My shared learnings from modifing an Epson 1270 and 1290 with the goal of building a working DIY DTG.
I have taken up the advice to learn on an old printer first. My first build is an Epson 1270, A3, cheap $30 I have enjoyed every trial, tribulation and success with this project.
I have targeted my learning’s at a similar look to the ‘DTG viper’ albeit my hack is nowhere as stylish as the mother ship.
I have built an adjustable roller bed with a central conveyor belt to move an aluminium platen the adjustable bed is fabricated from steel and has be welded with a MIG welder.
The roller have ceramic bearings; I have design an auto tensioner for the rubber conveyor belt.
Height adjustment 300mm + I have left the top section of stand bolted so if need be I can make further adjustments.
My learning : “holy crap these printers have a lot of parts – half now thrown out”
Good advise – service manual, learn on the cheap printer – a lot to take in – information overload to start with.
Keep it simple, I have used the entire sensors on the printer, all of them work, the paper feed I have left on the printer even though I will never use it.
Align the driving mechanisms carefully I had a lot of ‘fatal errors’ to start with they were all from drive alignment and motor binding. Because these printer have been pulled to pieces. The frame work moves out of square just fiddle with the alignments.
I rewired the 5 pin flat flex cable to the encoder; I carefully cut the plastic plugs on the main board to solder to the exiting pins. The 5 pins have a natural hook on the end of them great to solder to, I used hook up wire and extended the cable by about 1metre (yah for cheap printers, hack with confidence – to be done at your own risk)
I have run into a snag the black ink was not printing I manually cleaned the heads the black ink sprung a leak in the printer housing L I have sourced another printer an Epson 1290 ($35) I am in the process of cannibalising my set up to retro fit the 1290 print head, encoder, and main board - dam another solder job ‘crap I broke off one of the 5 pins in the main board (hacked with too much confidence) I have soldered a new pin hopefully it works?? I have got a continuous signal through the circuit (fingers crossed) all I need to do is to fit encoder and print head
I will keep you posted this is enough for now.
Next post:
Things I would do different, wish list of further improvement hopefully the retro re-fit works.
I now have a mongrel Epson 1270/1290 blend DIY DTG printer.
Heres a pic of the first print from the re-fit, hopefully they will get better. I notice an improvement in this print about 1/2 way through. [left to right landscape A4]
[Click on Pic for larger view]
I am now going to start securing the printer and conveyor bed as it is all just sitting on the base board at the moment.
I have just ordered a CIS.
I havn't got a heat press.
I am looking at the 'possibility' of making a heat tunnel, not sure yet, still doing some research on that one, any ideas?
I thought of a ceramic IPR as it would be more efficient but also more costly.
For the 1st attempt I will probably start trailing a quartz based IPR as this would be cheap to make – I can get my learning’s on the concepts of a heat tunnels. I would need a Teflon belt and a small variable speed motor.
I assume with a heat tunnel you do not need to use a heat press?
Back to the printer:
What would I do differently? Although the frame is strong it does sway from side to side a little, this may improve once I tightened up all the bolts and secure things down.
I must do some trials on my belt system to see how much weight I can add till it stalls the PF motor.
My wish list for the next DTG project – maybe?
Make up a 4880 model with an alloy frame or carbon fibre moulded frame and carbon fibre components to house the encoder, belt tensioner, so it would be light weight and strong.
Carbon fibre would have the added advantage of being able to make master moulds and replicate quickly.
At this point of time I have no interest in making anything commercially I would get too bored doing that. I lean more towards open source and giving also to be able to print some of my own designed t shirts.
What next?
Secure everything down, paint the steel framework with primer paint.
Print a t-shirt.
If you are interested I will take a video of my first t-shirt print?
I would then like to run some trials, I will wait until I get the CIS going before I do that.
Noodle; That’s the beauty of cheap prototype builds. Still very much in the early learning phase of a consistent one pass print. I had issues with the 1290 encoder I had to play around to re-align that just to get the first print.
I have been keeping tabs on all the DIY DTG threads, what you guys are doing with the 1400 Mods is really great keep it up. How are getting on with your modifications last I read you were ready to print?
For registration issues, some possible solutions - Ideal would be an Epson 1400 or 1900 with a rip so once it is printed it can reverse back to start for second print - maybe.
I am thinking about building a flat guide rail (out of UHMW plastic) on the paper sensor side so the platen would guide itself along to the paper sensor that way I would get a more constant placement. I think I will start there.
Then perhaps play around with double printing because at the moment the way it is set up that would be futile.
At this stage I am pleased it printed
Just to point out to anyone looking at doing this treat it as a hobby a lot of time, effort, learning and fun to be had for sure.
A declaimer:
I would not replicate what I am doing - yet! Till I get consistency.
I will keep you informed
Grant
Last edited by GrantR; July 30th, 2009 at 02:08 PM.
