- Hello and welcome. This is Angie with
thecountrychiccottage.net. So today we're in the craft room, and I'm going to change
an Epson EcoTank printer into a sublimation printer. So I get tons of questions
about sublimation and how to do that. So we're gonna kinda start
a series about sublimation and the proper way to do that if you wanna add that to your business or to your home craft room. So the most inexpensive way that you can get into sublimation printing is by converting a regular printer into a sublimation printer. Done a ton of research, the
Epson EcoTank printer line is the easiest way to do that. So it's gonna be the quickest, the easiest, and the least expensive. So it really doesn't matter
which EcoTank printer you buy. So there's other numbers. They do different things. One might have a top load. One might print wider format, whatever. You can pick all of those options, just make sure that it's
the EcoTank printer, not any of the other ones. So with some of the other Epson printers you can convert them, but you have to have special cartridges, ink cartridges that go in them. And some of those you have to have a special chip to trick the printer into thinking it's a real Epson cartridge. And you have to buy
those chips every time. It can get really expensive to change some of those
other printers over. So I just decided that's not worth it. I would recommend either the EcoTank and the conversion we're gonna do today, or I will be diving into
other sublimation printers that you buy specifically for
sublimation in future videos. So with the EcoTank, what I recommend is that
you purchase it new. So that's why I have it
sitting here in the box. So you can see this is
a brand new printer. Because you never wanna
mix regular printer ink with sublimation ink. Now, if you find an Eco-Tank
printer at like Goodwill for $5 you can try to flush the
old printer ink out of it. There are videos on
YouTube on how to do that. This is not that video. I'm gonna show taking a brand new printer and changing it to a sublimation printer right out of the box. That is where you're gonna
have the most success. And I want you to be successful with this. But if you're that lucky person that finds that $5 EcoTank printer, I would try it. I'd just try it and see what happens. You're only risking the $5 plus the cost of your sublimation ink. Now, what else do you need? So you need your sublimation ink? So this is Hiipoo brand. I will link to everything in the description below, by the way. So this is Hiipoo brand sublimation ink. They sent me the ink itself
to change this printer over. So that's what I'm
gonna use in my printer. You also want to start basically with the brand
of ink you're gonna use. You don't wanna be going back and forth between different ink
brands in the same printer. So I have learned that as well. So I'm gonna do the Hiipoo brand. It's available on Amazon, and that's what I'm gonna
continue to use going forward. You'll also need sublimation
paper when we go to print. Now I'm gonna use this A-SUB
sublimation paper today, but I'm gonna do a
sublimation paper comparison at a later date. So if you're not already, head on over to our YouTube channel, hit that subscribe button, we'll have even more
sublimation videos coming up, and you don't wanna miss any of those. So now I'm gonna get this
printer out of the box, and we're gonna take a look at it close up and how you get the sublimation
ink into this printer. All right, so here's that
printer out of the box. And I basically removed
all the packaging material. Hopefully I got it all. If we run into some,
we'll just remove it then. Also in the box there was a
power cord, very important. You notice this power cord. I have not opened it yet. Do not turn this printer on
without filling it with ink. Sublimation ink in this case
is what we're going to use. But the printer itself comes with ink for regular printing purposes. And we're just gonna toss this. Again, like I said, at the beginning you never wanna mix regular
ink with sublimation ink. So we don't want to use
these bottles at all. We wanna fill it originally out of the box with the sublimation ink. So if you have that printer from Goodwill and it has regular ink in it, like someone's been using it,
there are videos out there, and basically you flush the printer from all the old ink and then
fill it with sublimation ink. Apparently it works most of the time, but it's really not guaranteed to work. So when you are maybe looking
for an EcoTank printer, like Facebook marketplace
or something like that, keep that in mind for
how much you pay for it, because it may or may not work once you've purchased all
these supplies and you're done. The other thing in the box was
like a disk for my computer so I can get the printer to
start printing and instructions. So basically we're going to
follow the instructions loosely because we're gonna use this pack of sublimation ink instead. So the instructions basically first were to unpack and to remove
all the packaging material, which I've already done. And then the next instruction
is to fill the tanks. So let's take a look
at the tanks themselves and how to fill them with sublimation ink. So on the side of the printer there is a place for your tanks. And this one has just the flip down cover. So now I can access the ink tanks just by flipping these back. And there's a port right here for filling. Now the original inks come with a little nozzle that
