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

And now, here I am with tests. I printed white-only solid boxes, the sheet is 11.8 in wide (30cm). The first large box is 15x15cm (4,72in), while the smaller ones (3 in each row) are 8,5x8,5cm (3,34 in). So, a total in height of about 14,74in of solid white. This is how the full sheet looks (sorry for quality, taking pics of it was... hard!): This is a closeup picture of the first bigger box: And this is a closeup pic of one of the smaller bosex in the very last row: As you can see, kinda sadly, results are pretty "consistent". The kind of banding seems to be the same in all of them, and this is right after a head clean. For this, however the ink is flowing it seems to be it just flows the same way. Makes me think that some nozzles, for some reasons, are not spraying. For sake of info, this print was done at 1440x720. This because I know in past I could obtain solid white even with this mode. Obviously 1440x1440 is slightly better, and here it is (row and closeup): Still, it's there. I could still run this machine doing 1440x1440 only, it's not optimal but doable. But whatever the issue is I'm afraid will just keep damaging things more over time

1st of all, thanks for the replies. Sadly this is ok. The main thing is the banding is happening only on whites, while if a machanical problem would exists also CMYK would had been affected. But they're perfectly ok. I'm sorry in advance, this is going to be a long post... but I'd like to to give a full background about WHY I'm doing as I described. This can also work to present myself a little more in depth I am a developer, it's about 20 years I work in creating online design tool for the printing industry. I am not a printer myself, however as automating processes is a big part of my tasks, knowing the technologies is something I just need to do. And I also find this extremely interesting! So it happens that I purchased semi-professional machines just to test and learn: it happened ranging from sublimation to lenticular prints (which I did at home using a 3880). About a year and a half ago, at the FESPA, I learned about DTF. What I noticed immediately was the potential, however I also noticed how immature the market still was. There were no solid DTF brands, neither for prints nor for inks nor for films. It felt like a very promising technology starting to go from DIY to the pro market. For that reason I decided to purchase something to test on, with the main idea of learning pros and cons and be able to properly talk about it to my actual userbase, which is the professional printing industry (mainly large format, but not only). I saw that THE machine used by a vast majority of ppls was a converted L1800, and there I started. I ended up purchasing a modified L1800 from a Chinese company named Procolored, and from them I also purchased their inks and pet film in rolls. All this intro to really say one thing: I am NOT printing much, as I'm not a printer. However, learning how to deal with maintaining such machines when rarely used was pretty beneficial for my main goal, which is being able to promote DTF itself if I feel it has a potential for a customer of mine. So: I purchased that printer past November, and it ran pretty good with the very 1st set of inks provided by Procolored. Everything was pretty good, results met the expectations. About 2 months ago, as expected, white started to be too watery. It literally needed full shaking and a full head cleaning every day before printing. Even that was expected, I wanted to see how long such inks could actually last. Answer is in the range of 5-6 months max, with proper daily maintenance. It was time to look for other inks, as by that time the one provided by Procolored was the only one I ever tried At the FESPA of this year I saw DTF kinda exploded, but 90% of companies selling DTF equipments really had no idea of what they were selling. This ranged from poorly modified Epson printers to mysterious inks always claimed to be the only one working with their printer. But no details, very often. When I say "they had no idea" I literally mean that: picture an international Tradeshow where they're almost all baking the powder without any suction system (thus releasing the exhalations in a closed space full of visitors), or they're hot peeling films meant to be cold peel, of having powder shakers with NO COVERING causing so the powder to literally flow as a cloud of dust (again, in a closed space full of visitors). This happened because a lot of sellers wanted to follow the DTF hype somehow. My main concern there was that, if sellers have poor knoledge of the technology, eventual buyers not being able to reach the results they were hoping for would just blame the technology itself, rather than the poor knowledge of it their sellers actually had. Still, several serious pals were there too. I was specifically looking to create a possible good bundle of manufacturers to propose a solid combination of printer/ink/film for different levels of printshops. So, of course, I was looking for inks. I think I wrote about it in past in this forum. DTF inks are sort of misterious items when you ask around. I met several companies working to release their own, and very few actually giving details or willing to test in general. This is when I had a proposal of testing a new white ink from a Corean company. As my machine is meant for testing, I agreed in taking the chance. To do that I completely flushed my old white remains, did the deep head clean, replaced the dampers and tested the new ink. It was fine for about 2 prints. Then it started by release VERY little white. It was bad, and in case you're curious, now I also learned why. In short, they always tested their inks against the I3200 heads. Still Epson I thought, and also a more "pro" machine than the L1800. But I was wrong. There is a key diffrences I know learned. L1800 has a minimum ink droplet volume of 1.5 pico litre. I3200 has a minimum ink droplet volume of 3.5 pico litre. And that was the thing: an ink created mainly for the I3200 was simply too "thick" for the L1800. Result for me was obviously a clogged printhead. And so, finally, we're at today. After the clog, I decided to purchase again a small bottle of white from Procolored. At least, it already proved to work properly with my printer. Moreover, as I had to flush old inks a couple times for this testing, and also had a clogged printhead as a result, it was a possibly good test to see IF it was possible to deep clean properly enough to be able to return to the initial stage. I changed my white dampers again, flushed a Corean ink out, cleared the tubes and deep cleaned the printhead again. What I used is the 6022803 A29 Epson liquid, which is used to unclog the print heads, and although it is also used to clean dry ink, it is more suitable for purging the internal ducts of the print head. It also serves as a general cleaning liquid. At the end of all of this, I reloaded the original white from Procolored. And I had the unexpected results I postead about. Phew, it looks like I wrote much more than what I wanted to! I will perform the other tests you suggested later today, I'll let you know. Hope I have not bothered you too much with all of the above, but at least it should answer to your questions about what/why I did things. Thanks!

