Discuss the various aspects of direct to garment printing. DTG printers include Brother, T-Jet, Flexi-Jet, DTG Kiosk, Kornit, Mimaki, Tex-Jet and others! Discuss and learn about this up and coming printing technology.
Has any one else had any touble with the new bright inks for the dtg kiosks. I've had a lot of shirts going from a nice kelly green to a really light nasty looking green after only 2 to 3 t shirts. Not only green but I have had troubles with the blue and black those are the only colors ive really printed with since switching inks. Its just hard to be able to produce a descent amount of tshirts in a reasonable amount of time when your having to do head cleaings and nozzle checks after every 2 to 3 shirts.
If the first couple shirts print the correct way, it would not be the RIP or graphic. You might want to see what the humidity is where your printer is located. You should not be experiencing that many clogs in such a short time. Could also be something with the dampers, but the humidity is what I would check first. Let's us know if this works.
The only thing is i have printed in this same room for over a year now and have never had this trouble before. It just kinda of started when I switched the inks out.
The profiles in the RIP software are designed for a specific type of ink, a specific type of media and your printer. Have you updated the RIP software to match the changes in the ink? If not, you will need to do this. If you do, I would recommend printing a color chart out to see what colors are achievable with your existing ink. If you don't have a color chart, you can use one from this link - MultiRIP Screen Printing, Sublimation, Transfers, Photograph and Direct-to-Garment Printing RIP Software. Different inks have different color gamuts. Some inks can only hit certain colors as you probably know. I am not saying the ink you are using is bad (as there are many characteristics of ink - color, not clogging,...). So, you might have to adjust the colors in the graphic to get the same results. Hope this helps.
Changes to the ink can have an effect on the number of head cleanings you are doing. I have not printed with your new inks, so it would not be appropriate for me to comment on them. However the settings and maintenance you do can differ based on different ink sets. Definitely call your distributor and see what their recommendations are.
Has any one else had any touble with the new bright inks for the dtg kiosks. I've had a lot of shirts going from a nice kelly green to a really light nasty looking green after only 2 to 3 t shirts. Not only green but I have had troubles with the blue and black those are the only colors ive really printed with since switching inks. Its just hard to be able to produce a descent amount of tshirts in a reasonable amount of time when your having to do head cleaings and nozzle checks after every 2 to 3 shirts.
If this is in a single print run- ie printing a number of shirts in a row- it sounds like ink starvation is causing one of your colors to drop out.
Look along the path of your ink from supply to print head for a seal that is allowing air in, air locks in the lines, dampers that are partially clogged, nozzle check to make sure print head is not clogged. Whatever type of ink feed system you have- check to make sure the air vent is open and the ink is well agitated and the area where it joins the printer is clean.
Also you could strain your ink through a coffee filter if possible with your system to look for any clumps that may be impeding the ink flow(as if lint got in there etc). Coffee filter is roughly a 5 micron filter.
Did you completely flush your system before installing the new ink? The upgrade kit Colman & Company was selling (at about a $100 discount) included a full bottle of cleaning solution to help in the flushing process. If you did not flush your lines good, you may have some contamination in the system thst is causing some restriction to the ink flow and thus ink starvation issues.
I would suggest that you contact technical support. If you have pictures of the degradation you are getting, that would be helpful as well as a before and after picture of a nozzle check.
SWF East/Colman and Company has been selling this ink since the first of the year (and I ahve been printing with it from my test machine since before Thanksgiving) and we have not seen any noticeable "spike" in head clogging or ink starvation issues.
I don't do DTG printing, but if it started out fine and then went to worse, it sounds like your Cyan, and maybe even Black are dropping out. That would affect the green (Yellow+Cyan and in some cases black). As you are also having problems with the blues and clack, this seems to confirm it. Has this happened more than once?
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Hey Don I cleaned all the lines completely out. I have tried to get some help with tech support but all I have really got is Anthony acting pretty rude and his know it all answers that I always get that are usually not right. Its wierd because I've got a fairly new head, dampers and ink lines in this machine so I wouldnt suspect it would be that. I have printed some blue today and havent seem to have had the problem today so maybe it will just go away...hopefully, haha. If you have any other thoughts to this problem I'm very open to suggestions.
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