Brother MFC-5890 and sublimation ink?

[johnny124]

Hi everyone,

I've had a good read through the forum and it's been a great benefit to someone new to all of this. I would like to be able to print onto A3 for sublimation printing, and spotted mention of Brother printers being possible to use. I have the MFC-5890 and although I've read of success with other Brother models, I wondered if anyone was successfully using this model? Or could confirm it should in theory be possible due to e.g. print head being same as another that is in use?

I know its not an "approved" printer and therefore I may be walking into some technical problems, but as I have this printer already it seemed to lower the cost of entry to doing this somewhat (and I get little use out of it at present so no problem devoting it to sublimation ink!).

Thanks

[WorthDoingRight]

The simple answer is yes it should be possible to use this printer once the existing ink has been flushed through and refillable cartridges put in place with the sublimation ink. It is however as you already realise a non-supported route to take and that you are likely to experience some issues that you may be on your own with sorting out. An ICC profile is going to be a must have also.

[johnny124]

Thanks, much appreciated :)

[bms]

Hi everyone,

I've had a good read through the forum and it's been a great benefit to someone new to all of this. I would like to be able to print onto A3 for sublimation printing, and spotted mention of Brother printers being possible to use. I have the MFC-5890 and although I've read of success with other Brother models, I wondered if anyone was successfully using this model? Or could confirm it should in theory be possible due to e.g. print head being same as another that is in use?

I know its not an "approved" printer and therefore I may be walking into some technical problems, but as I have this printer already it seemed to lower the cost of entry to doing this somewhat (and I get little use out of it at present so no problem devoting it to sublimation ink!).

Thanks

Just bear in mind that with the cost of sublimation ink, this could be an expensive experiment !

[pisquee]

(assuming printer is already filled,or has been used with non-sublimation ink in the past)
Buy two sets of refill carts
Fill 1st set of carts with printer cleaning fluid and print full colour test bars until you see no more ink printing through the printer
store this set of carts as a cleaning set for possible future problem solving
fill 2nd set of carts with good quality sublimation inks
repeat process of printing colour bars until image is not washed out, and is consistent - ie doesn't continue to get fuller colours as you print.
Now run a test print/nozzle check to make sure printer is printing properly
Now you need to get your ICC profile made- contact Paul on the forum

[johnny124]

Thanks all. I'll let you know how I get on!

[johnny124]

Well, a quick update. All the above followed, flushed with 1st set of carts, 2nd set of carts now in and seem to be printing ok. Only issue is colour matching - printing basic CMYK stripes, black is navy, yellow is hardly there and a bit pinkish, red and blue are a sort of dark pastel. I'm expecting the need for an ICC profile, but will one bring such a radical change to get these printing normally, or is it more subtle and unlikely to lead to changes of this size?

[WorthDoingRight]

ICC profile will almost certainly work wonders in getting a good working gamut of colours. PM 'Paul' on here and I am sure he can assist you.

[pisquee]

Yup, without an ICC profile your printer/computer will not know how to mix the different coloured inks in your printer to make the colours you are wanting/needing/expecting.
Do a nozzle check/print test in the printer driver (or on the printer itself) to check that all the colours are flowing properly, and nozzles firing - you can't see this from printing the colour bars you are printing.

[johnny124]

Right, quick update. Few nozzles appear blocked, but even so, it seems to print ok, and has been made better by the use of an ICC profile. Not perfect, so picked up a cheap Epson S22 at Asda as a backup/comparison, but happy enough so far. Thanks again for the help everyone.