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.
We're looking into a computer to screen (CTS) printer and we're having a hard time deciding which unit to purchase. We've been looking at the Kiwo I-Jet and the Richmond Direct Jet. Does anyone have any advise about either of these printers for me?
WOW you posted this a long time ago. We have an I-jet for our screen printing process. I love it as I am in Prepress department / graphic design end of the buisness. It's a work horse! We are really happy with it. Saves time & money vs. Film and chemistry cost. Digital files makes it so easy compared to the step and repeat method we used before with film Neg.s and poss. No one else?
OH I should add- we do 4 cp and spot colors for Edible ImageŽ products.
65 line, screen mesh is 255 that we use for 4 cp. They look pretty darn good! For spots we use 137 mesh and our base which would be your White plate we use a 40 mesh.
here is our website take a look at our pretty stuff! Mind you it is edible.
Thanks for your input Ricky. Better late than never. This really helps. We still haven't purchased one yet but we're very close. How many screens are you going through each day?
Do you print with edible inks? Those cakes look delicious! Nice work!!!
you're welcome! Yes they are edible inks (food color) It varies, as we do things a bit differently than a typical screen shop. Food safety and all. But I did visit a T-shirt shop about two years ago. They had two I-jets set up and they were getting 500 screens a day counting both shifts! which doubled the production. Their screen mesh was 305 and line screen 55 and 65. This machine is definitely for the garment printing industry. Not to mention the green part the 'WAX' that is applied is not toxic. Safe for our drain water. (Washington State)
They start at around $60,000. I heard M&R was making one for less. Haven't heard from anyone that has one though. Look at what you're spending on film every week and you might find a CTS unit will save you money. We're doing 100-150 screens a day and it's definitely going to save us money. We're going to the SGIA show next week and home to have one purchased before we leave. Hope this helps.
They start at around $60,000. I heard M&R was making one for less. Haven't heard from anyone that has one though. Look at what you're spending on film every week and you might find a CTS unit will save you money. We're doing 100-150 screens a day and it's definitely going to save us money. We're going to the SGIA show next week and home to have one purchased before we leave. Hope this helps.
I know a couple of years ago the PlanetB Sprite was selling in the low 40's range. I heard that Oyo Instruments was also going to come out with one in the 20's, but not sure if that ever happened and if the overall screen size was going to be smaller than what the other units provided. It should be interesting at SGIA as I have been told that the patent on this type product is going to expire in 1 year. So there might be more of them coming out when that happens.
One of the hidden cost savings on using a CTS/DTS system is that you can expose your screens for a shorter period of time and you don't need the glass in your exposure units. Companies like M&R are making exposure units without the glass now for that specific purpose from what I am told.
Mark
P.S. I am not a screen printer, but a close industry friend was a distributor for the PlanetB machines and I have seen them in action at several of his customers' shop. They seem to be pretty happy, but you do need to see if you can ROI out the equipment.
I got to see a few of them in action a few weeks ago and the Kiwo machine is the best, but the most expensive. It's got a large footprint, smaller than the m&r though, and is just an engineering marvel. The newest Kiwo I-jet cannot be beat but there are other options that are significantly less in price, but also less on performance. The Oyo Goblin was nice, a small machine at a pretty good price, I think around 20K. The m&r was also a nice machine that I believe was in between the Oyo and Kiwo in price. If I were buying one today, I might get my feet wet with the Oyo because we're only going through 100 screens a week. If we were at 30-50/day, I would do everything I could to get the Kiwo.
I am from a very busy T-Shirt printing company. We are also getting ready to take the first steps toward moving away from film. I am going to be going to Detroit to take a closer look at the CTS unit that Douthitt offers. So far I have been impressed with the quality I have seen from it. Compared to the Kiwo, it really comes down to price and design. From a quality standpoint both the Kiwo and the Douthitt unit will perform the same. I will update when I return from checking this unit out. Oh yeah, the company I work for is big in the Direct to Garment and Transfer industry. We use several different meshes and our lpi ranges from 35 to 85, Dither as well.
**Update**
I went to Detroit and got some hands on time with their CTS unit. I was impressed. The design of this unit is amazing! I currently have screens on the way to Kiwo to be imaged as well. The CTS unit from Douthitt is less expensive than the Kiwo unit and I believe will perform just as well. Both of these unit's use the same print head, if you look at the company websites you will notice that the Kiwo machine is able to image up to 700 dpi and the Douthitt unit will image from 600 to 1000 dpi. In order for the unit offered from Douthitt to image at 1000 dpi you will have to get a different head (no additional cost). The main draw back is that it will take this head twice as long to image than the 600 dpi head. Res is very important to us since so much of our business is 4 color process transfers that we currently image at 1200 dpi at 85 lpi. The folks at Douthitt seem to feel that with the 600 dpi head and ripping our files at 75 lpi will be comparable to our current quality...further testing will see whether or not this is true. I should mention that one draw back of any wax unit is the cost of the head and the down time required to change the head. Changing the head itself only takes about 30 mins but when you factor in the amount of time it takes the unit to cool down before you can begin your lookin at around an 90 mins. I will update again when I have more information that may be useful to anyone looking at investing in any of these unit's. Also, I am going to be looking into Richmond's unit more as well.
**Update**
Both of these unit's use the same print head
What head would that be? I figure it is some sort of xerox phaser type solid wax head as you say warm up and cool down times. But what particular head?
Last edited by essen48183; November 28th, 2010 at 09:15 AM.
CTS I-Jet vs Direct Jet 
