Amac Posted June 26 Share Posted June 26 I'm relatively new to DTF printing and I've probably read at least half of this forum looking for tips and advice to make my journey a bit less painful. I bought my first XP-15000 and killed the printhead with clogs, but the printer decided to stop powering on which let me RMA a new one from Epson, very thankful for that coincidence! I'm on my second XP-15000 now and I'm wondering if anyone here has an idea of what goes into making a good cleaner for printheads. I've seen the Youtube videos advocating for and against various brands of glass cleaner, with or without ammonia, various alcohols, I've even seen a guy push Goo-Gone through his printhead which seems like complete overkill and a good way to ruin everything. I've been using 4:2:1 distilled water, Windex (with ammonia), and 90% isopropyl alcohol and it cleans well enough but I still struggle with getting perfect nozzle checks. I've ordered a bunch of cleaning solutions from different print supply stores and I've been comparing them but if everyone has their own recipe for their cleaners it's hard to figure out what exactly the most important ingredients are! They all seem to have at least a bit of ammonia or alcohol in them by the smell alone I'd like to better understand what makes a cleaner effective and eventually make my own. Anyone have any ideas? Ammonia? Alcohols? Detergents? Humectants? Surfactants? Any ingredients that you guys know for sure will destroy printheads? I'd love to hear what you think Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnson4 Posted June 26 Share Posted June 26 16 hours ago, Amac said: I'm relatively new to DTF printing and I've probably read at least half of this forum looking for tips and advice to make my journey a bit less painful. I bought my first XP-15000 and killed the printhead with clogs, but the printer decided to stop powering on which let me RMA a new one from Epson, very thankful for that coincidence! I'm on my second XP-15000 now and I'm wondering if anyone here has an idea of what goes into making a good cleaner for printheads. I've seen the Youtube videos advocating for and against various brands of glass cleaner, with or without ammonia, various alcohols, I've even seen a guy push Goo-Gone through his printhead which seems like complete overkill and a good way to ruin everything. I've been using 4:2:1 distilled water, Windex (with ammonia), and 90% isopropyl alcohol and it cleans well enough but I still struggle with getting perfect nozzle checks. I've ordered a bunch of cleaning solutions from different print supply stores and I've been comparing them but if everyone has their own recipe for their cleaners it's hard to figure out what exactly the most important ingredients are! They all seem to have at least a bit of ammonia or alcohol in them by the smell alone I'd like to better understand what makes a cleaner effective and eventually make my own. Anyone have any ideas? Ammonia? Alcohols? Detergents? Humectants? Surfactants? Any ingredients that you guys know for sure will destroy printheads? I'd love to hear what you think 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. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amac Posted June 27 Author Share Posted June 27 22 hours ago, johnson4 said: 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. It does make sense that my clogs might not be ink clogs at all. I've seen a few other people on this forum mention air clogs as possible reasons for poor ink flow, especially when the printers haven't really sat dry for any long period of time or channels spontaneously dry out or come back to life. I also started with the aftermarket foam carts but I was getting terrible ink flow with those. After switching to emptying and refilling the OEM carts I haven't bothered with the foam ones at all. I'll probably start a wet capping regimen to avoid the head drying out while it's between uses, I'll just have to be careful not to overfill the station and fry my board. I think I've also seen you mention that you put an XP15000 through an abuse test and it held up rather well. It seems like these printers will hold up if they're meticulously cared for, it's just that finding the proper regimen takes a lot of trial and error (and money and ripped out hair) I'll definitely be moving away from the XP15000 as I get used to DTF printing. I mostly do embroidery and the family used to screenprint before they decided it was taking up too much space and downsized. I see this as a $600 experiment before I go all in on a more expensive purpose built machine, as I'm trialing mixing prints and embroidery in the same decoration. I'm not looking at this as a get rich quick scheme but an addition to the work I already do. If it turns out I'm not pleased with the results I'll only be out a few hundred rather than a few thousand dollars, of course I could have just ordered transfers online but I suppose I just wanted to be a bit more hands on As for now I'll try out some of the cleaners and capping solution I got from DTGPro. I'm thinking my problem may be air instead of dry ink so maybe all the alcohol and volatile ammonia in my homemade mix was making the problem worse. From the videos I've seen on purpose built DTF printers you could flood the printhead, capping station, and ink carriages with liquid and it won't touch a single piece of electronics. I wish I could do the same on the XP without frying my printhead Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amac Posted June 28 Author Share Posted June 28 Just as I was getting optimistic my second XP decided to die. I went to reset the maintenance tank like usual, it throws a "cartridge not recognized" error, I restart the printer and now it just refuses to power on. I think my short journey with the XP 15000 is officially over. Either I have incredibly terrible luck with these printers or they're truly not meant to be fiddled with for DTF at all. Maybe there are some differences between the earlier and later models that we don't know about? Otherwise I can't see how people seemingly abuse these things for months and make prints just fine while I've been struggling since day one doing my best to baby it. Either way I'm cutting my losses here I'll order transfers online while I do some research on purpose built models. I think I've had my fill of fun with converting printers and I'm not looking forward to trying to find a decent P4/6/800 or 5/6000. I may just pick up something with an L1800/R1390 printhead as it seems that's what most of the single head printers are made with right now. Not looking for a dual head until I'm ready to jump to a 24" printer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnson4 Posted July 1 Share Posted July 1 (edited) On 6/28/2024 at 4:36 PM, Amac said: Just as I was getting optimistic my second XP decided to die. I went to reset the maintenance tank like usual, it throws a "cartridge not recognized" error, I restart the printer and now it just refuses to power on. I think my short journey with the XP 15000 is officially over. Either I have incredibly terrible luck with these printers or they're truly not meant to be fiddled with for DTF at all. Maybe there are some differences between the earlier and later models that we don't know about? Otherwise I can't see how people seemingly abuse these things for months and make prints just fine while I've been struggling since day one doing my best to baby it. Either way I'm cutting my losses here I'll order transfers online while I do some research on purpose built models. I think I've had my fill of fun with converting printers and I'm not looking forward to trying to find a decent P4/6/800 or 5/6000. I may just pick up something with an L1800/R1390 printhead as it seems that's what most of the single head printers are made with right now. Not looking for a dual head until I'm ready to jump to a 24" printer 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! Edited July 1 by johnson4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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