Are Cheaper DDF Printers Worth Buying?

I recently had a customer bring in a printer with a foreign chip. Some people may refer to it as a “Chinese knockoff,” but I don’t think that’s the case. Believe it or not, Chinese brands are far superior to US brands in their printing technology. When I started my career, I learned a lot from them.

Anyway, the customer brought in a printer with a poorly made foreign chip in it. If you buy a DDF printer, as this customer did, I’d estimate that there’s a 75-90% chance it’s a used one. The sub-2000s printers are much shorter vertically than those that cost between $2,000 and $3,000.

Those printers are on a pedestal. Inside those pedestals are power regulation systems and white ink management systems. An LCD also flashes and gives you your printer’s temperature. It’s pretty useless.

A Modified DDF Printer

The printer the customer had sent us was modified. DDF printers that are under $2,000 are like that. What these sellers do is they’ll buy a used printer and put a new metal case over it. This tends to cause some serious problems.

For example, the customer’s printer I used as an example in the video accompanying blog had a wire hanging out. I spent a long time trying to figure out what this wire was supposed to attach to. Eventually, I figured out that the seller had randomly bought a mixer off the market and thrown it in.

They had just bought parts from anywhere they could and mashed them together. No wonder our customer was having problems! The parts weren’t integrated and didn’t work well together, but many sellers will do that. They purchase random parts, throw them together, and call them a DDF printer.

Ink Circulation Issues

Ideally, ink in a printer should flow into one container where it mixes and then flows out through a single pump. This pump should then let the ink circulate later in the ink system. That is not what was happening in this customer’s printer.

The ink system in the customer’s printer was gravity fed, but since the printhead was higher than where the ink was coming from, the printer relied on the suction of the printing process to get ink, which is pretty much impossible.

A good printer should have an ink pump that moves ink from the primary tank into a secondary tank. There should also be a valve to divert the ink. That’s the first red flag you should know if you want to buy a DDF printer.

Buyer Beware!

Many customers will see this poorly made ink system and think it’s a circulation system, but it’s not. It just had regular dampers, and you’ll see that the tanks are elevated in an attempt to use gravity to direct the ink, rather than the proper system. The white ink will also be a lot thicker, and the tubes will be much thinner. The thinner the ink tubes are, the more likely you will get frequent clogging.

The problem that this customer told us was that they were printing, and after a couple of days, their white ink became clear. The white ink functions as glue, so if you see the ink standing still, the white will separate, and the top will be completely clear.

If you’re watching along with the video, you’ll see that when I took that damper out, you could see a lot of clear fluid on the top and a very thin layer of white on the bottom. This would completely prevent any white ink circulation.

If I’m being honest, I had no idea how to fix this customer’s printer. It was completely screwed up. The only possible solution I could come up with was to replace the white ink system entirely with one that worked. Otherwise, the problem would persist.

What’s Up With the Damper?

The third issue I noticed was that this printer used the wrong damper. The one it had was called a positive pressure damper. The white ink should be using what’s called a negative pressure damper. A positive pressure damper needs a pushing force to get ink out. A negative pressure damper doesn’t have ink coming from the side and uses a sucking force to get ink out.

If you need to order a negative pressure damper, you can go to my website, BCHTechnologies.com, and find the direct-to-film section. From there, click on DDF parts, and you should be able to find the right damper. If you need a damper for the colored ink, then you want the positive ink damper.

Mismatched Motor

Another thing that I’m not sure if this customer’s printer implemented is the right motor. With DDF printers, you’re going to be printing a lot. Sometimes you print for as many as 10 hours straight. Because of this, it’s important to have the right motor. Usually, they come with a modified motor, so you can print for almost a day straight without causing any issues.

Since whoever sold this awful printer to the customer didn’t even understand how dampers worked, I was concerned that the motor would be messed up, too. I ended up just swapping out the circulation system and advising the customer to look more closely at the inside of a printer before they decided to buy it next time.

I hope this blog helped! Remember to follow my YouTube channel, Kevin at BCH for more helpful tips, tricks, and printing solutions!