Discuss the different types of equipment needed for screen printing. Topics include manual screen printing presses, automatic presses, dryers, folding machines, starter kits and high end machines.
I've been using a Xante A3 laser printer to make film positives for many years now, with great results.
Now I'd like to use an A2+ Epson waterproof inkjet system. I'm in the UK, so Epson don't sell the printers for the US market here.
Can anyone recommend a suitable A2+ Epson printer, the best ink for making dense positives, a suitable RIP and film (by the roll or sheet)?
Ta
Steve
Last edited by Solmu; April 12th, 2009 at 02:52 PM.
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Where's the best place to get A2 sheet film or on the roll?
Thanks
The 4450 is industry standard in Europe at the moment, it's dense, accurate and waterproof.
RIPs make life a lot easier, though you can get away with simple stuff with something like Ghostscript.
Whereabouts in the UK are you?
PM me for details.
Wasatch isn't available for Mac OSX, not problem, I don't need Wasatch then.
"Ghostscript is a postscript interpreter, you need Ghostview to open it and print. That's all you can do." So why should I install it on my Mac OSX, if it does nothing.
I'm happy to spend £1300 on an Epson 5400 A2 inkjet printer, but if it isn't capable of colour separating, vector format documents like Adobe Illustrator, and pixel based docs like Photoshop, that I can then expose onto a screen, what's the point.
OK.
If you have a postscript printer, and that can mean a virtual print-to-file printer like the Adobe Postscript printer in Illustrator, then you can produce a postscript file. That will hold halftone details and trapping.
To print that to film you need a postscript interpreter, Wasatch or Ghostscript are two examples.
open the postscript file in a RIP programme, Ghostview will do that or Wasatch, you can preview the file.
Ghostview will then offer a print via the Mac driver, the black will be composed of CMYK, that's all it does, Wasatch on the other hand allows you to rotate the image, crop bits out of it, scale it and nest it up on the film before printing.
Wasatch costs and GS doesn't, I think that Wasatch is really good compared to the competition and I sell it, other people are used to their RIP and get along fine.
It's a matter of what you need and what you can do with the tools in future.
Thanks Dave,
I'm making enquires for an iProof RIP for the Mac, but I'd be interested in getting some consumables from you, if I go for the inkjet system.
A2+ Waterproof Inkjet Positive Printer 
