Hello all. I'm very new to the whole concept of Dye Sublimation, and I could do with some advice over printers.
My partner and I want to run a small mug printing cottage industry from our home. My partner is an Art and Design student, and I am currently retraining as a chemistry teacher after years of working in engineering.
Photo printing of mugs has always been a hobby which we have enjoyed, but I wanted to move from doing small batches using a commercial printing firm, to full DIY.
My initial reasearch suggested that an EPSON WF2750 printer which I already had spare, should work well enough. So I ordered a set of CITYINK pre-filled Dye Sub cartridges, and having flushed the printer with flushing fluid attempted to print - at this point everything went wrong and the print head clogged completely. NO print at all.
I reflushed and tried again - clogged again. I reflushed a third time and fitted genuine epson ink and all is well - perfect printing. What am I doing wrong? Is it bad ink? or have I made a poor choice of printer?
I see that various firms offering a kit using a Ricoh printer - which is not unreasonable in cost. Would I be better scrapping my attempt at using the epson and simply buying a purpose built ricoh?
I have ZERO desire to end up as an unpaid IT maintainance tech - I want a solution which, as far as possible, just works. I have to say my experience with Epson, on this point is ABBYSMAL, every time I have used anything made by that awful company it has promptly failed, which is why the printer was lying about spare in the first place, because I didnt trust it - an opinion which has now been considerably strengthened.
I also have a Brother and a Canon printer in the house, which are both 100% more reliable than the epson but can find no mention of these being suitable for Dye Sub work, although I have rather gathered that the Brother should work, whils the canon won't.
So any recommendations please - Buy a Ricoh kit, persevere with the epson (possibly trying a different ink supplier), or use the Brother printer?