Why Is My White Ink Printing with Blue? Common Causes and Fixes for DTF Printers

Question:

I used white ink to print, and then blue ink came out along with it. It only clears for a few prints each time; even performing a head clean and having perfect nozzle check lines does not solve the problem. Do you have any idea why that is happening?

Answer:

Possible Causes and Fixes:

White Damper with Blue Ink Seepage

The most common cause of blue ink appearing in your white channel is contamination in the white damper. This can happen in two ways:

Wet capping contamination: If you perform wet capping daily (which is good maintenance), ink from a neighboring channel, such as cyan, can slowly seep into the white damper over time.

Solution: Manually draw ink from the white damper so that it is filled with white ink only. Once the damper is entirely free of blue ink, the remaining ink in the nozzle should dissipate after a few prints.

Delamination of Printhead Ink Channels

Sometimes, too much cleaning gradually weakens the internal ink channels inside the printhead, resulting in delamination—that is, the ink channels bleeding into each other.

How to Identify: A delayed printhead will show persistent contamination, with blue ink present in the white channel even with multiple purges.

Repair: If delamination occurs, the workaround is to identify the two channels affected. When detected, move the white dampers onto those delta channels and make color sequence adjustments within your RIP software. This process enables the printer to supply ink power normally despite damage to internal ink channels.

Printhead Related Problems and Unexplained Behavior

If a printhead behaves oddly and always prints with the wrong color first, you might be dealing with a faulty one. There's no proper technical explanation for this, as it's something observed from various printheads.

Solution: A quick workaround is to add a purge image at the front of your print job. That means the printer has to use its strange behavior up before printing the actual picture, and as long as the rest of the print doesn’t change, the results are unaffected.

More Resources and Suggestions

Troubleshooting printer issues can be difficult, since resolving them often requires hands-on access. For further evaluation and most likely repair service itself (https://bchtechnologies.com/printer-repair-service). As we have a lot of volume, turn around times would be based on first in line, so be patient as wait times may vary. Get fully guided on what would be required to repair the printer by getting parts of the printer replaced. Still, our pricing does not cater to everyone's budget.

Online resources are highly recommended to help self-solve these issues. Search on YouTube (https://youtube.com/@bchtechnologies) first: Click on the search icon to the right side of About on the menu bar next to the @. Because we’ve been making videos for more than nine years, it’s hard to remember every single one, so using YouTube’s search function is the quickest way to locate relevant content. For example, YouTube may recommend other helpful videos by different channels that can help you.

We appreciate your contact once again! Thank you for being so supportive, and we hope this information assists in solving your query. For more questions, make sure to connect with us on YouTube (https://youtube.com/@bchtechnologies) or our website (https://bchtechnologies.com)