution by increasing the ink being put down kind of “ flooding” over into the unprinted area( the 720 pixel gap), but you’ll always see the quality difference in my opinion. 

again, the lower resolution creates gaps, instead of a solid print. I print my solid whites at 65% for best opacity and hand feel, even on a black shirt it looks 100% white. 

Not that I am aware of. Each choke is equivalent to one pixel and every direction. EKprints goal I think was to keep it simple. If this happens to me, generally it’s not noticeable when pressed.

any white in the design, is white. So if you don’t enable the white underbase, it only prints color. For pure white only, I use black graphics and print on the white only settings for all white. 
 

if you only want the white to print with an underbase, and not laying white on everything else, it’s a matter of changing the settings to match that. 

I picked EKprint because of its reliability and simplistic design. It was easy to learn in the beginning. They have great support, and send out updates all the time. The last two things Acro doesn’t have at all. I can talk to the guy who made EKprint, and ask for changes. I can’t do that with acro. From my standpoint, I tried acro first, and EKprint was the most expensive software I purchased at the time, so it was a long hard decision. I ended up with EKprint, because acro always fell short in my specific needs and quality was always subpar. Keep in mind, this was years ago when I first started.

Thanks for the detailed info. The choke thing is unfortunately a bit off on my end. It's about 1-2 pixels too low so if I have a choke less than 5, the white pokes out from the top of the print. This is the main reason I'm considering Acrorip.

I also forgot to ask about this on my first post. Some of my cured prints end up looking like this image attached. It basically has tiny holes through the whole print and it does show on the final print. It seems pretty random on when this happens. Have you come across this issue?

16 minutes ago, johnson4 said:

are you using a different table size by chance? In the Custsize.ini file you can change how far down it starts each print, IF the "offset" on the main window doesn't make it close enough to the top. Each 720 is 1" in that file.

 

I am using a Custsize.ini file but the thing is, it was working great, 0 issues. Then suddenly a print started printing 2 inches from the top. 

I restarted my computer and printer and now it suddenly worked. Very strange.

2 hours ago, johnson4 said:

I’ve always said that doing that method is the same as throwing it in the trash. 
 

 

I'm glad I asked! I thought that was the recommended thing to do.

Now I suddenly came across another problem I hope you can help ASAP. I'm currently using A3 sheets and suddenly, EK Print is starting the print 2 inches from the top of the sheet. I haven't changed any settings and the last 200 prints I did started exactly where I placed it at the top of the print (usually about .5 inches from the top). Any idea what could be happening there? This is causing my 14.5 inch prints to print too low at the bottom of the page, and causing the printhead to smear the last bit of the image. 

On 6/5/2021 at 4:19 PM, johnson4 said:

 

You are right, the XP-15000 in my eyes is disposable, it's not made like the P series at all, but on a budget it will work. I didn't really have any issue, other than learning it's quirks to get mine roll printing. I will say though, it's not as robust as the others, but it's not discontinued, and it's usually available cheap. I'm not going to lie though, I didn't use the printer anything like I use the P400's, I just wanted a back-up plan, as I always do.

 

It's not a problem at all, I hope it helps some. I think that is the biggest thing of them all, patience and learning from mistakes. I see so many people blame so many things, when experienced users don't have the same issues, It's not to belittle the issues, rather you get over them and find more issues that you still don't know about, at least that's what happens to me almost daily. 

It really is a PITA and the xp-15000 is probably not the best printer for beginners to work on, however, I didn't have any issues with mine. It's just the best go-to since it's available and not over $1,000. I recommended it to many because I had it going for under $200 ( they were $200 when I bought them) and sheet/roll printed around 100 prints on it before cleaning it and putting it up for a rainy day, just to make sure it would work for me. Unfortunately , I didn't really consider the learning curve that happens with this type of thing, and how susceptible the 15000 was to those mistakes. 

 

 

I would say I’m a beginner (10 years of printing but to this day still struggle when it comes to clogs. I’ve thrown away printers after failing to clear clogs that somehow happens within 5 minutes of modifying a printer to use sublimation inks), but so far the XP-15000 seems to be easy to use. 
 

The only thing I worry about is trying to clear a clog since that has been my biggest issue all these years. I have 1 clogged nozzle that a printhead cleaning (through the menu) isn’t clearing up and I thought I could take the printhead out and use those little tubes to put into the nipples of the printhead, inject printhead cleaning solution in it until the nozzles are all clear, but I obviously can’t do that with this printer since it uses the foam cartridges. 

