OKs I'm in no high spirits.
I'll put my background up so , even in danger of seeming Off-Topic, you'll understand where I come from in my criticism.
After 13 years of working with laser transfer technology, I've been considering a faster way of printing, so I'm about to commit to dtg. In laser technology there are no worries in machine quality, you lease a machine for 5 years and the machine has a 5 year warranty, so even that there might be downtime there is no actual repair costs, end the lease price comes to be between 4000 and 6000$, paper ranging from 10 to 25 c. But color fidelity is unpredictable, and blues and vivid reds suffer in the transfer process. TO the point, I'v been researching DTG and I thought I would sample one of each, A Proprietary Kornit, The well praised Brother and an Epson conversion, in this case the HM1.
The Kornit: I have to say, that even costing 4 times as much as any other single platen DTG, it Blew my mind in color quality, and Feel. After the Demo I have to say that the stronger points in the kornit were the auto-treatment and evenness of the print, the colors where superb and on whites luminosity spectacular. From the Demo I would've probably bought this machine, but there where some points that threw me off. They had a 2 panel air dryer 9 feet long and the shirts kept coming wet after multiple passes ( 4 counted), and in all that moving back and forth the shirt some ink peeled off. They recommended a 15 feet long 3 panel dryer, but that is impractical for the space I have. That seriously is my only complaint on the demo.* BUT * and it's a big BUT, even though money matters if this was a trouble free machine I would buy it tomorrow, but some unhappy costumers are making a big point of unreliability , and distributors in countries where they have two, one or none machines I would think do not have lot of pull. Also I forgot to ask what is the warranty on the machine, at least I would think 15.000 t-shirts is about a right amount, before it should start having hiccups, 80.000€ is a lot of dough for a car that will only look nice. some pictures attached
Lights
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Darks
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Peeling
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Brother: This machine had me expecting too much I guess, I heard how resistant it is like a quiet man, no complaining just working, but I guess a 4 year old DTG had to have it's minuses and it did. I don't know if at the demo they where not prepared or they show the machines to non-critical buyers but I saw a very poor print quality and banding ( that as a long time ink-jet printer, I seriously loathe). And the colors, well , quiet, too quiet. pictures enclosed
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HM1: Although I've heard a variety of opinions I was expecting something better, and something worst. I thought the machine was going to be well built and it is but it has this hacked look all over it, but the print quality is nice, although in Darks I was disappointed with the result ( loots of in-thread white gaps), the light garments where very nice almost as nice as the kornit, for a fraction of the cost. The big BUT in this machine is it's speed, SLOWWWWWW, BUt maybe I could think about doing lights for starters and have double CMYK, that could help in speed and color, and still cheaper than the brother. some pictures so you can decide.
Lights
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Darks
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a Comparison of the HM1 vs the brother in light garments
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May pledge to this forum is as usual HELP ME!!! I have it pretty well thought trough, I could go with plenty different machines but this three are as good and in some cases better than any other.
So users of the kornit, is this machine that faulty? of course people who complain make more noise than the rest, but the kornit user family is not that big!, I mean how many kornits are out there , and how many 932? 30 50 100? so it leaves me wondering if this is just a very nice attempt at a production machine where the clients will always have to pay the bill for R&D? or 2 out of many have been having problems, and have reached a dead point out of desperation.
Brother Users, Is this the quality you can get? I know 600x600 is not a lot, but enough for grandma to enjoy her niece on a shirt, what a bout people who care about color fidelity, like advertisement, I could not sell them this t-shirts and expect them to come back any time soon. I don't know why the machine at the distributors workshop was banding ( I saw a low indicator on cyan, but he assured me that was not it, the t-shirt was faulty according to him, and I know banding when I see it). and although he could increase the output to 4 (he was working max at 2), wouldn't that increase your ink costs times 4? maybe I'm confused so any insight would be appreciated.
HM1 owners: are the gaps in the black shirt common? I could stand the thicker feel of the HM1 compared to the kornit, but the gaps are not acceptable. Maybe the demoing person didn't care but my clients certainly would, I DO. And is it possible to increase the speed of light garment printing if you replace the white ink with a double set of color inks?.
