There is nothing that you need to do when your Freejet printer’s ‘Ink’ light comes on.

The ink light will come on from time to time because part of the print head’s supporting electronics monitor ink usage and have noted that nearly a cartridge worth of ink has been used for one or more of the 8 ink lines.

Since FreeJet printers use a bulk ink system rather than ink cartridges (to reduce your ink cost and maintenance time) you can safely ignore the ‘Ink’ light. Your printer includes an Ink Reset feature that will automatically notify the ink monitoring system that a new ink cartridge has been installed, and the ink light will then turn off. Note that the ink light will flash just before the reset is completed, but nothing needs to be done by the operator as this is an automated function.

You also have an option to perform a manual ink light reset process with the following steps:

1. Press ‘Function’ + ‘Stand-by’
2. Pause for 4-5 seconds
3. Press ‘Function’ + ‘Stand-by’ a second time

When these two lights are flashing back and forth, with one on while the other is off, we need to reset the waste ink pad counter before we can continue printing.

To run a full ‘double pass’ print with no manual interaction (a white underbase followed by the color & highlight layer) it’s necessary that the Layer setting be set to ‘B’.

If your Freejet is set to ‘A’ and you’re in the middle of running a 2-layer print, just tap the ‘Stand-by’ button after the underbase has finished printing — once the gantry has settled back to its rear home position. The gantry will then move to the front ‘Print ready’ position and the color layer will print.

See the below video for details on how to change the Layer setting to ‘B’ so you won’t need to tap Stand-by between layers.

Color vibrancy is mainly determined by two factors: pretreatment and color strength.

If a garment is not properly pretreated then too much ink may be absorbed into the fabric. When working with unfamiliar garments, it’s often necessary to experiment to find the proper pretreatment amounts.

Increasing color strength by a few percentage points can also add more vibrancy to colors.

However, adding too much ink by boosting the color strength may cause the ink to bleed so it’s best to optimize pretreatment before boosting color strength.

The only difference between these two Environments is that the Dark Environment will use ink to print all colors in your design, including black, while the Black Environment will not use any black ink.

The ‘Dark’ and ‘Black’ Environment types in DirectRip will lay down exactly the same white underbase while printing the first layer, with no underbase printed where the design contains pure black elements.

So we can save black ink by using the Black Environment when printing onto black shirts. The black color of the shirt will provide the black elements for the design.

Of course, if the Black Environment is used when printing on any other color of shirt (not a black shirt), then any black content in the design will appear as the color of the shirt. So we only want to use the Black Environment for printing on black shirts.

The Dark Environment should be used for all shirt colors except black or white.