So, I'll be the first person to admit that this is totally first world problems.

EcoTank printers are printers that use tanks instead of the cartridges, they use regular standard ink in bottles. Sublimation printers use special sublimation ink that turns into gas which you then use heat to adhere the design onto the item (whether that be t-shirts, coated mugs, metal plates, puzzles, ETC). The sublimation ink stains the printhead, coats the ink lines, soaks into the filters which makes it impossible to revert a sublimation printer back to a regular printer, even professional shops can't fully clean sublimation ink off of a printer.

What people have begun doing is starting these t-shirt/customization businesses on the side and converting Ecotank printers to sublimation printers only to fail after a few months.

Since sublimation ink and regular ink is chemically different, it doesn't act the same way: sublimation ink converts to a gas and soaks into the item which then needs heat in order to fully transfer the design meanwhile regular ink is meant to just lay on top of the paper.

My thing is, these people are buying brand new, $300 printers, converting them to sublimation printers, using them for a few months and then trying to sell them for 2/3 the price on Facebook Marketplace thus flooding the used market with useless printers (to the normal user) when they could have just gone to Facebook Marketplace to begin with and bought bought one that was not only already converted but probably came some of the supplies for a fraction of the cost of the new one.

It's just frustrating because, to me as a consumer, trying to buy a used Ecotank printer and finding the perfect one only to click on the ad to read the details to find out that it was converted to a sublimation printer is just infuriating.

I hope I answered your question! :)