Thank's for your time.
I'll put my background up so , even in danger of seeming Off-Topic, you'll understand where I come from in my criticism.
After 13 years of working with laser transfer technology, I've been considering a faster way of printing, so I'm about to commit to dtg. In laser technology there are no worries in machine quality, you lease a machine for 5 years and the machine has a 5 year warranty, so even that there might be downtime there is no actual repair costs, end the lease price comes to be between 4000 and 6000$, paper ranging from 10 to 25 c. But color fidelity is unpredictable, and blues and vivid reds suffer in the transfer process. TO the point, I'v been researching DTG and I thought I would sample one of each, A Proprietary Kornit, The well praised Brother and an Epson conversion, in this case the HM1.
The Kornit: I have to say, that even costing 4 times as much as any other single platen DTG, it Blew my mind in color quality, and Feel. After the Demo I have to say that the stronger points in the kornit were the auto-treatment and evenness of the print, the colors where superb and on whites luminosity spectacular. From the Demo I would've probably bought this machine, but there where some points that threw me off. They had a 2 panel air dryer 9 feet long and the shirts kept coming wet after multiple passes ( 4 counted), and in all that moving back and forth the shirt some ink peeled off. They recommended a 15 feet long 3 panel dryer, but that is impractical for the space I have. That seriously is my only complaint on the demo.* BUT * and it's a big BUT, even though money matters if this was a trouble free machine I would buy it tomorrow, but some unhappy costumers are making a big point of unreliability , and distributors in countries where they have two, one or none machines I would think do not have lot of pull. Also I forgot to ask what is the warranty on the machine, at least I would think 15.000 t-shirts is about a right amount, before it should start having hiccups, 80.000€ is a lot of dough for a car that will only look nice. some pictures attached
Lights
Darks
Peeling
Brother: This machine had me expecting too much I guess, I heard how resistant it is like a quiet man, no complaining just working, but I guess a 4 year old DTG had to have it's minuses and it did. I don't know if at the demo they where not prepared or they show the machines to non-critical buyers but I saw a very poor print quality and banding ( that as a long time ink-jet printer, I seriously loathe). And the colors, well , quiet, too quiet. pictures enclosed
HM1: Although I've heard a variety of opinions I was expecting something better, and something worst. I thought the machine was going to be well built and it is but it has this hacked look all over it, but the print quality is nice, although in Darks I was disappointed with the result ( loots of in-thread white gaps), the light garments where very nice almost as nice as the kornit, for a fraction of the cost. The big BUT in this machine is it's speed, SLOWWWWWW, BUt maybe I could think about doing lights for starters and have double CMYK, that could help in speed and color, and still cheaper than the brother. some pictures so you can decide.
Lights
Darks
a Comparison of the HM1 vs the brother in light garments
May pledge to this forum is as usual HELP ME!!! I have it pretty well thought trough, I could go with plenty different machines but this three are as good and in some cases better than any other.
So users of the kornit, is this machine that faulty? of course people who complain make more noise than the rest, but the kornit user family is not that big!, I mean how many kornits are out there , and how many 932? 30 50 100? so it leaves me wondering if this is just a very nice attempt at a production machine where the clients will always have to pay the bill for R&D? or 2 out of many have been having problems, and have reached a dead point out of desperation.
Brother Users, Is this the quality you can get? I know 600x600 is not a lot, but enough for grandma to enjoy her niece on a shirt, what a bout people who care about color fidelity, like advertisement, I could not sell them this t-shirts and expect them to come back any time soon. I don't know why the machine at the distributors workshop was banding ( I saw a low indicator on cyan, but he assured me that was not it, the t-shirt was faulty according to him, and I know banding when I see it). and although he could increase the output to 4 (he was working max at 2), wouldn't that increase your ink costs times 4? maybe I'm confused so any insight would be appreciated.
HM1 owners: are the gaps in the black shirt common? I could stand the thicker feel of the HM1 compared to the kornit, but the gaps are not acceptable. Maybe the demoing person didn't care but my clients certainly would, I DO. And is it possible to increase the speed of light garment printing if you replace the white ink with a double set of color inks?.
Thank's for your time.
