Does a printer have to be un used to work with sublimation?

[asub]

Hello,
I just have a quick question...
Can someone tell me, if I get a printer from ebay, I read somewhere that it has to not have been used for normal printing? The one I am looking at is refurbished, do you think that will be ok for sublimation?

Thank
A

[Steve]

I have had a few 1400's second hand, and apart from the head clogging no problems changing over inks, change the carts or add ciss and print a few pages and do a few head cleans, this should get rid of old ink and replace it with sub dye ink.

steve

[WorthDoingRight]

Like Steve has said, once you have flushed out all the old ink then the new ink should work fine. However some printers have a very long feed tube to the heads from the ink cartridges. Epson printers do not but Brother and Ricoh do. Also remember that not every printer is ok for use in sublimation so your best bet if not buying a Ricoh is to go for a supported Epson model.

[asub]

Ok, well am assuming the one i'm about to buy should be ok (sx235w) ill give it a go.

Thanks
A

[socialgiraffe]

I see lots of future posts from asub starting with "HELP..."

[asub]

What is a forum for if you cannot ask questions?
Thanks
A

[pisquee]

If you use some printer cleaning fluid in some refillable cartridges to flush the old inks out of the printer (print full colour test bars until you see no colours printed) then change over to your sublimation inks, and print test bars again til the colours are solid.

[pisquee]

However some printers have a very long feed tube to the heads from the ink cartridges. Epson printers do not but Brother and Ricoh do. Also remember that not every printer is ok for use in sublimation so your best bet if not buying a Ricoh is to go for a supported Epson model.

Some Epsons do have ink feed lines, including but certainly not limited to the large formats. And in the case of having to flush out unwanted ink, getting rid of loads of ink left in the lines isn't a waste if it is ink that you are wanting/needing anyways.

[asub]

Excellent, Im not really expecting ink in there its just that you never know when buyiong refurb items!

Thanks for all the help,
A

[purpledragon]

I see lots of future posts from asub starting with "HELP..."

I think what the giraffe is quite rightly trying to point out is dye sub is finicky at the best of times without adding the issue of second hand into the equation epsons in general should be ok after a head claen or 2 ricohs i think are pretty much uless if normal ink has gone through unless you are expdrianced with dye sub and printers my advice would be save ur self the heartacbe and money and buy new