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Heat Seal - Heat Press - Whatever you want to call it! => General Heat Seal => Topic started by: ZooCity on May 09, 2017, 09:22:22 PM
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We're moving our dye sub printing in house and I'm wondering what's good out there.
I will be purchasing a wide format unit, not for the width of output but the savings on consumables.
I see Epson, Ricoh, Mutoh and various rebrands of these print heads/engines and maybe I'm missing some?
Leaning toward SureColor F6200 and calling it a day but my gut tells me the RIP and workflow are equally important to the printer functioning and that's hard to vet out until you are in it.
Would love to hear what others are using successfully, and why, in their shops.
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We have the Espon F6000 which is essentially the F6200 minus the bulk waste container and firmware to run the high density black ink.
We opted to marry it up with the Serendipity Mega RIP as the RIP is what makes the printer run and support for the Mega RIP is good. I had doubts about support from Epson on RIP issues because they don't actually use it or make the RIP.
Experience has proven the RIP choice was correct, many SKYPE sessions and the ability to save the entire rip setup and email it to Jason at Serendipity has proven to be a life saver.
The machine has been faultless, it just works. I'm not sure there is anything more I can say there.
Sublimation paper OTOH has been a learning curve.
We invested in an Xrite i one so we can make our own ICC profiles, and again this has proven to be a life saver.
Any questions not answered fire away.
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One for Epson, thanks. Will look at that rip too.
I have a color munki I need to fire up for this project. I understand the profiles are paramount.
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Zoo remember you also have a big hot press or a roll feed hotpress to handle the paper and product you need.
Shane
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Zoo remember you also have a big hot press or a roll feed hotpress to handle the paper and product you need.
Shane
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G890A using Tapatalk
We're aren't planning to image larger than a 16x20 heat press can handle. Buying wide format because I did the math and the consumables are so much lower that it makes far more sense to go with the larger format even if you only need 17"w output. For instance, you'll spend as much in ink carts for a smaller sawgrass virtuoso in year 1 than the whole wide format package with starter ink would have cost.
I also like that the larger printers are far more robust than desktop format, less hassle overall.
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Maybe more robust not as quick I have ricoh with bypass and quick with gel inks. if you cant find gel inks in bigger betterfpr quickness. i dont know if they make one. why????? I run the larger carts that helps. I ran a 4880 with 8 cart good color compared to 4 but head went out. 4 color hard blue and purples on inkjet. Get a hard design cask for sample to test. My opinion.
Shane
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What about Roland? I see their Texart RT-640 has 8 colors which would cost more but worth it for the increased gamut and flo color ability?
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Send them a sample with lots of colors. Have them print and you do the hot press to see colors. I would try this with all vendors and get how fast and amount of ink used per printed sample. Then compare apples and apples. My opinion. Conde/dyetrans might do samples on the mutoh of choice and epson of choice My Rep is Forrest - 1-800-826-6332. Check with Nazdar also.
Shane
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Great idea, Thx!
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I just bought a Epson T3270, it has 5 cartridges so I have set up 4 CYMK sublimation and one Black for films.
So for I'm happy with the results, I haven't really tested for color accuracy.
One problem is that the Sub inks don't dry that fast so we have to catch the sheets as they come out the printer. Maybe printing without cutting will work better.
One thing I like is the price compared to the big Sublimation printers, and I also have a back up for my 4880 film printer.
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Maxie are you printing on sublimation paper? or something else?
Shane
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I use rolls of Sublimation paper.
I have someone in Florida who supplies me with bulk Sublimation inks and he sent me the color settings.
If you pm me I'll give you his email.
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what brand ink? mine isnt dry but i usally dont have problems with smearing. i am using ricoh 7700 with gel inks from conde.
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I'm not sure what brand it is, I get it from
edward.m58@att.net
Who is based in Florida.
A big bottle costs $70.
I also get Black UV blacking dye from him for the same price.
I've been using it for years.
He sent me a profile for the sub inks.
The T3270 prints quite fast and if it cuts the pieces of paper fall onto each other and smudge.
I need to try either putting a small fan or not cut the roll until the ink dries.
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To follow up:
Epson F6200 in house. Running well except it started jamming paper every 2nd print last week using the Epson DS Adhesive paper.
It's all stock, oem inks right now which is, aside from the above, running fine and making some tight prints.
Except, the Wasatch SoftRIP has some major workflow limitations. According to Wasatch we cannot:
- Print multiple copies out of AI to the RIP.
- Automatically adjust paper length to artboard size.
We'll look into the Serendipity rip suggested but I hate to give up the Wasatch color profiles we have been building ours off of. Can't believe that the Wasatch RIP can't do the above. They're suggesting each artist go to the rip station and adjust the paper size per job.... anyone using Wasatch have a better workaround? I can only setup up to 4 print units so utilizing print units for common paper/artboard sizes is kinda out.
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Maybe a stupid question but why do you need a rip for dye sub printing?
We print with a Epson T3270 directly from Corel to the printer, the ink supplier gave me a color profile.
I had a problem with the ink not being dry when it was cut and the paper with not fully dry ink falling on paper caused problems, I now don't cut and this gives the paper time to dry.
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It's horses for courses I reckon. Sure you can print directly from art creation software and it's easy quick and simple, but what you gain in ease and simplicity you loose in control of the print.
We have multiple profiles in the RIP for fabric and image types. For example we spent hours tweaking one to get really good black and white photo reproduction so we could service the professional photographer with printed cushions and other textile products that they sell to their clients.
Without a RIP we could never have the control to produce the prints.
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You are very right.
RIP and work-flow are equally important to the printer functioning. The RIP software you use is just as important as having a good printer? The printer is only doing what it is told by the software itself. Things like print quality, color match, color vibrancy and white base generation are all controlled by the RIP. There are some major factors to look at when you are shopping for a printer or just the printer software. Even when some companies use the same RIP software, there can be major differences in how the software is programmed to work. Here are five top reasons why a good RIP is important http://www.omniprintonline.com/blog/top-5-reasons-good-rip-important/ (http://www.omniprintonline.com/blog/top-5-reasons-good-rip-important/)