If you’re reading this, you probably already know that I repair professional printers as a living, so I know the ins and outs of printers. So today, I’ll be going over a few things you can do to use your regular, run-of-the-mill desktop printer in a way that works just as well as a professional one.

Printer Functionality

To start with, let’s talk about the way a printer works. The monitor on a computer works with an RGB color scheme, with R standing for Red, G for Green, and B for Blue. You start in a dark room and shine a red, green, or blue light. Using different combinations of these colors within the pixels, a computer monitor can produce a wider variety of colors.

Within a printing system, we use the color scheme CMYK -- Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. Rather than starting dark and using RGB lights to produce a color, a printer starts light (often on a white piece of paper) and uses CMYK inks to create color.

A printer can produce virtually any color by adding cyan, magenta, and yellow to a white background in varying combinations. However, since the coloring works differently with a printer than a computer screen, you need to be conscious of what background you’re printing on.

4-Color Printer Limitations

Printing on a plain white sheet of paper is the standard, so you’ll have no problem with it. Printing on a light color, you have to remember that the color you’re printing on will affect the color of the print or print using something called halftone, which I’ll go into more detail about elsewhere. It will often appear more washed out if you need to print on a darker color. You could also try using a halftone print here. The one color you cannot print on is pure black. It’s simply not possible for a standard printer.

Another limitation you have on top of the colors you can print on, is the material size you can use. You can only print on things that are A4 wide (the standard width of your average loose-leaf paper). It can be as long as you want (as long as it’s less than 42 inches), but it can’t be wider than approximately 8.5 inches.

4-Color Printer Advantages

However, there are also some advantages to owning a 4-color desktop printer. To start with, they’re significantly less expensive. In general, they cost less than $600 to own. They also tend to have little to no daily maintenance, which means less money and effort on your part in the long run.

In terms of repair costs, the most common thing to break on this type of printer is going to be the printhead. Fortunately, that only costs $100 to get fixed. The printhead life is relatively long. In most cases, they can print about 20,000 pages before needing a new printhead. This means a few years.

In Development

I should also mention that I’m in the process of developing a white coating printer machine. By doing so, I could remove all of the limitations related to what colors of material you can print on. It will use a white substance to set a base before printing with the rest of the colors so that they won’t lose anything or start to look washed out on a colored background. If everything goes as planned, you’ll even be able to print on a black background.

6-Color Printer Advantages

Now that we’ve covered the basics of a 4-color printer, we should go over the differences between that and a 6-color printer. The 6-color printer will use two more colors during the printing process than the 4-color printer. Like the 4-color printer, the 6-color design uses CMYK.

However, they also implement the additional ink colors of light cyan and magenta. They swap these two colors for a white coating. They print CMYK and then use both channels to print a white layer on top of the colors. Because you have that white background coating, you could print on a background of any color. This then removes the material limitations.

6-color printers also tend to have wider size limitations than 4-color printers do. They can do a width of 11.8 inches (commonly referred to as A3+).

6-Color Printer Limitations

One of the major drawbacks of owning a 6-color printer is that it tends to be significantly more expensive than buying a 4-color printer. Generally, the price is between $2,500 and $4,000. In addition, they have more maintenance requirements. If you average out the price of daily maintenance, it will come out to about $60 a week. Repairing a printhead on this type of printer will also cost more, averaging about $400 for the printhead and $160 for the labor. However, if you can find a 6-color printer for $2,500, every penny is worth it.

6-color printers are also very high maintenance compared to 4-color printers. You’ll need to set aside around 30 minutes a day because if you don’t print with it every day, it will cause problems. There are ways to set up automatic daily maintenance, which I go over in other blogs, but that still won’t save you money.

Lately, on places like eBay and other resale apps, I’ve found that people will buy 6-color non-DTF printers and then put DTF ink in them so they can sell them as DTF printers. I bought a couple to check them out, and I discovered a few problems that meant some modifications were needed.

BCH Printers

I had to modify the printer inside and out. For example, one piece was there to control how the page first lands on the printer. Ideally, it would reduce printhead strikes. The one I got from eBay could not print high-density jobs without leaving scratches everywhere. We ran multiple tests and compared it to our printer; the difference was noticeable.

