Brother A3 including MFC-J6510DW - Printer Maintenance

[rossdv8]

I use Brother A3 printers for various reasons and a few others are also using them for some jobs, particularly pigment printing.

They are pretty robust. They were one of the first affordable A3 printers on the market and they are Epson compatible in many ways. They also can do about 5,000 prints per refill and they are priced to be disposable if they break.

For anyone with Brother printers it might be handy to know that Brother not only produce a general user manual: http://download.brother.com/welcome/doc ... 4001_b.pdf with most of the information about the printers

And they also produce an 'ADVANCED' user manual: http://www.brother-usa.com/VirData/Cont ... N_2744.PDF

This latter one has all the information about routine maintenance like cleaning rollers and stuff. Particularly what NOT to do and what cleaning fluids NOT to use.

The same applies to other models of their A3 printers, and a quick Google will find them, or a search in Brother's web site support area.

Cheers,

RossD.

[GILSAN]

Hi Ross,

I looked up your location: Mackay on Google and didn't realize it was in Queensland. From what I read about where you live, it appears it's a fairly humid part of Australia. Do you find that humidity has any adverse effect on your Brother printers, on the papers and other materials you use or even on the inks?

Where I live is fairly humid and I find that it does affect some of my electronic equipment occasionally.

[rossdv8]

Hi Gil,

Yes the humidity does have an effect. I had problems with Dye Sublimation paper sticking to mugs after pressing. I have serious problems with all papers curling and sometimes not feeding. I cannot put a stack of dye sub paper in a printer, it is always a case of feed one sheet at a time.

And of course canvas has a tendency to curl once the humidity is above a certain point. Humidity will also cause some unusual problems with print head nozzles. I have acquaintances who do DTG on shirts and I'm sure they spend more on print head maintenance than the cost of their DTG printers

But there are a few simple solutions. If you have a regular work shop, you can use air conditioning.

I do a lot of mobile work so I created some dry boxes. Plastic storage boxes with a space in the bottom that has a perforated plastic sheet. Under the sheet is a bed of silica gel (the stuff in medicine tablet bottles). The best (affordable) source of silica gel I found is a brand of kitty litter that is made out of the stuff.

I have a habit of doing work on site from the back of a camper van, using either an Android tablet or a laptop for graphics and printing. That just leaves a mug press running off the generator or a battery and inverter.

So there are lots of options for the adventurous - or the crazy!

[GILSAN]

Thanks Ross, you sure have a lot of great info. I would never have thought about a particular brand of kitty litter that can be used as a substitute for Silica Gel. Then again, my cat never uses the stuff. He does his necessities outside in our garden.

Over here I occasionally use a Dehumidifier in my photo studio when the humidity goes up which is more frequent in summer. Since the temperatures here rarely go over 30ºC we don't use air conditioning. So I think I'll probably have less problems than you as far as heat and humidity problems go, once I get set up and going

Gil