fits directly on here. The sublimation ink pack we're gonna use comes with syringes that we're gonna use to put in that port. And I do want you to note across the back. It tells you what color
goes in which port. So you have black, yellow, magenta, cyan. The other thing I want you
to note is across the front, again, black, yellow, magenta cyan, and these windows are clear, or, I mean, they're slightly frosted, but we're gonna be able to see the level of
the ink as we fill it up. So you can use this viewer
to see how much ink you have at any point in time. And that will be your
indication to add more ink or when you filled it enough, that would also be an indicator. All right, so let's also take a look at what's inside the sublimation ink box. So first of all you'll get four syringes for each of the four colors. You also don't wanna mix any colors, so use a different syringe for each. And then there is all the colors. So we have the black, cyan,
magenta, and yellow ink, corresponding to the tanks
on our EcoTank printer. The first thing I did
was get all the syringes out of that bag. It does also come with a pair of gloves, which we're gonna wear
as we fill our tanks. You do not want to get
the ink on your hands, just because it will stain them. And for each of these, I'm
going to assemble the syringe, and then I'll pull this
cap off so you can see. So it's a long needle like,
but open at the bottom. So you can suck in that
ink into the syringe and then push it into the
appropriate cartridge area. All right, I have my sublimation
ink out of the package. You can see it says sublimation
ink right on the bottle. And I have all my syringes
assembled and ready to go. Also have the gloves on
that came in the package. I'm gonna open the black. So now you can see that
this has a nozzle on it at the top to stick your syringe inside. You can see that nozzle a
little bit better right there. And we're just going to add
our syringe into that nozzle. And as your bottle gets more empty, you will have to tilt it, because you want to be
able to pull that ink in. So I'm just gonna tilt it and start pulling the
ink into the syringe. And there we go. So I just pushed it back down so that air I had in there would go out, and now we can just pull that up. I'm gonna get as much as
possible in my syringe? We can do this as many
times as we need to. Then we'll just remove the
syringe from the bottle. And so now we have some ink in our syringe and ready to be put in the printer. All right, now this is the
black port on our printer, and we take our full
syringe and we just put that into the port. And then just start pushing
down on the syringe, letting the ink flow into the container, and you can start to see it
on that indicator on the front as it fills up. And then we're just gonna
repeat the same process until we have enough ink in
each of the ports to print. So now I've filled up that
syringe a couple times, adding it each time, and you can see the black
moving up on that indicator. So I'll continue with my other colors. All right, the ink is full
when it reaches the top line. So there are lines on this
and there's a line up here. So you can still see
there's a little room, but that is a full ink cartridge. So now I'll move on to my colors and fill those in the exact same way. So I did wanna show you
as the ink gets empty, you will have to turn it
more and more to get it out, but this tip pushes inside of this nozzle. So you can really turn that up and then pull on your syringe to get the ink into the syringe. So just keep tilting so
you get the ink in there and not air. And I'll just push that back in because I'm done with the yellow. All right, everything's full I'm ready to install the
software on my computer and start printing. I did wanna note. We talked about that the
ink still had some in it. So these syringes, you
would need to clean them if you wanna use those again or order another set
to use the second time. You also never wanna let the ink get below this very bottom line. The bottom line has an arrow on it. You don't wanna let the
ink get any lower than that and still continue to operate the printer. So just a note to keep an
eye on your ink levels. Since everything's full,
it's time to start this up. So I have my power cord, I've
removed it from the packaging, and now I'm gonna hook it up
to the back of the machine on one end and then an electrical outlet on the opposite end. And we can fire this up. So we don't wanna connect
to our computer just yet. So we want to just start the printer up, and to do that we're gonna
raise this control panel. Then there's a power button. We're just gonna press the power button and let it start up. So the power button's flashing, which means I need to select my language. So I'm gonna select the language
I want from the dropdown and then proceed. Then you need to select
your country, press OK. And then we're gonna select our time. So the first screen is
like daylight savings time, winter or summer. So we're in winter. And the month and date format that I want. And then we need to select our date. So we're gonna wait for
the preparing to go away and then we'll complete the procedure. So now it's basically telling me I need to see the start here
sheet to finish everything up. I have my start here sheet,
