Pigment printer for transfers

[rossdv8]

Glad to help. Just remember these are 'my' experiences. Not everyone would agree with me. But at least if you don;t Like the Brother you've got an A3 printer AND you can scan with it. I even print wirelessly from my 10 iinch Android tablet to the Brother printers using the Brother printing app for Android.

You would be surprised how many useful little graphics apps are around for the Android, and what you can do with them even in a commercial sense. My Android tablets have more computing power and storage than the computers we used to use to print commercial jobs ten years ago!

I'm assuming you are working with graphic designs and text mostly. If you ever decide to work with transferring photos, either by Heat Transfer or by Dye Sub, feel free to let me know. I have learned a few very simple tricks that will save you hours in getting a photo to look really good for printing. And everyghing I do can be done with FREE software.

I use Linux, but just about every program I use can be got for Windows or Mac free and legal. GIMP for example does almost anything that Photoshop will do. Inkscape and Xara LX are free and do Vector graphics. ImageMagick lives in a world of its own. You write simple little scripts and it does everything while you make a coffee

For example, if I copy 4 photos from my camera to a folder and click a script I wrote to make Dye Sub prints for mugs (for a tourist area) I get this:
First it slices the four photos into the shape I use and it sticks them next to each other. Then it makes a text section and sticks that alongside and makes everything the exact size I need for a print to fit on a mug. I like a white border top and bottom on my mugs.

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Then the script continues and cuts through the haze that is just somethign my cameras do.

Next it makes all the details nice and sharp adds a bit of colour enhancement to work with the sublimation inks (weird saturations because I don't use an ICC profile).

So all I do is copy 4 photos to a folder and wait 2 minutes while everything is done for me. Then I come back and do a test mug. If I am happy with it, I give it a name and file it.
Then next time I want to do a mug of the same town, I just choose a new mix of photos. If I'm doing a different town, I edit one line of text in the script file.

It may not be useful for you - but click on each image and compare the original straight from the camera, and the second one after a simple enhancement. You'll see what I mean about making photo detail sharper. It is about 3 clicks in Photoshop or GIMP. The only reason I write programs to automate stuff is to save me mouse clicks :-)

[Markola]

Thanks for the great info and advice. My Brother printer arrived today. Just waiting on the inks, cartridge and paper. I will let you know how I get on. If all goes well I will be buying a second brother printer for dye sub.

Thanks again your advice has been invaluable.

[Markola]

Just a quick catch up, Thanks to the great advice from rossdv8 I decided to take the plunge with a brother MFC J4510dw. Pigment inks arrived today. Took a while to get the printer to recognise them but after a bit of trickery I'm all ready to go. Got some of the stretch pro? transfer paper from Yolo and some inkjet printable flock. Going to have a play about tonight and I will print the results sometime tomorrow.

Done a couple of test prints on plane paper, initial results were not great, struggling to get a nice deep red but improving with every tweek. Playing around with the settings in corel draw to get more vivid colours. Its amazing what you forget over the years.

Ross, Im impressed with your colour enhancement techniques, they look great. However should I decide to do products featuring my hometown (Hull) I will be working with mostly Grey's and murky brown.

[pisquee]

Get Paul to do you a custom ICC profile, and then you will have a lot less tweaking to do.

[rossdv8]

I think pisquee's advice might be the way to go.

I have to tweak my colours a little to print with Dye Sublimation inks, however, for ordinary transfer printing you shouldn't really need to tweak colours to use Epson pigment in any Brother inkjet.

I got similar images from genuine Brother dye ink, Brother compatible dye ink and Epson compatible pigment inks. The only difference is that the cheap Epson inks clog occasionally. But it has not been a problem over the few years the printer has been running the pigment as long as the Brother printer is left turned on 24/7.

That activates the self maintenance function, usually some time in the dark early hours of the morning. I have never found anything in Epson's manuals or tech support to tell me any way to set a time for this. And it is difference from printer to printer. If I am sleeping in the workshop it used to be amusing to suddenly find myself waking up because I could hear a printer running in the middle of a dream. Look around and there would be a blue light form the LCD display and the sounds of self maintenance.

Then the other Brother printers in the room would all go off one after another. Until that happened I didn;t realize my HP colour laser had also been doing this for years. It's like a little orchestra going.

Anyway, that doesn't help your colour problem. A long time ago, Paul put together a neat test pattern for Dye Sub mugs. http://www.dyesubforum.co.uk/vbforum...g-for-everyone

There are a lot of test patterns available through a Google Image search. I like Paul's because it has a mix and is mug size. irrelevant for what you want, but it does have skin tones AND nice solid colours. So printing it out and looking a the reds, blacks and greys will give you a pretty good idea of what you are getting.