Grant
what you can do is combining your thinking of rubber conveyor belt to move a base platen with linear guide on both sides and you put (fixed position) a t-shirt platen on top of the base platen and you won't have anymore double pass registration issue. So what the conveyor belt job is moving the base platen so the t-shirt platen can also move along with it. And the beauty of it is you can put as many as possible t-shirt platen if your printer capable of feeding paper rolls.
Nick and Justin:
Thanks for the encouragement; I hope that becomes reality soon – got to crawl out of the swamp first
Noodle:
Sounds like the go, I am still in the commissioning stage (crawling before the walk) had a few more problems yesterday.
I added a flat guide rail, did an A4 print on paper, it went OK, and with confidence I grabbed a big piece of old white cotton sheet big enough to cover the whole platen to do an A3 print.
I was so confident I spent 2-3 hours making up a design on Photoshop especially for the occasion.
I was mindful of dwindling ink (CISS not arrived yet ETA, Monday or Tuesday) the plan; double print on the cotton sheet before doing the t-shirt print.
Ah! But this would not print ‘paper feed error’ played around with that for about 15min retrying, you get this on your own build been here before many a times ‘Dinner’ - came back - ‘No Power’ Dang! I checked all the plugs, fuse. (For me when things go wrong its best to walk away and come back fresh to the problem otherwise I will be part of the problem)
This is the current state
A wee note of observation DTG is a rapidly developing industry from my research with either the off the self or DIY printers all have their own problems, the disadvantage of DIY is time and effort to get there the advantage is the Learning’s getting there and being able to fix it yourself. (This may be a big ask from me this time, fingers crossed)
Next – fault finding. I will replace the main board battery should have done that before with this being an old printer, multi-meter check wires from power board to circuit board a couple of wire look stressed (my fault should have fixed this earlier) apart from that pull my hair out.
Sorry for the long winded reply and any Kiwi slang that has you scratching your head
Got to take the good with the bad
The good: I got a nice design now just waiting for the occasion to use it - hehe.
Like an old saying ‘I don’t want to buy a drill I just want the hole in the wall’
Same thing with DTG ‘We just want the print on the t-shirt’
DIDI: No I will not be selling any plans but I would be happy to give them to you if I ever get around to making up any. I will be giving them away. That probably will not happen till I get it running consistantly.
Dave: So far I have only printed on A4, I was going to print onto A3 but lost power to the printer
Noddle: Thank you and everybody else for the encouragement.
I have sorted out the Power problem but I now have another problem.
Some one may have had some experience with this.
Ink will go freely through the head on clean but not a single drop will print onto paper??
I may not spend to much more time on the 1290 I am looking out for a 1800, 1900, 2400 so I can have options of progressing into a rip build. For now I will probably still use the conveyor base as I still have a lot to fine tune and learn from it.
I have got a loan of a video cam I will start a Video Diary and share with you as to where and and what I am up to.
My first vid is around the power failure issues and I will give you a quick tour around the build
I uploaded the video to you tube but it came up with 'This video is not yet processed' I asume that it may be formating it self to run on you tube.
hopefully it is processed by the time you come to view it
I have been researching the no print problem.
Ink is definitely getting through the head on the clean cycle. From my research on the piezo elements they vibrate rapidly so this may not be working properly. (Possibly dead - New head required?)
or
Another possible cause - the pumping mechanism may not be working properly. Now I am not sure on this but from my searching on Google the pump creates a vacuum in head to the cartridge (almost like priming a pump) if this is not done properly poor printing or no printing is possible.
When I did the retro fit 1270 – 1290 I did not change over the pumping mechanism. So if the pumping mechanism is slightly different to each other than an incorrect seal or vacuum from each ink port may be possible. Flooding of ink to the pump station may produce an imbalance causing a vacuum loss resulting in over retraction of ink back through the port into the cartridge net result no ink for the piezo element to fire onto the paper.
It may have been possible that I was able to do one print after changing over the 1290 print carriage as the cartridge and head was already primed correctly from the original 1290 set up.
I could be talking a load of shyt here, I’m not an Epson technologist and don’t pretend to be one. It was only a few month ago for this project that I had purchase my first Epson.
Only one way to find out - in the next couple of days I will fit the 1290 pumping mechanism and see if this make a difference.
Grant
I am still having problems with printing I can get ink through to the cleaning station but nothing on paper.
I fitted the CISS, on the video you can see the ink being drawn through the tubes on a head cleaning cycle. The CISS cartridges are full of ink.
I have since purged ink through the tubes. I have changed over the ink pumping mechanism. After several attempts still no print. I conclude that I have fried the print head. I will stop working on the 1270/1290 printer.
I have just purchased an Epson R1800 I will get some home print off this and get to know its working before I take the knife to it.
This is a link to the 1270/1290 The last dance. 40second video
Your conveyor system is impressive! I would love to see / hear more details, regarding how you were able to set that up.
Also, how's the connection with the ink lines, both at the head and the cartridge? It almost looks like ink isn't being drawn through the lines at equal speeds, which makes me wonder if there is an air leak? I am just guessing, based on what I've seen with other printers.
Epson 1270/1290 with roller conveyor build 
Re: Epson 1270/1290 with roller conveyor build 