On 6/5/2021 at 4:26 PM, johnson4 said:

I wanted to add, before removing/adding the carts, basically anytime they are not installed, always have both plugs in place to prevent leaking, Especially if you pull the tank side plug, it will leak BADLY if you remove it from the printer with that plug removed. 

Yes this is important and something I failed to do a few times. 
 

It’s basically like when there is liquid in a straw and your finger plugs the top. When you let go, the liquid falls out. This helped me realize how these cartridges work. 

As I'm playing around with the XP-15000, I've been coming across a few things here and there that I'm noticing and that I'm unsure of how it's supposed to be. If anyone has played around with DTF long enough, I'd appreciate if you can help me out with these questions.

1. Banding - I noticed some people printing setting the color to print at 1440x720. At this setting on my printer, I see banding when I select this resolution. Does anyone else notice banding on their printer when using this resolution?

2. Opacity - I've seen all types of suggestions for the opacity of the white underbase. On my end, if using 1440x1440, 75% is the absolute lowest I can go. Going any lower results in the shirt color showing through. A white on a blue shirt for example would look like a baby blue color. When using 1440x720, I have to use 100%. Do you all find these to be the same in your settings?

3. Choke settings - I use EKPrint which has less settings than Acrorip. For example, you can adjust the choke on all 4 sides on Acrorip while you can't do the same with EKPrint. Am I wrong here or is there a way to make better adjustments? On my printer, 4 is the absolute lowest I can go because the choke is closer to the edge on 1 side. Wish I could get it shifted a bit more in without having to use a larger choke.

4. White vs White Underbase - EKPrint seems to consider ANY white on my print as a white underbase. So if I have an image that has a solid white anywhere, I have to make sure to have "white underbase" selected or it completely omits the white part. Is this the same with Acrorip?

5. Acrorip vs EKPrint - Any reason you picked one over the other? So far the only functionality I wish EKPrint had over Acrorip was the extra choke settings.

1 hour ago, johnson4 said:

Just a random side note if you are using the Epson P400 P600 P800 and notice after 30-60 consecutive roll prints, then the printer randomly says " paper out" and spits the film out, It's overheating. 

 

Did the printer literally unroll the whole roll? That must have been a pain to roll up again lol

On 5/29/2021 at 5:57 PM, johnson4 said:

With or without the shaker machine, 8 minutes seems like quite a long time for a 10x10 design, but I could be wrong. Printing in 1440x1440 for a single layer I have gotten an average of 35 prints an hour ( timed by the minute at 2 minutes, or by the hour at 35 prints in that hour) printing the same 12x10 design using an Epson P400. During my testing of the XP-15000, The timing was the same, for the same design. I very rarely print with a solid white backing, which I didn't test. But again, that shouldn't have any time difference. Generally I print with white over any colored pixel, excluding black with doing an under base.

All the shaker machine does it auto powder and cure it, so it shouldn't have any bearing on how long it takes to print, unless you factor in that time as well for the powdering and curing side.

 

I have used a total of 2,600+ feet of film, and it always has about the same average depending on the print size. I would question if you are using higher than Level 1 for your ink level, since that means how many ink passes it makes before advancing. It sounds like you might be running that on level 2. If level 1 takes me two minutes, lowering my ink density and raising the ink level to level 2, will now take that print 4 minutes to complete, which I'd imagine would take even longer using CMYK+W for an under base. Honestly about the only thing I could imagine, but I could be wrong.

I've done some crazy amount of testing since your last few posts and I realized why my 10x10 print (circular....so it should be even faster) was taking 8 minutes. I put the ink density to 60% in the white underbase settings but EKRip automatically changed it to 600%. I guess I have to choose the defaults on the drop down.

However, after changing it to 75%, I'm now printing that design in 4:28 which I start timing immediately when the printhead starts laying down the first pass. At a full A3 page (11 x 15 to leave 2 inches of space at the bottom), I'm getting around 5.5 minutes for a rectangular design with a white underbase. 

On 5/27/2021 at 8:35 PM, johnson4 said:

 

cmyk ink  70 density ( I think, I can double check later).

when doing an underbase, start at 50 percent white, and make the white ink density 35. 

