I see this question multiple times a week on various groups. Sublimation printers are expensive ($400+), while Ecotank printers can be had for $189 on Black Friday, or $200 regularly. And if you want a larger format printer that goes to 13″x19″, you can find Ecotanks for around $550 or so on sale and sublimation printers are at least twice that, if not more. So, should you “convert” an Ecotank? I can’t tell you if that’s right for you, but I can tell you about a number of details that can help you make your decision.
Fair warning: this is a long and detailed explanation that explains everything you may have heard about Epson printers. I use Epson EcoTanks exclusively, so much of this is predicated on research I’ve done before and after purchasing them and on personal experience.
I’ve Heard I’ll Void the Warranty!
This seems to be a big concern with many people. Let’s look at what the Epson limited warranty says, particularly the limitations:
3. Limitations and Exclusions
The warranty will be invalid in the following cases:
3.1 When the product’s serial number has been removed or altered.
3.2 When the product has been misused, has undergone unauthorized modifications, has been used or stored in ways that are not in compliance with the environmental specifications of the product.
3.3 When the damage resulted from the use of refilled supplies or consumables, or when damages are the result of use of media that does not meet the product’s specifications.
3.4 When damages resulted from the inappropriate transport of the equipment (packaging, installation, maintenance, transportation).
3.5 When damages were caused by natural or intentional disasters (fire, floods, lightning, earthquakes, etc.), power surges, or interaction with other brand products.
3.6 When the product has been totally or partially disassembled, or has been repaired other than by an Epson Authorized Service Center.
3.7 When substances have been spilled on the product.
3.8 When the external plastic case has been scratched or abused.
3.9 When damages resulted from inappropriate tests, installation, maintenance or adjustments.
The warranty does not extend to accessories (lids, covers, trays) or replenishing supplies and consumables (ink cartridges, toner, ink ribbons, batteries, photosensitive units, knobs, print heads, lamps), which, due to their nature, must be regularly purchased through authorized dealers.
Well, it doesn’t explicitly say that putting in different ink will void the warranty. But putting in third-party ink could be either “unauthorized modifications” or “media that does not meet the product’s specifications.” Here’s the catch: unauthorized ink, particularly sublimation ink, will stain the little tubes that take ink from the tank to the printhead. They will likely ask you to take a picture of the tubes before giving you any tech support, even if it has nothing to do with printing (for example, scanning or connecting to the network).
Some people have noted that the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act has been updated to ensure that third-party services or consumables cannot void the warranty. However, the original text of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act says that if a warranty is labeled as a limited warranty, it means it does not meet the federal minimums of this act. That’s why I specifically italicized limited in the opening paragraph when describing Epson’s warranty. The emphasis is mine, but the limited warranty phrase is Epson’s.
So with an Epson Ecotank, you are on your own. With the Epson F170 or F570, or the Sawgrass printers, or the Brother sublimation printers, you’ll have a warranty, provided you use their ink/cartridges. It should be noted that the Epson F170 is built on an Ecotank chassis and the Sawgrass printers are built on a Ricoh printer. Both Ecotanks and Ricohs are built primarily as inkjet printers, not sublimation printers.
Here’s the bigger point I’d like to stress: I’ve been working with technology/computers/printers for 40+ years. I’ve never used the warranty on a printer. I’ve never had one dead on arrival, though that can happen. I have had a number of problems though. Most of them are problems printing with the tiny, very expensive cartridges that don’t work out of the box or within 20 prints — they aren’t covered under warranty at all. The other problems have all come past the warranty expiration. And when I have tried to get technical support, it’s been lacking. (That goes for any manufacturer, including Epson, HP, Canon, and from what I hear, Sawgrass.)
But Converted Ecotanks Clog a Lot, Right?
Inkjet printers clog. Period. There are teeny-tiny nozzles that are capable of printing 5780 individual dots per inch. These nozzles squirt out 3 picoliters at a time (3 trillionths of a liter, which is too small for the human eye to see — a raindrop contains thousands of picoliters). How fast does 3 picoliters dry? It’s actually kind of amazing that it makes it onto the page, honestly! So yes, nozzles will clog.
Yes, you see a lot of people online complaining about their printer clogging. These people are having trouble and need help. How many people post when they aren’t having problems. Nobody’s posting, “WOW, this is the 54th consecutive month without a clog on my printer! Can I get a whoop-whoop?” They are happily at home, printing away, keeping our internet free of silly “whoop-whoops.”
So yes, when you look on sublimation forums, you’ll see people complain about their Ecotanks clogging. Try this: search the internet for any Epson Ecotank model and add “clog” or “fix clog” to your search, intentionally omitting “sublimation.” You’ll find lots of complaints. Then search for pretty much any inkjet printer. Inkjets clog.
Some of it is user error. For Ecotanks, if you leave the printer turned on all the time, after a short period of inactivity, it will move the printhead to cap it, keeping it from drying out. If you turn it off using the power button on the front of the printer, it will park the printhead and cap it before turning it off. When it turns back on, it will do a bit of a cleaning on the head. If you pull the cord out of the wall or use a switch to turn it off just after printing, there’s no power to be able to cap it. The printhead, with those tiny little nozzles, is left open to the air. It will likely dry out. Quickly. I wonder how many people are being very efficient with their printing and turning it off with the switch on the surge suppressor just after it finishes printing, but before it parks the heads?