came with the printer. So just make sure you
have the sheet handy. And what it tells me is to
press one of these buttons for about five seconds. Then it's gonna ask you to confirm that it's filled with ink, which we did. So it tells me which button to push. And the next process
takes about 10 minutes. So I'm gonna pause this video because we're just gonna
listen to this printer run. My set up's complete with the printer. So basically it takes some
of the ink you put in there and primes the printer so it
fills it up with that ink. So at the end of this, like
my black is only half full. Some of my cartridges are way down. You might wanna wait
to clean your syringes until after this is complete. And you can go ahead, just
pop this top once again and just top those cartridges
off if you would like. I went ahead and claim these so I could kinda explain to you how I did it. Now that setup step, you only have to do the
first time you set it up. So every other time when I use, I can just use this
like a regular printer, and I can just flip this and fill them up. You don't have to run through
that set up once again. So all I did to clean
these, I took them apart, and I just took like a disposable cup, and I just sorta ran air through them to get all the excess ink out. And you could even take them apart and make sure that they're clean
and all that excess is out. And then if you take canned air, you can run it through and just
make sure all the ink is out and just run it into the disposable cup including through these
little nozzle tips. And you can put the lids back on those. Now I can tell, like there
is some staining on them, so I can tell which is for which color. If you can't, mark these
caps, put the cap back on. So you always use the black for the black, the cyan for the cyan, that type of thing. So you always wanna use the
same one for the same ink color. All right, so now that this
is done, we can press OK. And now we can adjust the
printer to get the best quality. And that requires us to load paper. So I am gonna go ahead and
load some sublimation paper just so we can get a, take a look at how it looks. So we're gonna flip out, there's a tray in the back, and there's adjustment guides to adjust for the width of our paper. And then the exit tray
is gonna be in the front, and that flips out. And while I load this paper let's talk about storage of your ink. So you do wanna store those in a place like not extreme heat or extreme
cold and away from light. So did wanna say that. And then your sublimation paper, though, it'll have like a marking on the back and you wanna print on the front. So I'm gonna load that with the front up, and we'll adjust those
guides to fit our paper. And now we have some paper loaded, and we can select to
adjust the print quality. And what it's gonna do is perform like a print head nozzle check and we can do this on
regular paper if you'd like. I just have this sitting here so that's what we're gonna use. And I just pressed OK to do that. All right, now, the next thing you need to
know about sublimation ink is this will not look like a regular print. So it will not look as bright or vibrant because when you press
it to your substrate, that's when it brings out that pigment and gets really bright. So what we're looking for is
if all segments are present. So that basically makes sure that ink is all the way through the system and that it's printing all
the segments, which it is. There's one that doesn't look too great. So I am going to say no. And we're just gonna print one more to make sure the ink is flowing
all the way through there. But I don't want you to get
scared when this comes out. So all your colors are on here and your black, it's gonna
look gray, for instance. And I didn't want you to get scared that you've done something wrong. That is the right way for sublimation ink. So it will have a gray appearance
instead of a solid black. So the second time it printed it printed a more comprehensive paper, and I'll need to choose which
one is best on the screen. Basically, I need you to look at the boxes for each of the rows and pick
the one with the least lines. So we are going to proceed. And so on the first one, and I'm just gonna run
through each of these and pick what the best alignment is, and then we'll come back and actually do some sublimation. Okay, I finished the
alignment of my printer. We're ready to print. Now you need to get
your computer hooked up to your sublimation printer. It does come with a disk. So if your computer takes disk, pop this in, let it do its thing. There's also a website
address on the start guide. So if you don't have a disk, I just went to the website,
got everything set up. So basically it just adds a program to your computer, all the drivers, that type of thing. It checks for any firmware updates, which takes a little while. So just run through all those setups. Again, you only have to do those once, but what you do wanna do
is head to the computer and let's take a look at the best settings to pick to get the best print out of the printer for sublimation. And I also wanna take a look on the screen at what I'm printing. We talked about how the sublimation ink coming out of the printer
is gonna be super muted. And then when you press
it, it will get brighter. So I wanna take a look on the