I somehow overlooked the underbase settings you suggested here. Just to be clear here, you mean I need to move that "Opacity contrast" slider to the -35 (more white ink side)? 50% density alone when I tested last week absolutely did not look good at all. The color of the shirt basically showed through the print.

Also, anyone that has this printer, can you tell me if this is what it looks like under your cartridges (pic attached)? It looks like ink from the other cartridges somehow flow over each other. It hasn't affected my prints at all but wondering if this is normal. I made sure there were no leaks when I put the cartridges in. Even cleaned them multiple times and they always end up like this.

34 minutes ago, johnson4 said:

The one's that require a white underbase, I only get roughly 18 an hour with those- half as fast, Which, is still faster than DTG for me,

Just to be clear on this, 18 an hour with just 1 of the shaker machines?

Man even 18 an hour is great...I timed a 10x10 print I just did for a customer right now (with a white underbase) and it printed in almost exactly 8 min on the dot. What could be the reason for this? I do 1440x1440 for color and white. I think even if I change it to 1440x720, I got 5 min out of the same print when I tried a few days ago. 18 prints an hour comes out to 3.3 min per print.

On 4/6/2021 at 9:06 AM, johnson4 said:

It’s going to depend on the resolution and overall required settings. It might end up being faster than I thought though. The p400 on 1440x1440 resolution does about 2” a minute, or 35 prints an hour in roll mode. 

Hey Johnson. Can you explain this when you get a chance? How big are your prints? Why would you get 2" a minute in manual mode (I'm assuming A3 sheets....I'm getting about 2" a minute as well) but in roll mode you get 35 prints in an hour?

I'm trying to figure out how to speed this thing up a bit. Right now at 2" a minute, I'm averaging around 8 minutes per print. That's 7.5 prints per hour. It's almost twice as fast if I change the resolution to both the color and the white to 1440x720 but the banding shows when I drop the resolution.

On 5/24/2021 at 1:37 PM, johnson4 said:

Grainy comes from poor quality images usually.
 

Could also be that your printing an image and cmyk doesn’t have that range of color for black. That’s why like the p800 has 4 different black inks. If I print an image like that on my standard printer, it’ll have clear gaps in the tone changes. Whereas, I use a higher end printer with larger ranges of black, it’s a soft transition. 

 

ekprint “ photo” settings uses “light” ink droplets to try and overcome these things, and would probably be better for that type of image. Personally though, I don’t really know, I’ve never tried to print an image, especially an all black photographic image, only graphics. 
 

good luck!

14 minutes ago, Mdrake2016 said:

So I thought I had everything on point but I'm still having a bit of trouble on the colors and the graininess. I'm literally printing boxes for testing and the grain still happens at different shades. These are printed at 300 DPI. Please take a look at the attachment. Besides that, I'm still having other trouble when it comes to colors:

1. I cannot get a solid red no matter what. That picture on my last post looks red but in person, it's more orange when I print it out. I mean I literally can't even get any shade of red....only orange. I'm pretty sure this has to do with my settings. Can you tell me your full settings on your set up? These are my settings for both the color and white underbase:

Ink Drop Size - Light 
Ink Level - 2
Color Mode - Vivid
Density - 100% for both 

If I change the Ink Drop Size to Medium, I would select Ink Level 1 to get a similar print to the settings I have above. Medium at Level 2 is way too much ink.

2. I've seen someone else use an L1800 profile for their XP15000 (with Acrorip) and their prints looked great. I downloaded the L1800 profile from DTF Superstore to give that a try. However, I'm a little confused on what to select for "Input RGB ICC Profile." If I just select the "Adobe RGB (1998)" from my color profiles that I found on my computer, the reds actually print in teal lol. I'm used to just selecting a color profile in Photoshop when printing, never had to put in an input profile.

Nevermind on that first question about the reds. Apparently, using Medium droplet size fixed it. I guess I didn't test the colors in Medium until now. Starting to lose track of what I've done. It looks like the density is too high as well at 100% so I will have to play with that.

Now the grain is my only issue.

On 5/24/2021 at 1:37 PM, johnson4 said:

Grainy comes from poor quality images usually.
 

Could also be that your printing an image and cmyk doesn’t have that range of color for black. That’s why like the p800 has 4 different black inks. If I print an image like that on my standard printer, it’ll have clear gaps in the tone changes. Whereas, I use a higher end printer with larger ranges of black, it’s a soft transition. 

