Brother GTX - High White Ink Consumption!

23427 Views 34 Replies 20 Participants Last post by inkspired_tees, Oct 22, 2021

BJF09

Discussion Starter · Mar 2, 2018 (Edited by Moderator)

Dear all GTX owners,

The white ink waste on the GTX in my experience is not acceptable. I am not alone in my concerns with this issue.

We as business owners are literally pouring money down the drain. We must group together and post honest assessments in this thread.

It is no argument to simply say charge more to the customer. It is no argument to say manufacturers always bend the truth when advertising ink consumption to their client’s way below real world figures.

It has been reported some users are experiencing a 45% white ink waste on this machine. This is simply not acceptable.

Post your honest feedback on white ink consumption in this thread.

Reactions: 3

1 - 20 of 35 Posts

mitchischill

· #2 · Apr 4, 2018

Hello,

I have a GT-3 series printer and I am experiencing the same issue. I have a minimized the amount of WTC and WTF that I do daily and weekly. However, my printer seems to be still consuming ridiculous amounts of ink. As a result I am forced to purchase 2 white 380 cc cartridges every month and a half or so. In addition my ink waste bottle is also filling up extremely fast. This is abnormal from my understanding. I have tried contacting Brother, however they haven't been able to give me a clear cut solution.

I have noticed that on the diaphragm on the white cartridges (the hole where the ink leaves the cartridge and inserts into the printer) that there is some leakage of white ink. I have yet to find a solution to this. If anyone has any tips or is able to reach Brother, please reach out to me at 408-940-2074.

tusa

· #3 · Apr 5, 2018

How many shirts are you printing per month?

Two 380cc every month and a half is not bad.

On my GTX, two 700cc doesn't even last a month. But we probably do different quantity of printing.

I just ordered the 20 packs of white. Lets see how long that lasts.

gatorGRAFIX

· #4 · May 25, 2018

I have seen that if (for what ever reason) you let your GTX sit without printing any tees at all and just doing the required white ink shake every day and of course doing the required cleaning maintenance and nozzle checks whenever the GTX asks for it that two 700cc white ink pouches will slowly disappear in a little over three weeks time (along with a lot of cleaning fluid).

For this reason the GTX is best suited for someone who will be doing a lot of printing on it, mostly daily. It is after all advertised as an industrial DTG printer.

TedC

· #5 · May 30, 2018

gatorGRAFIX said:
I have seen that if (for what ever reason) you let your GTX sit without printing any tees at all and just doing the required white ink shake every day and of course doing the required cleaning maintenance and nozzle checks whenever the GTX asks for it that two 700cc white ink pouches will slowly disappear in a little over three weeks time (along with a lot of cleaning fluid).

For this reason the GTX is best suited for someone who will be doing a lot of printing on it, mostly daily. It is after all advertised as an industrial DTG printer.

I asked a Brother rep about this, and he told me that it is not required to shake the white ink when that message is on the display if you are not going to use the printer at that time. He did not give me specs as to how many days exactly you can let it sit, but I had the impression that it can sit for at least 4 or 5 days before shaking the white. I hope I got the correct advice as we do not print with it every day. If there is a Brother rep monitoring this board, can you please speak up and let us know what is the official Brother position on this matter?

gatorGRAFIX

· #6 · May 30, 2018 (Edited)

It will still do the auto cleans on schedule. Even if that is true it won't affect the outcome much.

TedC

· #7 · May 30, 2018

Mine does not do auto cleans if the machine is not printing. It does white ink circulation according to a time schedule (every 7 hours, I was told). I was told that the white ink circulation does not use much ink compared to the cleanings.

Augustine1987

· #8 · May 30, 2018

Hello everyone
I called brother to boss technical support and they told me that brother GTX is only profitable if you print at least 2000 pcs monthly, that's the only reality, even though the salespeople tell you that the costs are lower than in the old gt3, this is a big lay.

gatorGRAFIX

· #9 · May 30, 2018

TedC said:
Mine does not do auto cleans if the machine is not printing. It does white ink circulation according to a time schedule (every 7 hours, I was told). I was told that the white ink circulation does not use much ink compared to the cleanings.

Yeah, that's what everyone is told. I'm telling you, when your machine sits, it spits. That means (very expensive) white ink AND cleaning fluid goes down the drain.

Don't believe me? Go on vacation for two weeks or something like that and see how much white ink you have left in your "untouched" ink pouches. I would just say that this machine probably works best in the hands of someone who prints a lot of product. Nothing wrong with that if that is how it is represented.

