# Problems, do I buy a new printer?



## Rob Kelz (Feb 28, 2014)

Hi all,

I currently own an Epson XP-415 printer which has a CISS system with sublimation inks.

Recently prints have been coming out horrible, sometimes colours are wrong and so on, I've tried different print settings and also tried a custom ICC profile from printing off a chart, sending it off and then receiving a new profile to use but no joy they still seem horrible.

Sometimes they look ok on paper but come out terrible after being pressed, now I'm not too sure if this is down to the pressing time and/or temperature or just the printer being a paint with colours.

I use Adobe Photoshop for all my artwork.

I'm currently looking into moving away from the Epson printer and CISS system, and looking into a Ricoh SG-3110DN with Sawgrass SubliJetR inks.

Would you recommend this printer for my needs? Currently only do mug sublimation but also looking to mobile phone cases/backs too.

The heat press I currently use at 170 for 140 seconds.

Kind regards,
Rob


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## pisquee (Jan 8, 2012)

Can you please post screenshots of your colour management settings in Photoshop, as well as your printer driver.
Who did you use for your custom ICC?
For mugs, you temperature and time do seem low ... the 'normal' recommended starting point is 180 degrees Celcius for 180 seconds - for our mugs and presses, we find that 200 degrees C for 200 seconds works best, after the mugs have been pre-warmed on an electric heat plate.


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## Rob Kelz (Feb 28, 2014)

pisquee said:


> Can you please post screenshots of your colour management settings in Photoshop, as well as your printer driver.
> Who did you use for your custom ICC?
> For mugs, you temperature and time do seem low ... the 'normal' recommended starting point is 180 degrees Celcius for 180 seconds - for our mugs and presses, we find that 200 degrees C for 200 seconds works best, after the mugs have been pre-warmed on an electric heat plate.


Thank you for your reply

I will have a try at those settings, 200 degrees C for 200 seconds and see how that comes out.

The mugs are from SignzWorld or SignWorld whatever it is, the ink was from dye-sublimations(i think from memory) off eBay they come in 4 bottles of 100ml which I purchased when I first started doing the sublimation printing.

As for the ICC profile that was provided by City Ink Express, I was given a chart to download and print and then post back to them then they gave me the profile by email but as I said it just doesn't seem to be right.

The tightness of the press I use about a medium force on the clamp to clamp the mug.

Kind regards,
Rob


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## Rob Kelz (Feb 28, 2014)

Sorry I forgot to add in the print settings.

Now attached.


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## pisquee (Jan 8, 2012)

Signzworld don't have the best reputation for mugs or equipment.
Seller dyesubink on Ebay is the guy to contact for pro grade ink, you may need to message him if you're wanting 100ml quantities rather than litres though.
For ICC profiles, Paul, (user SaB on here) is most recommended for ICC profiling for sublimation- he does sublimation himself, and is a photographer, whereas City Ink come across to me as just sellers. Paul sells on Ebay and can be found by searching for "custom sublimation ICC"
For mugs start at 180/180 before trying other settings - wait 'til the press is up to temp and them put the mug in close it and start the timer.

Thinking - the ICC from City Ink may be perfect, but if used wrongly then it would be useless, hence why I was asking for screenshots of your settings.


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## Rob Kelz (Feb 28, 2014)

pisquee said:


> Signzworld don't have the best reputation for mugs or equipment.
> Seller dyesubink on Ebay is the guy to contact for pro grade ink, you may need to message him if you're wanting 100ml quantities rather than litres though.
> For ICC profiles, Paul, (user SaB on here) is most recommended for ICC profiling for sublimation- he does sublimation himself, and is a photographer, whereas City Ink come across to me as just sellers. Paul sells on Ebay and can be found by searching for "custom sublimation ICC"
> For mugs start at 180/180 before trying other settings - wait 'til the press is up to temp and them put the mug in close it and start the timer.
> ...


Are they the inks you use yourself, from Paul(SaB)?

I may give the CISS system a good clean out and start over with fresh ink etc. I can't try anything right now as I need to order some more mugs, is there anywhere particular you would recommend for them?

I'll also look into getting another ICC profile sorted too and give things another go, I was thinking maybe the CISS was playing around so I was thinking to just use refillable cartridges instead.

Many thanks and kind regards,
Rob


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## pisquee (Jan 8, 2012)

OK, assuming that you printed the test charts from City Ink from the Adobe printer utility, and that your printer driver settings were the same when you printed the charts (matte and best photo, ICM/no colour adjustment etc) The all should be good
However, you shouldn't be set up as using a CMYK workspace (US Web coated SWAP) as your printer driver is expecting RGB and so will have to convert the colour values, which will mess us your colours. It is normally recommended to use Adobe RGB 1998.


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## pisquee (Jan 8, 2012)

They are the inks we use (Inktec Sublinova Smart from seller dyesubink on Ebay) although we buy by the litre for our large format printers.
Originally we used SaB for our ICC profiling, although we soon bought our own kit to do it in house, as it was more cost and time effective to create the amount of profiles we needed.
For decent mugs, I would go for BMS' European mugs (printerowners.co.uk)
I would definitely ditch the CISS and get refill carts


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## Rob Kelz (Feb 28, 2014)

If I am to order a new ICC profile, do I reset the printer to use it's own standard profile rather than the custom one I am currently using, then just select matte, best photo, ICM and no colour adjustment then print (from Adobe Photoshop) and post that off to get my new custom profile.