screen at what I'm printing so you can see that color difference. And then you'll see that
again once we press. So let's head to the
computer and take a look. So I'm on a PC. It may be a little
different for Mac users, but you go to your printers and you print, and then we're gonna pick
the Epson printer it added. And we're gonna manage that. And what we wanna looking for
is the printing preferences. And this will set it for
every time you print from it, this will be set that way. And that's what you want, 'cause you don't wanna have
to change this every time. So first of all, the letter is what I'm
gonna be printing on. And then I changed this to
Premium Presentation Paper Matte. So sublimation paper is a matte paper. So we wanna pick that. And then we're gonna
pick the quality as High. And we're gonna go over to More Options, and we are going to make sure this mirror image button is
checked and then press OK. So what's gonna happen
is every time we print to this printer the image will be reversed for sublimation printing. Now let's take a look at
what we're gonna print. So this is just gonna be for our example, and I will drop the link for this below if you just really love it or something. This is what I'm gonna print. So you can kinda see
the colors on my screen of what it's supposed to look like. Now, let's print this with our printer and take a look at how it
actually looks once we print it. So what I wanna do is pick that printer that we just changed the settings on. And then I always make sure
that everything looks correct. So we had matte paper. And if you click More Settings, I can see that I still have high quality. Now it does not offer the
mirror option on these pages, but I'm confident that
those two are correct so the other one took
the settings as well. And now let's head to the printer at our sublimation paper
and print our design. So loaded my sublimation
paper into the printer, again, blank side up. So the A-SUB has writing on the back. Some of them, they're like a different color on the back or whatever, just make sure that the face
you wanna print on is up. And then I'm gonna click Print. Now, if your paper settings
on your tray are plain paper the printer is going to warn you of that. So it's gonna say, did
you load the right paper? So basically you can just hit like proceed and tell it to continue printing. And you can do that every time. And that kind of gives
you an excuse to check and make sure that you do
have everything set correctly before it actually starts printing or you can change the paper tray to be that matte paper
every time you load. So you don't have to hit
those buttons every time. Completely up to you. And now after a few seconds we have a sublimation print
ready to press onto our surface. So you can probably see
the color differences. I'm gonna flip the camera direction down and we'll take a look at pressing this onto a polyester shirt. And then we can see that
color difference as we press. So let's press the sublimation print. Okay, I'm gonna press this
onto 100% polyester shirt. I'm gonna use a protective
mat on my surface. So I'm actually gonna use an Easy Press. You can use an Easy Press
or a Heat Press, either one. I'm gonna use the Easy Press
just for ease of the video and to show that you can. Usually with an Easy Press you
have like an Easy Press mat. This is not that. So this is a mat from a different company. I'll link to it below. I like it way better for sublimation. So just to let you know that. So then this shirt is
100% polyester shirt. I will link to those below as well. You want at least 75% polyester, or something that says it's
a sublimation blank for this. The A-SUB paper does come with rough guidelines for pressing, but if the manufacturer of
the substrate you're using has a time and temperature,
follow those instead. So I have mine set to 400
degrees for 40 seconds. And then what do you wanna do, this is, sublimation is a ink, and it's gonna penetrate the shirt, have a chemical reaction
with the polyester, and be permanently
embedded in these fibers. What you don't want to happen is that the go all the way through to the back of your shirt. So I'm gonna use protective paper. I'll link to the brand that I like. And I'm gonna put that inside
my shirt, first of all. So we're gonna add that inside, between the two layers. I'm going to make sure it's
over the top of that mat and get any wrinkles out. And then first we wanna
pre-press the shirt. And if you're worried
about the material content, just add another
protective sheet on the top just so you don't come in direct contact with the fibers themselves, with
your Heat Press or Easy Press. So we pre-pressed that. Gets any moisture out, gets new wrinkles out, that type of thing. And then it's time for the magic. So what we'll need is
our print that we made with our sublimation printer. And you'll need some heat tape. So this is tape that's
gonna hold it in place, and you want something that
will withstand the heat we're about to apply, so
be sure it's heat tape. Again, I'll link to my
favorite brand below. And then we're going to put this, and we want the entire design, so we wanna locate it
on our shirt, of course, but we also want the
entire design on this mat and where the paper is underneath it. So I'm just gonna kinda locate it. Something you can do. So the center of my