With our printer, you can print very high density with no scratches and use high vibrancy without anything failing.

Unboxing BCH Printers

On an original Epson printer, there will be a flap toward the back, but if you order one of our printers, you’ll notice that it isn’t there. We remove these intentionally. In addition, the DTF ink will be refilled inside the printer, so there will be no ink outside.

Although we’ll fill the ink up all the way, holding the printer at certain angles will make it look as though the ink is only half full. The ink we include should last six months to a year without drying up or running out, so you don’t need to worry about rushing to get extra ink. If you need ink, you can order it from my website, BCHTechnologies.com.

You’ll notice a paper tray with five modifiers when you order our printer. Two of these modifiers should say BCH USA, and three of them should say BCHTechnologies. Inside the printer, there will be three adjusters. These cannot be glued on, so we install them as tight as possible. They might come out, so I’ll show you how to put them back eventually.

Next, you’ll receive a power cord and a bit of double-sided tape. You can either use 3m or the roll-on type. Three pages of the nozzle test page will also be included. Then you’ll have a small amount of DTF film paper and a small bag of powder to get you started. If you need a refill in the future, you can also find some on my website.

Installing the Epson Driver

Once you receive the printer and parts, you’ll need to install the Epson driver. If you’re using DTF, you’ll most likely need the rip software, which is super expensive and doesn’t support all printers.

Luckily, we can use the Epson original driver model and do a bit of tweaking. Start by going to Epson.com. This driver will work for both mac and PC, but I have a PC, so I’ll primarily focus on that. For PCs, a generic driver will automatically be installed. That driver can print fine but doesn’t come with all the bells and whistles.

Go to Epson.com and download the driver. You can do this by going to support>printers and searching by your product number. For example, I was using the ST-2000. If you wait a few seconds, the site will detect whether your system is using windows or mac. From here, you should be able to download the driver and utility combo or just the driver if you want.

Some people need help with installing the drivers. If you go to Bluetooth devices>printers and scanners in your computer, you’ll see that the printer is offline or says the driver is unavailable. In this case, click on your printer and remove the driver. Then, to download it, click install and say yes.

You may have to restart your printer several times to ensure it can properly install. Then it will ask if you want to install via network connection or USB. I recommend using the USB port. Make sure your printer is connected via USB before installing anything with this method. You may have to try a couple of times.

If you try it a couple of times and it still says the driver is unavailable, then go to the printer and click “printing preferences” on your computer. You will see a full menu with colors and maintenance and everything. This is the Epson driver, which means the Epson driver is available, and you can ignore anything saying that it isn’t.

Configuration

Once that’s all set up, it’s time to configure the printer. Find your printer again and go to printing preferences. For the document size, you can check and ensure it’s A4 or keep it as US letter, which is the default. The second thing you will want to check is the paper type. Click and change it to “premium presentation paper matte.” Change the quality to high, and click through to the second page.

There will be more options for you to check on the second page. Start by turning off the high speed. Then I recommend clicking the mirror image setting so that your DTF printer doesn’t flip the image. Then, go to maintenance and click on the extended settings. The most important thing here is the print density. Go ahead and scroll it all the way to the maximum of 20%.

Installation and Setup

When you receive your BCH-modified printer, you’ll see three metal pieces with letters carved into them. You’ll need to install them into your printer, but that’s easy enough. The first piece will have a capitalized L, which means it goes to the left. The second will say BCH, and it’s for the middle, and the third will have a lowercase r for the right.

Next, take out the paper plate. You should see two horizontal lines, one longer than the other. Then sort out those five modification sticks I mentioned earlier in the blog. Three of them say BCH Technologies, and two will say BCH USA. We’re going to start with the set of two that say BCH USA.

Take off the 3M protective cover and line up the longer line with the bottom of the flat side of the stick. Do the same on the other side with the second stick.