 

ekprint “ photo” settings uses “light” ink droplets to try and overcome these things, and would probably be better for that type of image. Personally though, I don’t really know, I’ve never tried to print an image, especially an all black photographic image, only graphics. 
 

good luck!

So I thought I had everything on point but I'm still having a bit of trouble on the colors and the graininess. I'm literally printing boxes for testing and the grain still happens at different shades. These are printed at 300 DPI. Please take a look at the attachment. Besides that, I'm still having other trouble when it comes to colors:

1. I cannot get a solid red no matter what. That picture on my last post looks red but in person, it's more orange when I print it out. I mean I literally can't even get any shade of red....only orange. I'm pretty sure this has to do with my settings. Can you tell me your full settings on your set up? These are my settings for both the color and white underbase:

Ink Drop Size - Light 
Ink Level - 2
Color Mode - Vivid
Density - 100% for both 

If I change the Ink Drop Size to Medium, I would select Ink Level 1 to get a similar print to the settings I have above. Medium at Level 2 is way too much ink.

2. I've seen someone else use an L1800 profile for their XP15000 (with Acrorip) and their prints looked great. I downloaded the L1800 profile from DTF Superstore to give that a try. However, I'm a little confused on what to select for "Input RGB ICC Profile." If I just select the "Adobe RGB (1998)" from my color profiles that I found on my computer, the reds actually print in teal lol. I'm used to just selecting a color profile in Photoshop when printing, never had to put in an input profile.

3 hours ago, johnson4 said:

Overall, getting the Chipless installed correctly is the only real way to use this printer. 
 

some people have trouble with it, some don’t. After loading the firmware and rebooting the printer, try another hard reset( no power, power cycle). 
 

once it works, you don’t have to do it again.

Weird but good thing on my end...I've noticed that the print ink levels on my XP1500 are staying full after making it chipless. I've printed about 10 full A3 size papers so far for testing and they haven't budged. 

19 hours ago, johnson4 said:

If you disabled the Epson icm, it probably won’t. Is the file in cmyk before opening it in EKprint? If so, what cmyk percentage are you running. 

It looks like changing the color mode to Vivid fixed it.

Attached is a basic test chart I printed just now. The chart on top shows the grays looking very purplish when in Graphic mode. The one below it shows a perfect gray (ignore the smear lol...not used to working with wet ink). The particular CMYK numbers were C-25%, M-20%, Y-20% for the light gray and C-52%, M-43%, Y-43%, K-7%.

Now the only other thing I'd like to fix is the graininess. Changing the droplet size to light made the whole thing too light, so I adjusted the ink level to 3 and it was darker but the grain came back. Is there some other setting I'm missing here?

10 minutes ago, Mdrake2016 said:

 

I did the same as you and put the white on Red and Gray and put the others in their original slots. Nozzle check is attached. Sorry for the quality...light went out in the room. 

I went through the EK Print manual and it looks like I did miss 1 step though...installing the EK driver for the XP-15000. I apparently had the demo downloaded and thought I just had to install that alone. I will have to see if this fixes the issue tomorrow.

Let me clarify about the driver. I had originally installed the Epson drivers for the printer, and within EK Rip I selected "Epson XP-15000 Series." Now I know that I need to install the EK Rip driver and select "EKPrint RIP for XP15000."

I'm hoping this resolves my problem.

51 minutes ago, johnson4 said:

the 15000 trial I had, only showed YMCKWWXX, since it only has 6 channels. Did you download the trial directly from their webiste?

47 minutes ago, johnson4 said:

I'd assume that was an issue with the settings, Black on Ekprint in graphics mode doesn't use black ink, it uses process colors ( CMY) to make black. So if those are swapped or wrong, ( since black is mostly cyan and magenta) it could be coming out wrong. 

I put the CMYK in the same original spot, and gray and red where white ink. 

When you do a nozzle check, or the check to see if the cartridges are selected properly, are they in the correct order?

 

I did the same as you and put the white on Red and Gray and put the others in their original slots. Nozzle check is attached. Sorry for the quality...light went out in the room. 

I went through the EK Print manual and it looks like I did miss 1 step though...installing the EK driver for the XP-15000. I apparently had the demo downloaded and thought I just had to install that alone. I will have to see if this fixes the issue tomorrow.