BrotherGTPrinter

· #10 · May 31, 2018

Ted C, our GTX running firmware 2.5 or higher, can sit up to 7 days when white ink is in the lines; we do have a white pause mode where maintenance pouches can be set in the printer to idle white ink for longer. After 7 days you will need to agitate the white ink pouches and perform a white refilling and any necessary maintenance prompted. You will want to keep the printer turned on as the printer will still perform a white circulation every 7 hours. During white circulations, the printer uses no ink or cleaning solution and does not perform any type of cleaning. You will want to keep the printer in stand by conditions of 20-85% humidity and 50-95 degrees Fahrenheit/ 10-35 degrees Celsius when not in use. If you’re located within the US or Canada and still require additional technical assistance, please give us a call at 877-4Brother or contact your original dealer if outside these areas.

Reactions: 1

gatorGRAFIX

· #11 · May 31, 2018

What is a white refilling?

TedC

· #12 · Jun 4, 2018

BrotherGTPrinter said:
Ted C, our GTX running firmware 2.5 or higher, can sit up to 7 days when white ink is in the lines; we do have a white pause mode where maintenance pouches can be set in the printer to idle white ink for longer. After 7 days you will need to agitate the white ink pouches and perform a white refilling and any necessary maintenance prompted. You will want to keep the printer turned on as the printer will still perform a white circulation every 7 hours. During white circulations, the printer uses no ink or cleaning solution and does not perform any type of cleaning. You will want to keep the printer in stand by conditions of 20-85% humidity and 50-95 degrees Fahrenheit/ 10-35 degrees Celsius when not in use. If you?re located within the US or Canada and still require additional technical assistance, please give us a call at 877-4Brother or contact your original dealer if outside these areas.

Good info. Thanks for the information.

gatorGRAFIX

· #13 · Jun 4, 2018

I asked Mr. Google and no where could I find out exactly what a "white refilling" on a Brother GTX is exactly.

I even downloaded and checked with the Brother GTX app and had no luck on this one.

Since I got no response to my question above I am going to assume it is similar to Epson's "idle sitting" procedure where you have to purge all of your white ink, inject cleaning fluid into the DTG and then later purge the cleaning fluid and fill again with white ink when the DTG is awoken from it's slumber.

On the F21000 this is a long term storage answer. Doesn't sound too user friendly or efficient to me.

ezlogos

· #14 · Jun 18, 2018

the waste in production is close to 40% (purges and head cleanings)by my calculations. As it sits it just does white re-circulation. i have done 9000 printes since october and the quality of this machine is in a class all by its self, the product washes and wears just like screen printing. i have been using brother from the beging and this is by far the best machine yet.

Ghoster32111

· #15 · Jun 19, 2018

gatorGRAFIX said:
I asked Mr. Google and no where could I find out exactly what a "white refilling" on a Brother GTX is exactly.

I even downloaded and checked with the Brother GTX app and had no luck on this one.

Since I got no response to my question above I am going to assume it is similar to Epson's "idle sitting" procedure where you have to purge all of your white ink, inject cleaning fluid into the DTG and then later purge the cleaning fluid and fill again with white ink when the DTG is awoken from it's slumber.

On the F21000 this is a long term storage answer. Doesn't sound too user friendly or efficient to me.

That is exactly what you have to do and to refill the lines it uses a good chunk of ink, when I did it when we first got it it killed about half of a 700cc bag give or take so expect to lose almost half a bag of ink doing that.

Reactions: 1

gatorGRAFIX

· #16 · Jun 19, 2018

Thanks for clearing that up for us.

BrotherGTPrinter said:
Ted C, our GTX running firmware 2.5 or higher, can sit up to 7 days when white ink is in the lines; we do have a white pause mode where maintenance pouches can be set in the printer to idle white ink for longer. After 7 days you will need to agitate the white ink pouches and perform a white refilling and any necessary maintenance prompted..

I guess this means going back to shaking the white ink bags daily. Looks like it's back to square one if you don't want to go through the hassle (and expense) of the "white refilling" process.

gatorGRAFIX

· #17 · Jun 20, 2018

After doing a little more research Brother does indeed recommend shaking the white carts EVERY day so I stand by my original statement of 3 weeks will drain two 700ML bags of white ink. Just an FYI. Casual printers I would say this printer is not for you.

Brother YouTube video on the subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPnBaxXkA6Q

BrotherGTPrinter

· #18 · Jul 16, 2018

Geno, with our latest firmware of 2.6 or higher, the maintenance procedures we detailed in our prior post is correct. The video you are referring to has been updated with these steps, https://youtu.be/iBBhUMHsbcI
If you’re located within the US or Canada and still require additional technical assistance, please fill out a support ticket, help.brother-usa.com/app/ask_ipd, or contact your original dealer if outside these areas.

gatorGRAFIX

· #19 · Jul 16, 2018

That process is MUCH better. Thanks for clearing that up for all of us.

Trophy Factory

· #20 · Jul 17, 2018

So, after watching both video's the only difference is to agitate the white ink on print days instead of daily. Either way, the only thing that was agitated was me. As a potential DTG Buyer, this is an eye opener as I'm doing my comparisons.

1 - 20 of 35 Posts

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