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Anyone doing large format dye sub (44" +) on apparel fabric that I can speak to regarding paper/ink?
Appreciate the help~
Appreciate the help~
Large Format Dye Sub
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104 Posts
mostly fabric - some shirts
Unfortunately cost is an issue
Unfortunately cost is an issue
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Hi. I was given two large format printers, so the first thing I can tell you is that the ink is less than half the cost of what it would be in a smaller printer.
The guy that gave them to me used them to sublimate onto large polyester flags, for corporate use. He used to buy sublimation paper on 25 metre rolls from somewhere in Holland, but I'm sure than many others must sell them too.
I am sure that you are aware, that you can only sublimate onto products that have a high polyester content.
The guy that gave them to me used them to sublimate onto large polyester flags, for corporate use. He used to buy sublimation paper on 25 metre rolls from somewhere in Holland, but I'm sure than many others must sell them too.
I am sure that you are aware, that you can only sublimate onto products that have a high polyester content.
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We dye sub now - just moving into custom apparel for sporting industry and needing to print on rolled fabric.
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I am talking to Sawgrass about a large format sublimation system. Specifically using an Epson 9880 wide format printer - 44".
I am also looking at various large format heat presses to deal with the output of this printer. Both flat and roller.
I should have some test samples using my own image files to evaluate next week.
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Have you found a good entery level roller press? The key colors in our little niche we target that some competitiors have troubles with are reds and blacks. It seems that finding the right combination of ink and paper is critical.
For fabric a roll press is the way to go. For ready made you need a flat bed. If you are doing lots of fabric get a roll press you are not limited to length. We use TextprintXP with our 9800 and a dual CMYK system. With the 9880 you can't use the dual CMYK feature and you will spend more on ink. To see samples of our work on TexprintXP and the dual CMYK ink setup check our website. When we print an image with a lot of black we press it about 10% longer.
If you will be doing full custom production and therefore cutting and sowing your garments, you might want to consider pre-cutting your fabric panels in stacks using a vertical cutter (jigsaw), this will allow you to reduce the labor cost and time involved with cutting the fabric. Once you have your panels cut you can use either a flat bed press (cheaper than the rotary models) or a rotary with a loading table (such as the Monti Antonio).
An epson 9800 will do the job if you are planning to use it for samples or small productions (10-20) units a day, otherwise you will need to look at some production units such as Mimaki or Mutoh. On those you can print about 60-70 complete cycling jerseys in 7 hours.
A Geo Knight flat bed press would be the most affordable production quality unit I would recomend. Since color is critical to you a good heat press with even temperature and pressure distribution is A MUST!
Also look at a good quality high release paper such as Beaver Texptint XP or JetTran HR. As for the ink on wide format printers you have a choice and from my experience US Sublimation and Manoukian are the best for quality and color.
Finally, fabric is very forgiving and when printing garments especially you don't need very high resolutions so you might want to use lower dpi settings on your printer(540dpi or 720dpi) in order to gain speed over the high resoltion settings that usually are very slow but dont give you any advantage when it comes to printing on most fabrics.
You mention that you are on a budget and in this case I would look at purchasing the best and largest heat pres I could buy and an epson 9800 (you need a rip to run it as a CMYKx2). Printer technology is evolving and new and cheaper printers come on the market every year, however the heat press you buy for keeps and if you buy well it will be an investment that stays with you for a long time!.
Hope this helps...
Milabix
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154 Posts
very timely post for me as I was just going to preferred vendors list to look for a 9880. We have a 60" roll press that I bought through a importer friend who deals with Asia daily. Currently we have a 9000 epson with ok results. Are you saying the 9800 is a better machine or just more cost effective than the 9880? My roll press will arrive Friday and am anxious to see the results. Approx. 6,000 plus all the other costs in importing. We make alot of flags but wanted to get into the cut and sew industry. thanks for the good info. Rick
9880, 9800 and 9000 are basically the same printer with 2 differences: the 9880 and 9800 use a single 8 channel (8colors) print head that can print up to 1440 dpi while the 9000 is a 7 color printer with the older 720 dpi heads.