26 minutes ago, johnson4 said:

A good example, Andy offers an ICC profile for EKprint and the P600. The only way that profile will work, is if you use the exact same profile he used( which is included in his file) and simply load the image and click print. Any alterations, will alter the outcome. So I'd assume DTFsuperstore ink/film is needed as well on a P600 printer. Then, the profile would work well since he already made the print profile to match what he had used when the ICC was made. 

 

I hope that makes sense. Overall, It's up to you to find, learn, experience and struggle with the process. DTF is not a simple process, it was for me because I already knew all of these things from the DTG world. That's where most of these " professionals" come from. The difference in DTG and DTF, for us, is something that only makes it easier, so we already knew what we were getting into. I spent over 4 years printing, struggling, learning, how to use DTG. So, I expect it will take some time( at least a week or two) and testing for new users to get to the same point with DTF. 

Could it be because my "Channel Setup" is stuck on YMCK-WWWW? The EK Print manual says to select "YMCK-WWXX when only having 2 White channels (which is what the XP-15000 has), but selecting this is greyed out on my EK Print. 

13 minutes ago, johnson4 said:

I didn't need a color profile, are you sure you have the cartridge colors in correctly, and the ink settings correct?

 

Color profiles don't really work for stuff like this. they don't just make all the colors exactly right, because there are a ton of variables that take place. 

 

The printer, the ink, the film, the ink settings, the resolution, with/without white underbase, literally every little setting will alter the outcome. Even your own computer will display colors incorrectly. I purchased a spectrometer to calibrate my PC's, even changing the brightness of your screen will throw the colors off. I found this to be the bigger culprit more so than the ink settings on the printers. 

 

With a NORMAL setup, a person would take a specific brand/style of photo paper, and any inks they use and print a photo with the settings the want, ( like matte, photo, high gloss, etc) and once it's printed, a device scans the colors, and compares it to what they should look like, vs what was printed. Then the program creates an ICC profile, that makes the printer print exactly the correct colors in that exact situation. Different paper, different ink, printer, or settings will alter the outcome. So ICC profiles aren't the answer. This situation you would calibrate your monitor as well. 

 

With these RIP programs, you are basically the ICC profile. The amount of ink you lay down, contrast, mode, resolution, I mean all the settings that are user editable, are the same type of things that create a color profile. For me, it took me about an hour to reproduce the colors with Ekprint. 

 

It takes experience, testing and time to get the correct settings for this. If you wanted to pay for an ICC profile, you could setup an exact situation that you print from every time, same resolution, same cmyk/white ink settings etc. Then send it off and for about $250 you can have one made for your specific setup. But, keep in mind, changing the ink percentage at all, the underbase, anything from when you paid for that profile would make it useless. 

 

ICC profiles only work on the paper world in reality. Like sublimation for example, ICC profiles would be needed, or Photo printing, anything the deviates from the OEM inks/printer settings. 

 

For DTF/DTG, ICC profiles are a waste, and unnecessary. That's why a high quality ink will be color matched. the DTFsuperstore inks print exact colors for me, much better than DTG did because I removed all the shirt color /pretreatment/opacity variables.

 

If you wanted EKprint to work like Cadlink in terms of color, simply copy over the ink settings they have( in the advanced menu). Personally, I print my CMYK at 65%, and I print my white at 50-65 percent depending on if it's an all white design, white under base, etc and I get good, almost perfect colors. I know for awhile I had trouble printing pinks with DTG, after calibrating my monitor, I found that my issue was my PC calibration.

 

 

Overall, ICC profiles aren't going to help, unless you have set up everything perfectly and want to get that last little bit of color accuracy out of an already set-up and printing near perfect system. Any other situation, and your ink settings are wrong, your design is in RGB instead of CMYK, etc. There are a TON of variables.  

 

Overall you need:

1. to design/change your design to CMYK ( since printers with CMYK cannot reproduce the entirety of the RGB spectrum) when you change it to CMYK you'll notice colors change, those colors cannot be reproduced in RGB, so they are changed to the nearest CMYK value. 

2. have your color only ink settings near perfect, no pooling with good colors.  Overall, mine is 65% with a p400. 

3. then add your white underbase and change it until you get the same colors as before, just with a white underbase, again, with no pooling.

4. Test the opacity on a shirt, and get as little ink as possible, to give a great hand feel, but enough to create a strong print. I use black shirts for this, since if you get black down with CMYK+W, the other's will work the same. 