Next, take out the three sticks that say BCHTechnologies. The pointy side should point upward, and the flat bottom should line up with the second, shorter horizontal line. For the other two BCHTechnologies ones, line up the flat side with the bottom of the paper plate. Once you install the sticks, you can find the slot and slide the plate into the printer.

If you need to remove the paper tray, you should be able to find a tab on either side. The one on the right will be wider and shorter, and the one on the right will be thinner and longer. Compress the tabs, and you should be able to slide the tray out.

Printhead Cleaning/ Nozzle Check

Before printing, we need to perform a perfect nozzle check. Go to the maintenance section on your printer’s LCD screen. Click okay and go to head cleaning. Hit start, and it should start cleaning. This step is crucial, but many people start cleaning without getting a perfect nozzle check.

There’s no reason not to try to get a perfect nozzle check with our printers because they come with multiple pages for you to do just that. You can do three cleanings, power down the printer, and then do another three. Repeat until you can get a perfect nozzle check. Don’t do more than six a day. Don't hesitate to get in touch with us if your printer cannot get a clean nozzle check after twelve total cleanings.

Preparing the Film

Next, we will need to start preparing the film for your printer. You’ll need regular legal-sized paper. If it’s your first time and you don’t know which side of the film to print it on, use a razor blade to scratch the corner. One side will have a lot of coating come off, and the other side should barely have any. The side with more is the one you want to print on.

You will want to use the double-sided tape I mentioned earlier on regular paper to make a T shape. Do it on roughly the center of the top of the paper. Put your film on top of the regular paper. The print side should face up. Now that the T has stuck it down roughly go ahead and put some on the corners of the film to connect it more securely.

The printer will ask you what kind of paper it is. You can use the original configuration each time you print or change the size to A4. Click okay and set the paper type to premium matte.

Printing Software

If you’ve set your printer up correctly, you should be able to use any graphic software to print. You could even use built-in software, like Microsoft Paint. If you tell your printer to print an image, it should prompt you for the paper size and presentation. If you want to check whether or not the computer has already flipped the image for you, go to options and printer properties. Under “more options,” you should have the option to mirror the image, which you want on.

If you want to print from photoshop, go to print>printersettings. Select matte, high quality, mirror image, and 20%density. The nice thing about photoshop is that you can ask it to save these preferences. From there, you can print out your image.

Print Check

If this is your first time using this printer, you may need to make minor adjustments to the paper tray and things. The first time you might get scratches during the loading when the paper reaches the plaque. The first thing to check if this is the case is that all three pieces we installed are aligned and pushed down. Check that the film has been glued to the paper properly. The paper should be flat when it comes out.

The second phase is called landing. If you look at it from the right angle, the paper might be higher than the rails when we put it in. You’ll want it to be on the rails when it lands. Initially, the paper will go up and up until gravity brings it down. This process is the second opportunity for printhead strikes to occur. You might have to change the paper’s route a bit if this happens.

The third phase is called the middle page. The page will print to the end of the center rail. During this phase, it’s not likely to get a printhead strike. However, there’s a risk of getting wrinkly in the middle. Certain types of film can also warp with moisture.

The fourth phase is called the end page. The risk here is that the T you made might need to be bigger or closer to the edge of the page. Another thing to test is the print landing on the two edge rails after the middle rail runs out. In my example, I was fortunate, and the printer worked perfectly on the first try. I didn’t need to adjust it.

Coating

I don’t have much to say about the coating, but I’ll review it a bit. I usually have some coating powder in a box and put the paper in. Swirl it around a bit and ensure it gets a little coating, then flick it so that any excess powder comes off.

Baking

Once it’s been coated, you’ll need to bake it. Most people get a DTF oven for baking, but you could use your regular kitchen oven. I use something I like to call the poor man’s solution, in which I use a standard heat press and a piece of wood that prevents the lid from coming down. I set the temperature to 300 degrees Fahrenheit and cook it for five to six minutes.

Next, you’ll need to separate the film from the legal-size paper. Otherwise, it will still be cool on the paper, causing it to heat unevenly, and the film won’t wrap. To cook it evenly, I turn the paper throughout the baking process. After baking, you should see no powder left.