Also, in my Printer Settings when I print I can choose a Colour Mode. I can choose 'Natural', 'Vivid' or 'None'.
Now I don;t know where they are in Windows or Mac, but I'm sure there will be similar options. If you are printing a red and you want it nice and bright, perhaps try the equivalent of 'Vivid'.

Again in Linux, and I would imagine also in Windows or Mac, I can adjust the colours R, G and B from -0 to +20 or -20 and gt some differences.

But I have never found this necessary with any printer that was not using sublimation inks. No matter whether I am running dye or pigment or even bulk cheapo ink cartridges from the shopping centre.

Try printing Paul's test image and maybe adjusting it either at the print stage, or in Corel or something until you get the colours you expect.

[NikGrey]

If you need Bulk Pigment Ink I have a full set HERE which I cant use..

[Markola]

I dont have the need for so much much ink. I wish I did have.

[Goose]

Thanks for the info rossdv8 I do like the look of the brother printers might have to give them a go.

[Markola]

Update: So I have been using the Brother MFC-j4510w A3 printer for over a month using pigment ink. Printed out over 150 a3 sheets without much problem.
My main concern was blockages, so far I have had none. I have been using a High quality pigment ink from cartridge logistics. They claim this has extemly fine pigments and is formulated for brother printers. Who am I to argue its worked a charm.
I have encountered two small problems..
I did have a problem getting the printer to recognise the one of the refillable cartridges. I got around this by installing the origanal cart then when the printer was happy remove and reinsert the refillable.
Secondly without warning the printer gave me an error that one of the inks needed replacing. I tried my trick again but this time the printer states the cartridge is empty. Not too sure how to sort this. Do i need a chip re setter?

Well as many have mentioned Brother printers can indeed be used with pigment inks but the path can be rocky. For the £99 I paid for my printer I'm more than happy or will be when I figure the empty print issue.

Will update when I solve this issue.

[rossdv8]

Sorry to hear about the cartridge issue. I'm interested because I use a couple of the earlier model MFC-J6510DW printers pretty heavily and feed all sorts of stuff through them including canvas and cardboard.

Regarding your thoughts on replacing the 'chip'. One of the neat things about the Brother printers are that they have bigger holes (nozzles or whatever) in the printhead than the Epsons, which is why said in early posts I run Epson compatible ink only in my Brother printers. I decided I may as well allow for smaller pigment particles to pass through the bigger holes. Even then, I do get some minor nozzle clogging. But nowhere near as much as I used to get with Epsons.

The other neat thing is that all the Brother printers I've had so far have had no cartridge chips. Instead there is some sort of sensor inside the cartridge that sends information to the printer about ink levels. If I remember correctly i think it is a float type device.

Something else I mentioned in a previous post is the importance of making sure you put the set of little clear funnel lookng things in the correct holes. These let air flow into the cartridges and filter out some of the dust in the room. You would be amazed at how much paper dust can be in a room.

Anoter point is that the most common pigment cartridge that seems to clog for me is the magenta cartridge. The black does once in a while, but magenta is fairly often, say once a fortnight. The sublimation cartridges rarely ever seem to cause a clogged nozzle even if I have been away for a couple of months overseas.

I rarely remove the cartridges for refilling. I just carefully pull the coloured bung and top the cartridges up once they are a bit below the level of the label.

So from the operator, towards the back of the machine on the cartridges there is:
Label
Pretty coloured bung in the hole nearest me
Clear plastic filter in the hole further away from me
The other ends of the coloured bungs sitting loose
The little coloured clips that hold the cartridge in place

When you use the extended length cartridges there are soem other things to remember:

The cartridge door has a switch in it. A little plastic curved piece of plastic was supplied with the long cartridges. This MUST be in placeat the lower right of the door opening to trip the switch. I have a small screw, screwed in to keep it in place.

The plastic things you press down to lock the cartridge in place also seem to have a switch in them. You MUST make sure they are correctly 'clicked' up when you put a new or refilled cartridge in place. If you don't, you will get a message on the display telling you that cartridge is low on ink and the printer might fail to print, even though you know you have a full cartridge in place.

THAT Last bit is worth reading again. I have one cartridge slot that occasionally tells me I am low on ink. I replace the cartridge with another and often it works, but I put my refill back in and it says it is low again. I picked up on it when I tried a spare brand new cartridge and got the low ink warning. Does that sound familiar?
Sometimes I have to click the cartridge firmly into position several times to clear the message.

I suspect you might have found the same bug.

Hope this is of some use.

Cheers,

RossD.