design is about the center of this piece of paper. I can just fold it just at the top. There's no ink there anyway. And that'll give me an
idea of where the center of the paper is and the
center of the design. Then I can line that up
with the center of my shirt. And then I can see through
this paper, just barely. You probably can't on camera, but I can. And then I can kinda see where
the top of that design is in relationship to the
shirt and that looks good. And then you'll do it
from side to side as well and make sure it's in
approximately the center. And then we have it in place. We do not want it to
move during this process. So we are going to tape
it down to the shirt. And I like all four sides. You can like reuse this tape. And as long as no ink gets on this paper you can reuse the paper as well. So don't be shy with any of that. We're gonna cover it up with the paper. And then I'm going to add the Easy Press. And something I need to make sure of, before you start this process, what I'm gonna make sure right now, so I have another one printed out. It will cover, like the easy press itself, the base, will cover the entire design. You need to see if you
need to press twice. You may have to press
down low and then up high. But I think I can cover this whole thing with just one press. So what I'm gonna do is locate this paper right above my design. Then locate the Easy Press so it's at the top of that paper
and then press the button. And then it says medium pressure. So I'm just gonna hold down
firmly for the entire time. (Easy Press beeping) And what happens is it
beeps when it's done, and you wanna lift straight up. So basically, we've taped it down, but we don't want anything to move. So lift that straight up, and we're gonna move it to our base. And we can go ahead and remove this paper off the top and take a look. So you may see a yellowing
of the sublimation paper. That's okay. That's perfectly fine. And what we wanna do is
remove the sublimation paper, but I don't want you to burn your hands. So this right now is 400 degrees, right? That's how much we heated
it for, for 40 seconds. So be careful at this stage you can let it cool a little
while before you remove it, and just make sure that you're
not going to burn yourself, and then start peeling back. And you can see that this yellowing did not get on my shirt at all. And look at that amazing color that came from the sublimation print. So let's compare that to
the print we had originally. So this came out of printer, and after printing it looks like this. So super vibrant color. So the color just really like
pops off once you press it. And it is completely in those fibers. This is now like ready to wear ready to throw in the laundry. It is not going anywhere. It is down into these fibers completely. So it's super amazing way to turn an Epson printer into
a sublimation printer. We have a sublimation printer
from an Epson EcoTank printer, just that quick with
Hiipoo sublimation ink. So I'm gonna link to everything below so you can get all the
supplies to do this yourself. If you have any questions feel free to drop down below, ask away. I think you'll be super impressed with the projects you can create. I love the look of sublimation. And it's definitely the
most professional way to make shirts, and I'm
sure you're gonna love it. Now I use my Easy Press to
press this just for ease of use, not to get my big Heat Press out. You can definitely use a big Heat Press if that's what you have or that's what you want for your business, does not matter, as long as it goes up to that 400 degrees to press
the shirts or whatever. And then you're not limited to shirts. So any type of sublimation blank. You have sublimation mugs,
sublimation tumblers. There's metal that you can sublimate on. There's tons of different
sublimation blanks out there. I do have another video for
finding sublimation blanks, and I'll link to that below as well. So just look for something
that says it's for sublimation and then get to printing
and get to pressing. You will need special
equipment to press onto things like the mugs and the tumblers. I do have a video on how I do that with a small little oven in my craft room. And I'll link to that below as well. So the sky's the limit now. You can do all the things with sublimation now that you have a sublimation printer on the cheap. So this is a super inexpensive way to do sublimation printing at home. And it's fairly compact, really. So I did wanna caution you on one thing, with these printers you don't
wanna turn them at an angle, because it can mess up
that EcoTank system. So you always wanna keep it just like this now that it has ink inside of it. So I know that you'll be
moving it quite a bit, especially if it's not
in a permanent location. Just be aware when you're moving it to keep it flat as you move it. So just one tip there. If you like this video don't
forget to give us a thumbs up. And if you think this video is great, you might wanna head on
over to our YouTube channel, hit that subscribe button. I'm working right now on a comparison of sublimation papers
that you don't wanna miss. Once you have your printer
you'll wanna know the best paper to use inside of it. So you get the best results. And that is coming soon. And tons of other
sublimation ideas as well. So don't miss any of that. So thank you all so much
for joining me today, and I'll see you next week, bye-bye.