 

After you've done all these things, your colors should be printing perfectly fine. too much white, they'll be wrong, too little, they'll be wrong. put it on a black shirt, if it's wrong, one of your color settings isn't correct, probably the white underbase.  IF your monitor is wayy off, ( my HP omen and Alienware were both wayy off). 

 

After you have all this set up, if you switch ink or film brands, expect to do it all over again to some degree. For example, the Film andy sells won't hold as much ink as my current film, so I have to lower my values to work with his film, and do so in a way to keep my colors accurate. If I change inks, it's likely to have a slightly different color making the color settings needing adjusting again. 

 

Basically, asking for an ICC profile to correct the colors, is like asking for the answer to life, There are just too many variables to predict the outcome in every situation. 

 

If you used the EPSON driver, be sure to go in there and disable the ICM settings under the printer options since EKprint handles that for you. 

 

 

I'm pretty stumped then if it should be working without a color profile. I used Andy's inks, film, and powder and my colors are coming out completely off. I had an image that had a gradient that went from black to white (with other colors so I can't print it in Grayscale mode). The gradient ended up printing purple to white. I have the Epson color settings to "No color adjustment" and within EK Print, I have "Graphics" Color Mode selected. I don't see what I could be doing wrong here. Take a look at this picture straight out of the printer. The label on the black powder bag is for comparison so you could see the black on that label versus what I printed out.

22 hours ago, johnson4 said:

you should clean them, at least the seating edge to make sure it’s a good seal. Normally, I don’t but this printer is different. Doesn’t need to be ink free, just build up free. 

Sorry to keep bugging you man...I'm almost there.

I got everything working..had 1 hiccup (left both plugs in when installing cartridges so it was printing blank). I got it printing now but after a few test prints, I realized my colors are way off. Do you have any color profile for the XP-15000?

18 minutes ago, johnson4 said:

I don’t think it would hurt. I used to load cleaning carts, do two cleans and let them sit until I needed them. Load ink, two cleans. Ready to go. I do that on any cartridge only printer that I let sit for any time anyway. 

This may be a stupid question but would I have to clean the nipples on the printhead before loading up the cleaning carts? I'm not sure if it matters if the cleaning carts get contaminated by the inks at all.

On 5/17/2021 at 2:56 PM, johnson4 said:

Capping station fluid is there to keep the capping station wet, and the printhead from drying out. 

print flush fluid, is designed to break down and flush out the ink in the lines, if your trying to clean all (most) the ink out.

printhead cleaning solution is designed to clean the head and break down clogs, without damaging the printhead.

clog buster is a last resort solution to use when you have a serious clog that nothing else clears, if used long enough( like it sitting in it too long) in itself can damage the head. 

 

I use printhead cleaning solution to clean everything, and distilled water for capping station solution, which, if its DTF isn't really needed, depending on the printer. if your using something like the P600/P800, the capping station fluid would help. Using it on something like an L1800 or XP-15000 I wouldn't use anything in the capping station, it can and will siphon the inks out, or mix the ink colors in the head/dampers/cartridges. 

Would you say it's unnecessary (or would it cause any problems) if I were to run a few headcleans of the printhead solution a couple times a week for maintenance?

1 hour ago, johnson4 said:

The buildup will happen, I've ran mine for about 5 months and haven't had to do it yet. Keep your wiper clean blade clean and capping station and you shouldn't have much issue. If you have partially clogged nozzles and print, it will cause the build-up quicker. Overall, pulling the printhead on the xp-15000 is pretty easy and straightforward. If your careful you can also just use a foam swab. 

Thanks man. I'm actually preparing to place my order now and see 4 different cleaners on DTF Superstore (Capping station cleaner, print flush fluid, printhead cleaning solution, and clog buster). I emailed them about what is necessary for DTF printing but haven't heard back yet. Do you have an opinion on which ones are needed? For some reason, I thought 1 liquid was all that's needed to handle any of the issues that can arise.

On 5/15/2021 at 10:04 AM, JTS said:

I just ran into a problem yesterday.  Was printing fine, then red and white channels started printing very light.  Now I'm getting massive banding.  Installed and ran my cleaning carts through a bunch of head cleaning cycles.  Had to leave for an event, so I'll re-install ink carts and see if that fixes it.

Please keep us updated. Issues like this have been my nightmare for the past 10 years, which is why I switched over to White Toner Printing, but the headache and cost of that is even worse. Trying everything I can do make sure I avoid problems when I get the DTF set up.