The problem with the 9880 is that the chip system on it is hard to crack and good bulk ink systems are hard to find for it. On the 9800 the bulk ink solutions are more stable and proven while on the 9000 bulk ink solutions are not easy to find as the printer has been off the market for a while.
All those printers use light colors that are useless unless you print high resolution pictures on hard substrates, on the fabric there is no real advantage. The 9800 and 9880 can be set up as CMYKx2 but you need an additional software (a RIP that supports this set up on the printer) to do that.
To make a long story short, if your 9000 is set up properly will give you the same quality as the newer models although at slightly lower speeds.
Milabix
The problem with the 9880 is that the chip system on it is hard to crack and good bulk ink systems are hard to find for it. On the 9800 the bulk ink solutions are more stable and proven while on the 9000 bulk ink solutions are not easy to find as the printer has been off the market for a while.
All those printers use light colors that are useless unless you print high resolution pictures on hard substrates, on the fabric there is no real advantage. The 9800 and 9880 can be set up as CMYKx2 but you need an additional software (a RIP that supports this set up on the printer) to do that.
To make a long story short, if your 9000 is set up properly will give you the same quality as the newer models although at slightly lower speeds.
Milabix
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I get my supplies through conde and have have good tech support and quick service
A great starter printer. It prints very well, no need for special RIP software and easy to profile. The speed of the Epson printers is the only drawback... they are quite slow compared to other printers such as the 42" RIO units or the more advanced mimakis, rolands, and mutohs.
As for ink, before you start buying online call a couple of dealers ( I would try Westar Systems -westarsystems.com in Colorado or US Sublimation in Florida - ussublimation.com) and have them guide you through cleaning the printer, loading it with dye sub inks and send you color profiles. Both also sell paper, ussublimation also has an online store you can buy your supplies from once you are set up. Choosing the supplier you start with is important as once you start with one ink type switching to a different ink will not be easy as matching colors between ink brands takes a color specialist... so do some homework before you load your printer and start selling your products.
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What is a color profile?? And what do you mean by matching colors between ink brands. could you explain?? thank you so much
Well, each ink manufacturer buys raw colorants from different sources and as it is often true with any other products although basically the same will have slightly different characteristics. Basically the Red dyes from manufacturer A might be of better quality and strength compared to those of manufacturer B.
Those differences in the raw colorants determine differences in the density and hue of the colors offered by different manufacturers so that the magenta from ink brand A will not match the magenta from ink brand B: while both are magenta, they are not identical.
So, if you take two identical printers and load them with different ink brands you will not get identical prints. The differences in color quality and the specific qualities of each ink set are "balanced" out with color profiles, or ICC profiles. ICC stands for International Color Consortium and it is an international standard. An ICC profile is a little piece of software or "code" that tells the printer how to mix the inks in order to achieve a standard color (based on ICC guidelines) independently from the individual characteristics of the inks used. AN ICC profile however can only go as far as the specific caracterirstics of the ink can take it. Better inks usually will have a better color gamut and will be able to reproduce certain colors with more accuracy while in situations where the color gamut is restricted the ICC profile will have to "adjust" or "Clip" the color by reproducing it the best it can. This is a little like using two different size monitors or monitors with different definitions... on the HD monitor certan details, gradients and shadows will be clearly visible while on the lower definition monitor, while the overall color will be accurate, certain details will either be inaccurate or will be missing alltogether. You can also think of paint, if you take two different white paints and one is more diluted than the other, while both will give you a white surface the coverage from one paint will not be as good as the coverage of the other.
ICC profiles also take in consideration a variety of other factors and adjust for different media characteristics and for the specific idiosyncrasies of the printer and other equipment used so usually an ICC profile will be built for a specific combination of printer,ink and paper. Unknowingly many people use color profiles when they print; every time you go in your setings and chage the paper type from let's say Photo Paper to Matte paper you are actually changing the color profile that the printer will use to print.