Hello everyone, I know this is something already asked and discussed, but I'm still trying to determine the root cause. So, here's yet anoth topic on the matter! This is the print: As you can see (hopefully), colors are just fine: good and solid. However, white and white only shows stripes. For the sake of info, my printer has 2 white channels. I know this normally means cleaning is needed, or problems with dampers/printhead, etc... But in this case it's slightly different, I think. I have just replaced the white dampers with new ones, filled them from a new bottlw of white ink (produced on Spets 2022) and I've also performed a very deep head clening (to be more specific: the way it's described in here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXNGJzjuUZk ). While doing that I visually saw all the nozzles spraying the clening liquid properly, so no clogs of any kind should be in place. And at the end of the process, after refilling whites, the printer went through at least 6 full head clens. With such clean process, new dampers and brand new white I was expecting white to SHINE. But something went obviosly wrong, looking at the results. That said, what do you think? I can only imagine 2 things, but both sounds unlikely 1) for whatever reason, doing the cleaning I managed to ruin the printhead for both the while inks chambers only 2) something mechanical of the printer (although I would not understand why colors are fine, in such case) thoughts / suggestions? Thanks in advance!

Hello World! I'm not really here to ask questions, rather to share an experience. So, today I decided to give a try to small DTF prints on left chest of a polo shirt and a 100% polyester jacket. Print was just fine: solid white on back, properly cured, and nice on font, This is the print on top of a blu sheet of paper to better see details: And now to the press. THe polo shirt has a curious texture. Seeing it with a backlight you clearly see it has a lot of "holes" in it: Fine. So, when I pressed one of my tests, this is the result: Not ideal, indeed... although it might depend on the kind of effect you want. I cannot be sure yet, but I suspect that with such kind of texture, perhaps less pressure should be applied when pressing. Visually talking, it's just like the glue did nothing where if fould holes, rather than "filling" them. Curious enough, no leftover of colors was found neither on the back of the shirt nor on the film. Guessing where the color meant to be on the holes went? However, this is probably my main curiosity on this test: does anyone know if pressure strenght could be a factor with a texture like this? Or simply that's the best we can obtain as.. that's the texture? Next in line is the test on polyester jacket. This is a closeup pic: To make it even worst, I test by appying my DTF on top of an existing embroidered logo. You can see it ghosting on top. You can see somehting similar in some way to the issue of the polo shirt. However, in this case the problem is not about the texture having "holes". I suspect it's simply because polyester has a lot of micro-wrinkles, but when heated it become as flat as it would be. So I'm afraid those cracks are literally the flattened wrinkles themselves. Again, I think it might work with a different combo of temperature/pressure strenght, one day I'll eventually try. So, that's all I have. I just wanted to share some experiment results. Have a great day!

Are you using semitransparency on white edges, or is it solid white? I'm asking because white cannot actually "fade", so the rip might not consider non fully-opaque whites printable

Not yet, but shortly I'll try with polyamide powder as I know I have stored somewhere... just have to find it. Probably later on I'll also try polyester so I'll have all the main powders tested

Are those prints made after ink shaking and head cleaning? Only times I've seen similar reults was when I had clogs in some colors. Personally, to be sure everything is ok, in the morning I try to print the attached file, 2 per row (height is just 2cm, I'm unsing roll feed). In order to see well if there's any problem (especially with white) I actually print it WITHOUT the "print color first" option on, so it's pretty clear if a clean is needed and/or which color/area gives issues, like this:

Which RIP? I assume you're decreasing the 2px in it while printing. But there are options to control how it is applied, at some extent. In Acro there's a checkbox where in white setting's decease named "except white only". But even assuming the RIP cannot help, if your picture is like the example you linked and is meant to be printed by you, you could just print that as 2 separate things. In that case, the colored part with 2px decrease and the white part with none.A piece of heat resistant tape on the back of the two prints and you will end up with a single "virtual sheet" as asked.

I never tried that, but I guess that something like silicone covers could be done with UV DTF printers (no heatpress at all, in that case). Not sure about how many of those are around yet, though. Regular UV printing still surely the best on hard surfaces. In the meanwhile, just in order to try understanding, I decided to start looking for the chemical properties behind TPU powder. If it detached so easily after washing and if material is so unsuitable for the glue, I cannot still get why it stayed well in pace while dry... and so I try to go deeper. The reading was quite interesting, assuming you care about the subject. In case, this is a pretty good article I found on the matter so I thought to share: https://appliedadhesionscience.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40563-016-0060-x

Interesting thing. At this point I doubted anything could be used at all. On such fabrics I always see embroidery or some kind of thermoplastic tags. Chewing if "DFTing" such tags could be of any practical use... One day I should probably just start using technologies for what they're meant for