How to Convert Epson Ecotank Et-8550 to DTF (Direct to Film) Printer

hey everybody today we have the uh epson eco tank uh 8550 it's a wide format printer um it's brand new uh it's one of their new or one of their newer printers um so we're gonna try to convert it over to dtf today all right so i'm gonna go ahead and open it up i just got it so the cool thing about this one is it doesn't need cartridges you just insert the ink right into the printer it has slots for for each individual ink color which works great for dpf because then we just put the ink right in we don't have to do any conversions to make it for dtf inks oh so there's the printer okay so these are going to be the cartridges that you would normally put in there uh we're going to swap this out for a different ink a special ink specifically for dtf printing but this is these are what normally you would put in there um they're just in these bottles and then you basically just uh insert it in upside down right there all right so we're just going to go ahead and remove all the blue tape from it [Music] there's quite a bit of it so just it's a heads up on that make sure to look for all of it i'm gonna start in the back and work my way towards it so i don't have very much knowledge of the printer um and from researching it and doing all the uh searching you know scanning through the forms there's not much online knowledge about it especially for gtf printing so we're just going to be giving it a try today and see what happens [Music] okay so this is the scanner part of the printer here's the paper tray uh make sure not to insert any paper um until after you've uh gone through the initialization process so just a heads up on that but that's a paper tray this is where you adjust uh your paper um the the paper width size so all right slide that back in there okay that's the back okay so there is two slots here i don't know two yeah right here so you're going to click these two um there's these two little indents right here we're just gonna click those and they're on both sides to lift this up all right and when you do that turn back and we just go ahead and remove the tape from here make sure to be careful especially um with this one this is your print head if you damage this there will be no printing that's not good a piece of tape just went in there oh man this is just my look a piece of tape legit what's in there oh man well that's the type of luck i've been having uh with this project okay so we are back i got a phone call real quick so still remove it we're just removing the blue tape and uh continue so came back a few more pieces okay so we gotta get these out here that's true we got two i'm not sure what these are and look at it so this is where our inks are gonna go we're not gonna fill it up yet we're going to turn the printer on and then go through it um i do kind of want to open the printer before i turn it on but let's let's go through like basically just run it through as normal um and then i'm gonna do the random stuff like removing the rollers and trying to build a external wasting so we'll hold off on the external wasting just in case we break out just in case we break it during the uh uh just filling it with the dtf eggs all right so let's just let's do one one step at a time and then we'll go from there all right so i'm gonna actually go ahead and uh i think i got all the blue tape out um i don't see anything okay okay um i'm not sure if this comes off we'll find out later okay so let's go ahead and plug this bad boy okay so okay so we turned the printer on we're going to go ahead and go through the initialization process okay we're going to continue without the app because i'm recording using my phone i'm not going through that okay so it looks like it's time to fill the inks right now what we're going to do is go ahead and switch over to uh my other section uh and then we're going to fill our uh our empty bottles with dtf ink so we're gonna do that in just a sec okay so we've got the inks these are dtf inks i got them from uh gtfsuperstore.com basically this is what you're gonna use these are the type of ink you're gonna use to do the dtf printing uh the direct to film uh printing all right so it's a specific ink you can get it from multiple suppliers but i got mine from the dtf superstore and i haven't had any issues with them so far no clogs or anything also i'm probably shaking these a little too vigorously whatever so these are the refill refillable uh tubes or bottles i got these from a third-party seller uh on etsy what i did was i swapped the caps out for so this is the original uh ink that came with it i just basically swapped this cap out to match the color coordination um if you do buy third-party seller ink cartridges just know that i'll show you guys in a little bit but you're gonna need us each color has a certain um tank that it can go into so if you're buying third-party ones they're all uh you they're not universal all right so we're gonna go ahead and refill this line for sure let's start yellow okay oh yeah these chips are hard to take [Music] so i've had the printer for since about thursday um i've refilled it maybe once so i've refilled some of the colors once so the ink does last a pretty uh pretty a pretty good amount of time and i've probably done um i don't know probably close to 50 prints probably over 50 prints so compared to the xp 15000 if you're using that printer that entry level dtf printer this one is way easier it's going to be a lot less issues and refilling the ink is way less of a hassle also you're not with this printer you're not dealing with uh having to buy third-party uh uh chipless software [Music] okay guys so we are finally finished i don't know how long that took but it probably took quite a bit of time uh just because of all the little side missions we did um so here are the inks got black got your gray which is white you got your photo black which is white um you got your cyan and then you have your magenta and your yellow all right so now i'm going to take you guys over to back to the printer and we're going to go ahead and just go ahead and enter uh okay so we are back and now we're gonna fill it up so this is black we're gonna put black another cool thing so one cool thing about this printer is you can actually see the inks filling up too i think we squirted it all i can hear yeah okay so black is almost done lag is done cap it off so that did actually i would say pretty much almost the whole bottle um there's probably like maybe it feels like maybe about that much left doesn't feel it's right all right so next we're going to do photo black which is going to be a white [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] okay it's like white is done believe it yeah it's filled all right so it says press let me take you guys up says press okay five seconds all right it says make sure all the inks are filled up to the upper line so we're just going to go ahead and press start alright [Music] come on camera you could do it hopefully can you focus okay we're back so the initiation is complete um is saying to do an adjustment uh we're going to adjust [Music] wants to do a printhead nozzle check so let's get some paper put it in the uh so uh and i think i missed some tape so sounds like it's printing go you see that that's color yep so it's going to do a couple more alignments and then we're going to check the rollers okay so we're back looks like the printer is set up um the next thing we're gonna do is i have to remove rollers from this printer don't know exactly how we're going to do it but i'm going to take a look at it just okay so we are back um i figured out how to remove the rollers it doesn't look like there there's any screws on the rollers you're just gonna have to pop it out from each side so this side might be tricky so i got this side out i just popped it out well guys what are the odds it works [Laughter] all right let's try to assemble this back okay so we uh we got the room the rollers removed um it's still warming up i'm gonna let it just let it warm up see if i get any error codes and then after that we'll do a nozzle check okay so same because the power was turned off i might need to do a nozzle check anyway so we're gonna go ahead and do one well that printer's a knocking don't don't come rocking hey guys we're good that is that is clear lines rollers are removed let's try to do as much printing as we can all right so printer set um i'm gonna have to try to figure out the external uh waste tank later um that'll be a different video but uh let's try to do some uh dtf printing i'm gonna load up the sheets and we're good to go

Channel: Hangry Muscle

Views: 11,146

Keywords: Epson, Epson et8550, et-8550, et-8500, epson ecotank 8550, direct to film, dtf printing, dtf prints, epson printer, direct to garment, dtg, hangry muscle, hangry, hangry muscles, t-shirt printing, convert, xp-15000, epson l1800

Id: ubTK8k3ju00

Length: 31min 18sec (1878 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 26 2021