[kendavis]

I seem to remember someone on here posting that, for the most part, they keep cleaning solution in the white cartridges and just put the white cartridges back in occasionally when they get a dark shirt job. Is this a productive way to work?

I don't get many dark shirt jobs and the cost of the white ink just to go through daily cleanings is making this a no profit situation. I would love to be able to cut down on that white ink cost.

If this isn't a viable solution then I may have to go with dual cmyk and either use heat press transfers for my dark prints or use my Roland for print cut transfers.

 

[23spiderman]

that is how i do it! i haven't had white ink in my printer since Christmas, and have done around 700-800 prints since then. now, today, i need to put it in to do 20-30 prints.

white ink will ruin your print head quicker than anything, so i only have it in the printer if i'm printing jobs that require white ink.

 

[kendavis]

Thanks. It must have been one of your posts I read. I imagine there's a little bit of white ink loss with the loading and unloading but it can't be anything like losing it doing cleanings everyday when you only print white every couple of months.

 

[23spiderman]

there's very little loss. i push the white ink back into the carts with my syringe by connecting it to the tube that attaches to the dampers. then i use that same connection to pull warm water through the lines until they are clear. the dampers get switched out to clean ones, and i clean out the dampers that were just removed. once everything is put back together, i pull cleaning fluid through the dampers so they are primed. now i have cleaning fluid going from the carts all the way through "clean" dampers. the head was already waterfalled, and now i just button it up and run a couple of cleans.

the white ink carts will have a little air in them after this, but you just pull it out with your syringe.

 

[kendavis]

Thanks for the info!

 

[EricDeem]

Many people do exactly as you described. We recommend this to people in your situation all the time. Its better to be safe than sorry by leaving white ink in printer. If you disconnect the white ink lines from the j-joint you can use a syringe to push the ink in the lines back into the cartridges. To get the white ink back up and running the easiest way I have found is to pull ink thru the dampers from inside the print head. This will prime everything and not waste cmyk ink by doing a power clean to try and re-ink just the white lines.