Another thing that can cause clogs is extreme overuse. The manuals state that if you print more than the recommended monthly volume, your printer will need more maintenance. The RMV for most of the Ecotanks is 300-500 prints per month (10-17 prints per day, assuming you print every single day). For people running a business and printing 100 prints per week may be overusing their printer. Cleanings are a part of maintenance, but they also put wear-and-tear on the head. Remember when I said that turning the printer on causes it to do a quick clean? Let’s say you turn it on before printing twice a day, every day. Over the month, that’s 60 extra mini-cleanings per month that you don’t have when you leave it on all the time. These extra cleanings can actually cause the need for more cleaning. And finally, one of the things recommended to clear clogs is to print purge pages, up to 50 or more. That’s a lot of wear and tear on the printer, which could cause the need for more maintenance. In other words, the way you treat your printer can make a difference. In my opinion, turn it on and leave it on. I’ve never had a clog in over 4 years of an Ecotank with regular ink nor a clog in over a year with sublimation ink. I leave mine turned on all the time. I don’t make sure I print every week or two weeks, either.
A third issue is not a clog at all. It’s air in the system. How does it get there? Let’s first look at the dampers. I’ve unclicked them from the printhead (no tools required on the ET-2800!). They are shown on their side, the ink supply lines ride on the top and the outlet into the printhead is directly across on the other side. As they are installed, the side is a plastic film, much like on a frozen meal. The film is quite sensitive to temperature swings and air pressure. In a home, the HVAC system changes the air pressure in the house every time the HVAC fan turns on and off. When there are changes in temps or air pressure, the film moves a bit and acts like a little like a tiny pump and can pump that ink right back into the tank. If your printer is right under or over a duct, you may have more problems than people who have it on the opposite side of the room or store it in a cabinet where there’s a bit of a buffer. Using it daily keeps the ink flowing freely, but it’s not practical for many of us to craft that often. Instead a syringe fits perfectly into the outlet of the damper and sucking the air out draws in the ink from the tanks. You’re good to go again without the need for 30-50 purge pages.
So It Must Be Hard to Convert, Right?
No! The only conversion is to put different ink in it. There are 4 settings to change, but you would be setting all but one of them if you wanted to print photos on with standard inkjet ink. There’s an additional setting to mirror the printing so you don’t have to remember to do it every time you print. That’s the entirety of the conversion process.
So why is it called “converting?” Well, back before Ecotanks were a thing, there were (and still are) WorkForce printers that have cartridges for each color. These cartridges needed a bit more fiddling, particularly since they have chips on the cartridge that count how many prints have been done and require resetting or other fiddling rather than buying new, genuine Epson cartridges. It was a bit more trouble to use sublimation ink, especially way back when the sublimation ink was only formulated for very different professional printers. That’s when the color settings needed to be tweaked. Now that inks are formulated specifically for the Epson printers, you don’t need to do that any more.
One problem that happens too frequently when converting is putting the ink that came in the box into the printer. This happens for one of two reasons:
- The person setting up the printer thought that the ink that came with it is sublimation ink (it’s not!)
- The person setting up the printer got really excited and grabbed the wrong package (the two packages do look similar!) and put in the Epson ink.
If it happens, you can fix the problem. It involves getting some syringes, drawing the inkjet ink out through the dampers and disposing of it, filling the tanks, then drawing the new inks into the dampers until they’re full. Print a few full-page graphics and you’ll be ready to sublimate. Find several YouTube videos, watch them, pick one, then follow along.
Tip: to prevent this from happening, when you unbox your printer, as soon as you touch the Epson ink, put it in the refrigerator.
You can take it out after you finish setting up the printer.
Why the refrigerator? Well, you have to admit, it’s a pretty preposterous place to put printer ink! You might remember to do this step because it’s so presposterous! And if the Epson ink is in the fridge, you won’t confuse it with the sublimation ink that you should use.
NOTE: If you purchased a sublimation-ready printer, such as an Epson F170 or F570, any Sawgrass printer, or the Brother one from Joann — you do NOT need to buy separate sublimation ink. It already comes with it.
For more information, see: “Help! I Just Got a Sublimation Printer and I’m Intimidated!” for how to set it up.
Will Using Sublimation Ink Cause my Printer to Stop Working?
No. You may be hearing about Epson WorkForce and other cartridge printers that can tell if third-party ink is used. These are typically cartridge printers that have chips on the cartridges that the printer reads. If the chip is genuine (or a good fake, which are pretty prevalent), the chips count how much ink should be used. When the chip thinks its completely used up, it gives you an error. If it continues, it assumes it has been refilled and will take whatever action it needs to stop you from printing. There are ways to get around this that are well documented, one of them being to never update the firmware (which, to this programmer, is very concerning as firmware updates not only fix problems or offer new features, they also give extremely necessary security fixes that keep your network safe.
