This blog accompanies a video on my YouTube channel in which I discuss the methods I use for DTF printhead scratches, strikes, and smudges. If you find that your pages are printing almost perfectly, but they are getting consistently smudged, then this blog is for you.

Uninstall the Printhead

To fix this, we’ll need to free the printhead. You can do this by turning on the printer, waiting for the printhead to start moving, and then immediately cutting the power. Remove the cartridges if your printer has them, and if your printer uses dampers, make sure to mark them before removal so that you know their order for reinstallation.

I strongly recommend ordering a dentist’s tool off of Amazon for this process, because it will make it easier to reach things. The next step is to remove a plate that is being held in place by two tabs, which are hard to get to with your bare hands. Use the handy dentist’s tool to compress the tabs and remove the plate.

Remove the Cables

Next, you will need to remove a few cables. Make sure they have some sort of protection, because it can be very easy to punch a hole in them accidentally.

Now, we can move on to the cause of the problem: the wiper can no longer wipe the printhead effectively. If you look at it, you’ll see that there’s a build up of rubber and gunk alongside it. Use your dentist’s tool to remove them. As you scrape it, you should start to see some flakes coming off.

The box needs to have an air-tight seal and a moist sponge because its job is to suck ink out of the printhead. Next, we’ll move on to cleaning the carriage. Use a piece of non-woven fabric to wipe the bottom of it off. Since you removed the printhead, you can also use some more extreme measures like placing a piece of cardboard under the carriage and moving it around a bit to get some of the more stubborn pieces off.

Your printer should now be able to print pages off beautifully without smudging them.

I hope this blog helped!