So the printer is telling me I am out of yellow ink. I see some in there. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to use up that last little bit? Normally we would just throw another cartridge in, but I don't have one. I do, however, have another 50 shirts to run. The design used up much more yellow than I anticipated. I guess I played it better sorry than safe. Any tips would be appreciated.
I'm not sure what groove you're talking about Chris. I'd like to hear more about it. I think you could take the cover off and tape all the way across the bag to keep the ink at the bottom - if that's what you're talking about. We were able to take the "empty" cartridge out, shake it a little to let gravity do its thing, stuck it back in and printed the other 50 shirts. Whew!
I was a little apprehensive at first, but there's about $10 - $50 worth of ink in there depending on the incident. If you look at the cartridge, there are pop tabs on both sides and one set in the front. Carefully use a thin instrument I I use a dull old pocket knife) and stick the tip in to pop the tabs, sliding your blade or whatever along the seam to pop the other. You will also have to score/slice the paper sticker that covers the seam on the face.
Be careful not to pop the sack inside, but don't worry about being rough with the casing - it's just a hard plastic shell with no moving parts.
Once you are in there, pinch and roll the sack forward, squeezing the ink toward the output valve. I take two strips of duct tape and tape one end to the roll Ive made and the other forward over the lip, but do whatever you want to secure it.
I've saved (I estimate) about $300 this year from this technique. Best of Luck!
The cartridges have a tendency to have ink sitting until you squeeze them, but I have found an issue with this technique, the machine might think that you still have ink and try to suck it from the cartridge just to find yourself that said color is not printing, although the machine says it is. I did a run of 10 just to find the cartridge almost dry by my 3rd t-shirt then I had to do an initial head cleaning because the lines where also dry, and I had to pump ink to the head, and that makes me wonder if there is any danger with line clogging.
But definitely if you do not hack the ink cartridges you are loosing money.
Yup. and sometimes when it is a bare min. you will know when it is outta ink when slight banding appears,
Happen with black ink, so I change cart, changed wiper, cleaned up excess, and just needed 2 normal head cleans on black to get it going, didn't need to waste ink with an ink charge.
I got about 300 more prints with that black cart. and 200 or soo with yellow .. these shirts were 12x15 prints for most part too 100 of them...
Maximum ink usage 
