In the printing industry, maintaining the nozzle is an essential task, which shouldn’t be ignored no matter before or after printing. I am a test engineer of DTF PRINTER manufacturing company. I have rich test experience in DTF printing. I wrote this article to share more printer knowledge and help more people develop smoothly in printing business.

●The most important step is the habit of daily use：

Test the printhead before each print, if the testing pattern is not complete, we must clean the printhead and test again until the testing pattern is as complete as possible.

In order to make it clear to everyone knowing whether such a test is necessary. Let’s start from the structure of the nozzle.

●Why do the test strips have to be printed in full every time：

The ink used by DTF printer is known as less fluent because it needs to be stable after printing. Just imagine if a clogged nozzles is ignored by you when the testing pattern is missing. Then after 1 hour of printing, which means clogged nozzles are exposed to air for up to an hour. It may cause the consequence that this nozzles become irreversible clogged completely. Over time, it will lead to a lot of blockage of the nozzle, and finally you can only spend money to replace the printhead. In order to avoid such a situation, you must clean the nozzles before each print, and print out as complete a test pattern as possible each time.

●How to test efficiently

Straight line detection method

In order to understand the status of the nozzle we need to use the Factory-built testing software.At present, the test methods of printers on the market are mainly divided into two types.The first is the straight line detection method.For example, a printhead with 3,200 nozzles needs to print 3,200 lines separately, and then judge whether the corresponding nozzle is blocked by whether the printed lines are complete. But in my opinion this is not an efficient way to detect if 3200 lines are complete.Because I only need to know if the nozzle is in good condition and cleaned, I need the results at a glance, so the situation with the linear test strip makes my judgment very difficult.

color square detection method

Another test method is the color block detection method from AIIREY’s 60CM DTF printer, detect whether the nozzle holes are clogged by observing whether the printed color blocks are complete. Although it is not possible to know which nozzle is blocked like a straight line detection, the block can easily see whether the nozzle is blocked. For non-repairable nozzles, knowing which orifice is clogged doesn't make much sense. And the linear test strip is very difficult to see clearly, it is important that we know whether the nozzle hole is blocked at a glance. At the same time, AIIREY ’s 60CM DTF printer is equipped with LED light tubes, which makes it easier for operators to find small defects in the pattern while printing. Many manufacturers will not equipped with LED light tubes if they are not confident in their own printing technology. Whether there are LED light tube can be used as a reference condition for people to purchase new DTF Printer.

The above is a brief introduction to the necessity of cleaning the nozzles and printing a complete test pattern. I will introduce to you in detail how to clean the nozzles in my next article. Please follow me and comment more and discuss with each other about DTF. technical problem.

Next, I will introduce how to make the nozzle still use if your nozzle has been irreversibly blocked.

●Structure of the nozzle

Take the EPSON I3200 commonly used by our company's AIIREY 60CM DTF printer as an example. This printhead has 3200 nozzles, a total of 4 rows, and each row has 800 nozzles on a very small printhead. It is a very precise Component. Any improper maintenance of the print head will cause dust to clog or become clogged by ink solidification.

●Principle of The MASK program

The nozzle blockage is irreversible and difficult to avoid completely, in order to increase the customer's use time under the circumstance of nozzle hole blockage. All printers currently on the market will added a MASK (feathering) program by most manufacturer. The principle of MASK can be simply explained that when one nozzle is blocked, the MASK program will automatically adjust other nozzles to replace inkjet according to the sequence of nozzles to avoid pixel loss in the image. With the MASK program, can it mean that the nozzle does not need to be cleaned frequently? The answer is negative. Because it means that as more nozzle are blocked, the other nozzle will have to work more, and the printing efficiency will go down until the printing speed begin unacceptable.

Finally. In any case, the nozzle needs to be kept in good condition before printing, and during printing, it is necessary to monitor whether the nozzle status is abnormal or the ink is in good condition. Regarding the monitoring during printing, many customers choose to use the flashlight function of the mobile phone to illuminate the printed pattern under the printed pattern to check whether the printed pattern is in good condition. However, for our AIIREY printer, there are LED lamps on the printing end to directly illuminate the printed pattern, so that we can quickly check whether the printed pattern is complete. This is also a function that many printer manufacturers are reluctant to add, because it can Whether there is a problem with the printer can be found instantly, but AIIREY attaches great importance to the customer experience and is very confident in the quality of the machine, so choose to add this function to ensure that customers can find problems in time and prolong the life of the nozzle.