sorry to hear of your problems. Hope you are feeling better and going to be fine in the future. i agree that you should have sawgrass take responsibility for the warranty and get you back up and running.
i would try to purchase cleaning cartridges instead of just running ink through the machine as it should be cheaper.
i also know of a utility that is being created specifically for this industry and will allow you to take any epson printer and flush individual cartridges as to not waste ink. rumour is it will be under a 100.00 and will have test printing for alignment issues, many different cleaning cycle levels etc all built in. i am sure it is being aimed at the dye sub,
dtg and transfer market as there are just so many units out there and a lot of ink being wasted doing what you are doing now. it also will save on the everyday issues of possible air in a individual line that now will be able to be charged without wasting 7 other channels worth of ink.
it should pay for itself pretty quick in my experience.
tom