Why I Stopped Converting Printers and Bought an Epson F170

A Saturday in late April, and I had six tumblers for a friend's bridal party lined up on the folding table by the window. I pulled the wrap off the first one and my stomach dropped. The design was there, all right, but it was soft and streaky, like a picture taken through a dirty windshield. Five more to unwrap, and every single one looked the same.

Here is what I had been running since mid February. A converted Epson EcoTank filled with sublimation ink. Generic no-name paper. A countertop toaster oven with shrink wrap sleeves sitting on that folding table, the window cracked open beside it while I pressed. It worked often enough to keep me saying yes. Coworkers asked for shirts for the office fundraiser walk, a neighbor asked for a tumbler for her daughter, and I agreed every time because it mostly came out fine.

Tumblers went into that toaster oven wrapped in sleeves while I stood there watching a timer on my phone. Sometimes they came out lovely. Sometimes the wrap wrinkled and the design shifted, and I told myself that was just how it went for a beginner in a spare bedroom.

Then that same afternoon, the EcoTank clogged. Not a little. A printhead that had been sulking for weeks finally quit on me, and none of the cleaning cycles I ran brought the lines back. I boxed it up and put it in the closet, where it still sits. Two failures in one Saturday is what it took for me to admit the setup was the problem, not my technique.

The first week of May I bought the Epson SureColor F170, a pack of A-SUB paper and the HTVRONT tumbler press together, with my own money, from Amazon. I am a dental office receptionist in Evansville, Indiana. I am not a print professional and I never claimed to be. I needed one thing in that room that behaved the same way twice.

The next Saturday I remade those six tumblers. Sharp lines. Full color. No streaks. I sat down on the carpet of the spare bedroom and just looked at them for a minute.

Two failures in one Saturday is what it took for me to admit the setup was the problem, not my technique.

So here is what the Epson F170 actually is, in plain terms. It is a dye-sublimation printer built for fabric. Print only, no scanner, no copier. It handles one paper size, 8.5 by 11 inches, and nothing bigger. If you need large format prints, this is not the machine and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

What it does have is a PrecisionCore printhead and a resolution of 5760 by 1440. I could not tell you what that means on a spec sheet, but I can tell you what it looks like on a shirt. The gradients in my designs come out smooth instead of banded, and small lettering on a tumbler design stays readable after it is pressed.

The ink comes as genuine Epson sublimation bottles with auto-stop technology. You tip the bottle into the tank and it stops on its own. No funnel, no overflow, no ink soaked into the table. I refill every few weeks and I have never once made a mess of it, which is more than I can say for the converted printer.

Paper goes into a 150-sheet auto-feed tray, so I can load a stack and set up the press while it works. The machine is 16 pounds and measures 13.7 by 14.8 by 7.4 inches. It lives on that second folding table by the window, next to the tumbler press, and it has not moved since May.

It will not print on cotton. Sublimation ink needs a polyester surface or a coated blank to bond to, so dark cotton shirts still go through the Cricut with Siser EasyWeed, same as always. The Epson did not replace my vinyl work. It took over the jobs vinyl cannot do.

A normal Saturday now looks like this. I mirror the design on the Windows laptop, print it onto A-SUB paper, trim it, tape it down with heat tape, and press at 385 degrees for 50 seconds on a white polyester shirt. Flat work goes on the 15 by 15 press Gary built the bench for. Tumblers go in the HTVRONT press at 365 degrees for 150 seconds. The printer is the one link in that chain I never have to stand over and babysit.

The honest complaints. It costs a good deal more than a converted EcoTank, and writing that check stung. It only does 8.5 by 11, so a few bigger ideas are simply off the table for me now. And it wants to be used. If I skip a week, I run a small test print before I trust it with a real order. Six months in, that habit is the only maintenance it has needed.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If you were across from me with a laptop open and a converted printer sitting in your cart, I would ask you what a clog actually costs you. Not the printer. The Saturday. The six tumblers you already promised someone. The remade batch and the apology text you have to send.

I would also tell you that you do not need this to start. I started with a household iron, a Cricut and a Christmas shirt that came out of the wash with the vinyl lifting off. What I needed by spring was one piece of equipment that did the same thing every time I used it. For me that turned out to be the Epson F170. If your budget says not yet, buy the paper and a tumbler press first and keep saving. Just go in knowing that a converted printer is a project. This one is a tool.

And if you already own a converted printer and it is working fine, do not let me talk you out of it. Mine was not fine. That is the only reason I spent the money.