On an EcoTank, there is nothing that can determine what kind of ink is in the printer. There are no sensors to test the ink, no chips that count how much ink is used, nothing. It is designed to be refilled and the printer cannot tell what ink is in there. A human can, because as I mentioned before, the ink supply tubes are stained by non-Epson ink. But the EcoTank printer has absolutely no mechanism to figure it out. You’re safe.
A note on sublimation-ready printers: Epson F170/F570 printers are built on EcoTanks, so they can’t tell. But you should use their ink anyway, particularly if your warranty is active. I don’t have much data on the Brother SP-1 printer, so I can’t speak to how to use third-party ink. The Sawgrass printers are extremely agressive at ensuring the ink used is only their ink. At the time of this writing, (7/24), they recently updated their firmware and there are no “compatible” inks that work with their printer. It will print a cross-hatch grid over the entire page for a number of prints, then stop printing until you use genuine Sawgrass ink.
Is There a Difference Between Ecotank Printers?
For regular inkjet printing, yes, the differences are lots of features that help you automatically print duplex (both sides of the paper), use a document feeder to scan multi-page documents, supports thicker paper, whether there’s a fax, and so on. There are two basic maximum sizes of paper: narrow (letter and legal sizes, or A4 for the rest of the world outside of the US), or wide (13″x19″, or Super-B size for non-US readers). Almost all of them have the exact same printhead.
So what does that mean for sublimation? It means: buy the cheapest printer that does the maximum paper size you need. You’d think that the higher the number and the more expensive the printer would mean better quality, but it just means you’re paying for document features that you don’t use with sublimation. In the US right now, the 2800/2803 can be had for around $200 and it’s perfect. If you find the 2840/2850 for cheaper, get that. Those printers are narrow format printers.
If you want the larger printers, which many people do. For example, wind spinners, larger tumblers, t-shirts, garden flags, and tote bags all can be done with one wide-format print, or pieced with several narrow format prints. The 8550, 15000, and 16600 are all wide-format printers. The 15000 and 16600 use the same 4 color ink that the others do. The 8550 is a photographic printer that uses six colors: the same 4 as the others plus a gray and a photo black. It will only print 5 colors at a time, choosing between regular black and photo black depending on the paper chosen. Some people feel this is a waste because you won’t use both black inks (and they are the same black for sublimation, so just put a bit in the photo black and don’t worry about it). Some photographers and color experts prefer the depth of color that you can get from the addition of gray.
If you’re looking for a home or office printer, the ones recommended for sublimation will likely be insufficient for office or home use because you want those extra features, particularly auto-duplexing.
The ICC Stuff and Color Settings Scare Me — Can I Still Use a Converted Printer?
Yes, you can still use a converted printer! Honestly, I think people feel like they have to “do” something to convert. Don’t worry about ICC profiles and all the color color settings you see for Ecotanks. Just set a few of the settings (choose your paper, high quality, bidirectional off, and mirror — that’s all!), and practice printing for a few days on inexpensive, 100% polyester fabric using this project to get aquainted with your printer and press. Look on my site for an exercise to learn about your printer and press. This is what taught me that the press settings are likely more important for good color than the printer settings! If there are color issues, THEN you can start fussing with the settings. I run my 2800 with the default settings and my pressed projects look great — much better than with the suggested color corrections and ICC profiles.
How Do I Get Help?
There are many forums and groups to ask questions in. There are lots of sites, like mine, that have lots of information. And YouTube videos for everything imaginable! These EcoTanks are some of the most popular printers right now, both for sublimation and for regular inkjet printing. They are well made and quite easy to repair. There are videos for nearly everything! Unless the problem is that a board is fried, you can likely fix the problem with a damp paper towel, a cotton swab, a syringe, and maybe a screwdriver. And parts are available online to fix most of the rest. All you need to do is search for the error number and the model of your printer and you’ll find dozens of resources. (Do note that the Epson programmers are very lazy. Nearly every error is a “paper jam” error even if there’s no paper in it. Search for the number and find out what other two or three problems it could be! It’s nearly always easily fixable by you, even if you’re technologically impaired!)
When compared to the sublimation-ready printers (Epson F170/F570, Brother SP-1, and any model Sawgrass), there are many more resources for the EcoTank printers than there are for all of the sublimation-ready printers combined. For nearly all of the problems for EcoTanks, it doesn’t matter what ink is in the printer; the errors and fixes are the same for sublimation or regular ink.
So How Do I Make This Decision?
Sorry, I can’t tell you exactly what to do. You can “convert,” I mean, put in sublimation ink into an EcoTank, save a lot of money, and likely be very happy. I know I am. Remember, nobody posts “Celebrating 54 consecutive months without a problem!” You’ll only see the problems online. After helping many people over the years, I’ve found that most things that make people unhappy about their printer is that they don’t understand how it works (like the dampers having air in them) and spend a lot of time trying fixes that won’t fix the problem. Or, you could pay roughly twice the price of an Ecotank and be able to call the company and ask questions because you still have a valid warranty — for one year. I’ve also helped others with their Sawgrass and Epson F170 printers who then decided to get an Epson to convert.I won’t make that call for you, but I think you’ll likely be happy either way.