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## pisquee (Jan 8, 2012)

NO NO NO - you will get a useless ICC if you do that.
As mentioned previously, and should have been by City Ink (and most likely will be suggested by SaB I hope!) is to us the Adobe colour printer utility to print the charts. This is a basic program that will print the charts without any colour management to get in the way.
This is to avoid Photoshop messing things up. But in the printer driver, you do need to set it as you intend to use it to print - so if matt and best photo is the quality and ink amount you will use then set it so, along with the ICM/no adjustment, along with the mirror image setting - then save this as a preset for your printing, and set it as default.
No Color Management option missing | Printing | Photoshop CS5


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## Rob Kelz (Feb 28, 2014)

From memory I didn't use the Adobe Print Utility for the City Ink ICC profile, I only use best photo/matte as that was what I was recommended for sublimation printing as I was told the paper is thicker and needs more ink.

What I will do is get some refillable cartridges and order the ink from the guy on eBay so the printer is using the correct ink and paper that I will be using(paper was from Coralgraph), if I got the right person his name is Tim?

And I'll then get a new ICC profile setup using the new sublimation ink and the paper that I use, and go from there.


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## pisquee (Jan 8, 2012)

Oh, other advice would be to use good quality paper - go too cheap on this and you won't get good results - look at BMS again and get from there - I think they have a few to choose from, and their more economy ones still have good reports. Coralgraph sometimes can be too cheap on some of their products.


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## mgparrish (Jul 9, 2005)

pisquee said:


> OK, assuming that you printed the test charts from City Ink from the Adobe printer utility, and that your printer driver settings were the same when you printed the charts (matte and best photo, ICM/no colour adjustment etc) The all should be good
> *However, you shouldn't be set up as using a CMYK workspace (US Web coated SWAP) as your printer driver is expecting RGB and so will have to convert the colour values, which will mess us your colours.* It is normally recommended to use Adobe RGB 1998.


Adding to your point, not only is the Epson driver expecting RGB data but the CMYK data the driver is actually seeing is also being "filtered" through a RGB sublimation profile, not a good thing either is the data is not RGB hitting the RGB profile, then going to the Epson driver which is also expecting RGB data. Double trouble.

That Adobe utility for target printing link is 

No Color Management option missing | Printing | Photoshop CS5

assuming this is the one you are talking about.


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## mgparrish (Jul 9, 2005)

This link is helpful using the utility. Always use the targets the vendor supplies, this guide refers to the guides publishers targets, but still is a useful reference.

http://www.pureprofiles.com/downloads/Pure_Profiles_Guide_for_ACPU.pdf


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## Rob Kelz (Feb 28, 2014)

Thank you all for your help, the CYMK was a test I done the night before I sent the screenshots over, I usually do use the RGB 1998 profile but I thought I'd test out the CYMK to see if it made any difference, thank's for the heads up on that though.

I've ordered new empty/blank refillable cartridges that arrived on Saturday and I've ordered new inks also from the recommended supplier(Sublinova ink) and also ordered some new paper(SubliClassis+ from BMS, so once the ink and paper turns up I'll get a new ICC profile sorted and go from there.

I will also order new mugs from BMS but they are out of stock on the european ones at the moment.

Again many thanks all and I'll let you all know how I get on


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## Rob Kelz (Feb 28, 2014)

Morning all,

I received the new ink yesterday so I filled up my new refillable cartridges all seemed to be well. Installed them in the printer and got things running and done a couple of prints on my current paper and.

I printed one WITH my ICC profile which looked kind of brown, when printed onto the mug it DID look brown!

I then printed the same, with the same settings but using the printers default profile, but no colour correction, No ICM etc and best photo which looked a dark/navy blue (in my opinion) but when printed was a good black.

Now I'm stuck for what to do, does this sound like the ICC profile I puchased is dodgy and should order a new ICC profile?


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## pisquee (Jan 8, 2012)

Where did you buy the ICC profile from?
Was it off the shelf or created for your printer using the ink type you have?
The only place I would recommend for getting an ICC profile done is here:
Custom ICC color profile for sublimation - Digital frames for sublimation photo mugs and photo gifts templates - (Powered by CubeCart)


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## Rob Kelz (Feb 28, 2014)

Hi pisquee,

Thank's for the quick reply. The original ICC profile was purchased from City Ink Express earlier this year. I was given an image to download and print to which I did, then leave to dry and post to them and then I received the profile via email.

Regards,
Rob


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## pisquee (Jan 8, 2012)

Get in touch with the guy who I linked to, tell him the printer model you have and that you're using InkTec inks, and also send him the ICC profile you got from City Ink, and see what he says. 
The advantage of the guy (Paul) I linked to is that he does sublimation, is a photographer, and has some really good kit for making printer profiles (much better than ours!) He knows what he's doing, and what you want to do.
City Ink are great selling stuff, but nothing on their website convinces me they are any more than box shifters, especially when it comes to sublimation.


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## Rob Kelz (Feb 28, 2014)

Yeah I wasn't too happy with the profile from the start when I got it anyway.

I have contacted Paul and asked him about ordering a profile from him, but I haven't had a reply yet. I did notice that when I last checked he hadn't been online for around 4 days so just need to wait for a reply at the moment and then I'll get a new ICC profile sorted.

I will be using the Subliclassis A4 paper from BMS and their European mugs but the mugs are not in stock at the moment, as soon as they are I'll order both the paper and the mugs.

Kind regards,
Rob


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## pisquee (Jan 8, 2012)

Paul is a busy guy - keep messaging him, and you'll get him eventually - say I sent you ;-)


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## Rob Kelz (Feb 28, 2014)

Yeah I thought as much, also at the busy time of year too.

I did have a response from him with how much it is and how long the turn around would be, just need to know what I need to do next to get the ball rolling for the new profile.

Had said originally that you pointed me in his direction also


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