I'm giving consideration to purchasing a DTG injet printer and was keen to check out the quality of the Kornit as a benchmark. I contacted their Australian distributor and sent off a test image ... they had it for a week and this is the best they could do: Kornit.jpg
For comparison I had a test product done on a Kiosk: Kiosk.jpg
The Kiosk output looks much better than the Kornit (but still didn't impress me) - this doesn't make much sense to me given the price discrepency ... so I'm wanting to get some third party opinions on the quality of Kornit's output (perhaps the Australian distributor just didn't know how to drive the Kornit).
From what I understand the Kornit has the ability to print on black / dark garments without pre-treatment correct?
Some other factors you might want to consider are:
How long does it take to print a shirt.
What are the steps needed to print with the Kornit. The kiosk needs seperate software (Print Pro) if you are printing on dark, and requires you to have created a white highlight channel in photoshop.
How many passes does it need to take to get good quality. For example, I posted a sample I printed with a Kiosk on black, which required 2 passes of a white underbase (720 dpi) and 2 passes of color (1440 dpi).
The Kiosk output looks much better than the Kornit (but still didn't impress me) - this doesn't make much sense to me given the price discrepency
The kiosk version looks like they ran a couple of passes, and it also has a white background, which makes it seem like they went "heavy" on the white ink to try to make it "pop" more (makes the end design look weird in the square) whereas the kornit has the garment color (black) in between the design which is more natural. It would be better if both samples were exactly the same image.
I have shirts printed by cafepress (I think they use one of the Kornit models...they run about $200K) that look a better than your sample, but still have "muted" colors.
The black shirts I saw at the printwear show in Long Beach that were printed by the kiosk and t-jet were both "muted" (not vibrant colors), but you could tell the difference between multi pass runs and single pass runs.
Thanks Adam - the pre-treatment happens immediately prior to the printing (as part of the one process). As far as I know the Kornit dual pallet printer is US$190-220k. They are bringing out a new single pallet printer and from the specs of this printer I think it's about 1/2 the price of the dual pallet printer.
The Kornit was fast - but it wasn't that much faster than the Kiosk (I was expecting more speed difference).
When looking at the Kornit the issue I didn't really get a sense of is the quality and ease of use of their RIP.
I didn't really get to 'good qualty' on either printer ... so hard to answer this question.
Hi Rodney - the Kiosk print was done in two passes - one for white and one for colour. I agree with you about the white background ... I've asked the Kiosk folks to send me a new sample (which I'm going to inspect at SGIA).
I've just had a look at a sample from CP and Zazzle - CP did look a bit more muted than Zazzle - but I wonder if they were just using the Kornit in economy mode.
Those posts are actually quite old. RedBubble now produces all their garments on the Kornit (they are printing on American Apparel shirts with all the latest settings), and they look great.
Yep - it's over a year since we first looked at the Kornit. One of the key things we learnt in our research it that the Kornit is a capable machine - but it needs to be driven well. If you've got a bad operator the results will be sub-standard. The first samples we received (attached to the first post in this thread) certainly didn't do justice to the Kornit.
Well, you have to have a good eye and know when the machine needs another purge & wipe. You have to be able to look at the prints both when they are still wet and when they are coming out of the dryer and know if the machine is streaking (both the colors and the white ink). If you go to long without a purge & wipe your shirts will look crappy. You have to get a feel for when its time to do a purge & wipe. Also, a good operator has to be able to pick the correct print settings. Obviously, you cant print black shirts on a white shirt setting and visa versa. And you should have an eye for making sure the prints are centered on a shirt. You don't want to print 25-50 shirts and have them all be crooked. Lastly, the operator has to feel responsible for the product he is making. Some operators may have a low quality control threshold, while others have a high quality control threshold and will do what it takes to make the prints look their best. And it always helps if you are computer literate and tech savvy.
Yep - it's over a year since we first looked at the Kornit. One of the key things we learnt in our research it that the Kornit is a capable machine - but it needs to be driven well. If you've got a bad operator the results will be sub-standard. The first samples we received (attached to the first post in this thread) certainly didn't do justice to the Kornit.
Well, you have to have a good eye and know when the machine needs another purge & wipe.... If you go to long without a purge & wipe your shirts will look crappy. You have to get a feel for when its time to do a purge & wipe.
You might want to go over all of your params with a Kornit tech. We used to have to do alot of P&W routines to get the banding to quit, but after months of torture we tweaked some settings, and now we don't do more than about 1 P&W every 20 minutes or so. As it turns out, the P&W is what alot of people rely on because they have improper micropurge settings (ours was at 0 for some stupid reason). It took the guys directly in Israel to finally get it straightened out.
There is also a stepper setting that can eliminate banding for the most part, which also reduces the need for P&W routines (and saves ink and time).
I think the biggest thing that the operator can do to affect the final results is to tweak the RIP settings (ink limit curves are the most important, followed by correct source profiles) and use proper art processing techniques. For instance, we use a set of custom PS Actions to process 95% of all artwork, which were designed specifically for the way our RIP settings are programmed in.
I agree on the P&W. That is accurate for us as well. Anything helps. Is this stepper setting the "double color" setting? We use PS Action Scripts also, but just to create the custom underbase & highlight files. What else do you use your Actions for? Do you use them to process your art before ripping, such as fixing the blacks & whites? Justin, who is your tech in CA? Our tech is not very helpful which is why I am here doing troubleshooting on my own!
Honestly? Our tech is a guy who works for me, named Henry. He's brilliant. He's the one who made all my other employees block the pretreatment spray from hitting the printhead by holding a cardboard flyer between the pretreatment head and the printhead block, thereby eliminating the annoying streaking that is caused by buildup on the block and nozzle blockage caused by microdroplets of pretreatment making their way to the printheads. (The company has since developed an air knife that creates a sheet of air that blocks the pretreatment from reaching the block - we will be installing ours tomorrow) He is also the person who figured out that a soft buffer material on the platen (we adhere a square of t-shirt material to the platen) absorbs excess pretreatment on thinner dark garments, eliminating much of the pooling that can occur.
Our actual certified tech is a gentleman named Don over at SPR. He is a very nice guy, and he knows his stuff. The problem is, there are so many nuances to this machine, that we can't have a tech that we only see once a month or so. Basically, he comes by when we have the really big problems, and Henry takes care of everything else (INCLUDING disassembling and hotwiring the machine to run better. lol).
As for the stepper function - this is the param that tell the Kornit how far it should move the printhead per pass, on the left/right axis. By fiddling with this number, you can make the printheads cover up certain amounts of banding by going over those areas again. This is NOT the double color setting, which we would never ever use.
As for the PS Actions.... Those are proprietary, and take into consideration everything we have learned about the machine and how it processes artwork up until this point. Some of the actions adjust the actual colors and such, while the rest create the underbase, adjust the curves, and create the highlight channel. Then the last action sets the channels and flattens the image, which we then RIP. However, with the new Kornit software and new white ink, I will probably have to start over from scratch because it completely changes everything.
Kornit Underwhelming 
