Recent Posts

Pages: 1 ... 7 8 [9] 10
81
Not to be a debbie downer but I don't see this ever actually working well, and I also think it's kind of important to have human brains in the process.
My guess would be if they aren't using machine vision in the offset world already (which would be 1000 times easier to implement) than we won't ever see it in ours.
Like a lot of things.
82
General Discussion and ??? / Re: Are we at the Mercy of Greed?
« Last post by ebscreen on October 16, 2025, 12:00:41 PM »
Both. It's understandable that they will want to sell more product, and don't want to support every old piece of hardware under the sun at each version.

What is not understandable though is that each new version is laughably worse than the previous, and now includes increasingly more paid advertising
in the OS itself. We bought touchscreen AIO's for the presses that came with 11 installed and after five minutes of not being able to access driver settings
I promptly ripped that pile of garbage out and installed 10 which in itself is a compromise. Windows peaked at 2000.

Use Linux wherever possible.
83
General Discussion and ??? / Are we at the Mercy of Greed?
« Last post by 3Deep on October 16, 2025, 11:33:30 AM »
 So my win10 is no longer supported we already upgraded the office computers to win11 last year but I did not upgrade my art computer, fear that the upgrade would cause some of my favorite programs not to work so I enrolled in the carryover program for win10 upgrades which last until next year.  I know some upgrades are needed and thing's tend to move pretty fast but dang they just keep reaching in our pockets, my son told me last night that his cell phone is going to be EOL next year, so that tells me they are forcing us to upgrade whether we want to or not....so what do you think is it greed or necessity.
84
Equipment / Re: Dual Heat Press
« Last post by whitewater on October 16, 2025, 09:44:46 AM »
I bought a MEM TQ40x50 directly from MEM for $940.00
I am not sure how your tarriffs and shipping works but it's a great press.
If you do order a press get extra platens, sleeve, square for small bags, etc.

We bought 2 of these, work great...

way more than what you paid Maxie..LOL
85
Computers and Software - General / Re: Mac upgrades
« Last post by bimmridder on October 16, 2025, 09:41:14 AM »
Much appreciated. I guess what it comes down to is Apple will no longer support the machines we now have. Getting an artist to send me current specs.
86
Wasn't M&R testing an on press system that would catch mistakes or variations on press? Couldn't this be a variation of that?
87
Computers and Software - General / Re: Mac upgrades
« Last post by zanegun08 on October 16, 2025, 12:06:47 AM »
What is your staff currently using?  The processors have come really far in the last years with Apple chips, so anything will be a huge upgrade.

If you already have good monitors, then I would get M4 Mac Minis as they will be powerful enough for 99.9% of what we do in screen printing, especially if you are still mostly vector graphics.  If you have someone who handles sim process separations you could get them Mac Studio or Mac Pro but they are overkill for what our industry does in my opinion.

If you want your staff to be mobile, then a Macbook Pro or Macbook Air with recent chips are all powerful.  I personally work on a Macbook Air M2 with 16gb ram and it's powerful enough for like 99.9% of things and that .01% I can live with just moving slower on those graphics.

If you don't have monitors already, then I personally like the iMacs as they are a good value and a good screen.  May not be super color accurate but again I think for my guess on your client base it may not be that important.

I'm cheap, and Mac's lifespan is much longer than a PC espeically with the new chips.  I feel no need to upgrade my 2022 Macbook Air M2 even when using new features in Photoshop that may go a little faster.  For what we do (copy / paste onto a mockup / assign spot colors for separations) I don't think it's necessary to have the most powerful computer / processor.

I think at the time I went with the lower spec processor and more RAM like Admiral said, but again I'm cheap and at the time Macbook Pro was behind on updates so I got the Air as faster processor and cheaper.  Can look here - https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#mac as they have notes about releases and when you should or should not buy.

I think in most instances you may be better to run a RIP on a PC that runs on the network on a dedicated PC for that, as I think RIPs will have more support for PC than Mac and if the RIP is the thing forcing the upgrade it could make sense to change that over now instead of updating 6 macs.  It's not a big purchase but Apple does have a business division that you can get some discounts off retail from that you may want to look into. 

Post what computers they are currnetly using, if you don't know how just hit the apple icon in the top left and the first menu is "About this mac" and it will tell you the year, computer, processor, ram, operating system.

Adobe's trying to move a lot of the AI and new gimmick features to cloud processing anyhow, so long term having a faster processor may not even matter as much in a couple years.  But for most of the illustrator, spot color mockups, separations, the lowest power mac mini will be fine for 95% of stuff.

Don't think you need to break the bank.
88
Computers and Software - General / Re: Mac upgrades
« Last post by bimmridder on October 15, 2025, 04:49:12 PM »
Thanks
89
Computers and Software - General / Re: Mac upgrades
« Last post by Admiral on October 15, 2025, 03:41:18 PM »
I prob can't help a whole lot because we use Macbooks for development and Windows 11 computers for artists, but I would say make sure to get 32gigs of ram or more and the video card does not need to be fancy but the amount of ram on it is the only thing that comes into play for us so I get the ~$200 card that makes sense there with around 6GB of ram.

I upgraded all artist computers this year, they were 10 years old and mostly going strong with a minor upgrade or two on them.  New ones only cost $900 each with us building them (Ryzen 7 9700X, 32G DDR5, Samsung 990 Pro 2TB SSD). 
90
Great idea. Imo by the time you hit 2 years development and making it sellable the deocrating industry will be blazing forward leaving tradtional screening behind. look back at all the changes in the last 2 years, probaly a good forcast of the next 2 years. Curious, could the camera filter out random dots in a heather shirt without thinking it is a pinhole?

Camera settings should allow the reflection of ink vs shirt fibers to look very different.  I believe it would be easy actually.

We were thinking of doing something like this a few years ago but it's a very big set up and upkeep and it was going to be $50K per press at the time.  I'm definitely interested but couldn't do the upfront cost and wait for it to develop into what it needs to be, that's just too expensive still.  We don't have the time to R&D stuff right now but could be interested next year, after we see how this year goes.
Pages: 1 ... 7 8 [9] 10