ICC profiles are also used to calibrate other equipment such as computers, monitors, scanners, cameras etc... as each of these devices will "interpret" and reproduce color differently. If you have ever looked at a row of tv's in a store showing the same program you certainly must have noticed that all will show slightly different colors from each other. Well this is also true for your computer monitor, calibrating the monitor with an ICC profile will assure that the colors you see on the screen are accurate based on a common standard.
In an ideal world you would want to calibrate, or profile, your whole workflow from capture to output so that your colors are accurate from digital file to print independently from the media used and you would try to avoid changing inks except if you are changing to an ink that better suits your output needs (this could be a better ink with a higher density or wider color gamut for better color reproduction or a cheaper ink to reduce your cost; however in each case your colors will change and even though an ICC profile can minimize the difference it will never be exactly the same).
For most this level of accuracy is overkill and reserved to photographers, fine art and commercial printers; hoever output profiles for your printer, paper, sustrate and ink combination (and in dye sub also specific heat and dwell time) are necessary to reproduce consistent color. If you use different substrates, especially if you use both textiles and hard substrates you will need different profiles for each if you want your colors to be consistent.
If you are interested in the subject you can find more information on these sites:
Wasatch SoftRIP Inkjet RIP Software, Raster Image Processor Large Format Inkjet
INTERNATIONAL COLOR CONSORTIUM
I hope this helps,
Milabix
Those differences in the raw colorants determine differences in the density and hue of the colors offered by different manufacturers so that the magenta from ink brand A will not match the magenta from ink brand B: while both are magenta, they are not identical.
So, if you take two identical printers and load them with different ink brands you will not get identical prints. The differences in color quality and the specific qualities of each ink set are "balanced" out with color profiles, or ICC profiles. ICC stands for International Color Consortium and it is an international standard. An ICC profile is a little piece of software or "code" that tells the printer how to mix the inks in order to achieve a standard color (based on ICC guidelines) independently from the individual characteristics of the inks used. AN ICC profile however can only go as far as the specific caracterirstics of the ink can take it. Better inks usually will have a better color gamut and will be able to reproduce certain colors with more accuracy while in situations where the color gamut is restricted the ICC profile will have to "adjust" or "Clip" the color by reproducing it the best it can. This is a little like using two different size monitors or monitors with different definitions... on the HD monitor certan details, gradients and shadows will be clearly visible while on the lower definition monitor, while the overall color will be accurate, certain details will either be inaccurate or will be missing alltogether. You can also think of paint, if you take two different white paints and one is more diluted than the other, while both will give you a white surface the coverage from one paint will not be as good as the coverage of the other.
ICC profiles also take in consideration a variety of other factors and adjust for different media characteristics and for the specific idiosyncrasies of the printer and other equipment used so usually an ICC profile will be built for a specific combination of printer,ink and paper. Unknowingly many people use color profiles when they print; every time you go in your setings and chage the paper type from let's say Photo Paper to Matte paper you are actually changing the color profile that the printer will use to print.
ICC profiles are also used to calibrate other equipment such as computers, monitors, scanners, cameras etc... as each of these devices will "interpret" and reproduce color differently. If you have ever looked at a row of tv's in a store showing the same program you certainly must have noticed that all will show slightly different colors from each other. Well this is also true for your computer monitor, calibrating the monitor with an ICC profile will assure that the colors you see on the screen are accurate based on a common standard.
In an ideal world you would want to calibrate, or profile, your whole workflow from capture to output so that your colors are accurate from digital file to print independently from the media used and you would try to avoid changing inks except if you are changing to an ink that better suits your output needs (this could be a better ink with a higher density or wider color gamut for better color reproduction or a cheaper ink to reduce your cost; however in each case your colors will change and even though an ICC profile can minimize the difference it will never be exactly the same).
For most this level of accuracy is overkill and reserved to photographers, fine art and commercial printers; hoever output profiles for your printer, paper, sustrate and ink combination (and in dye sub also specific heat and dwell time) are necessary to reproduce consistent color. If you use different substrates, especially if you use both textiles and hard substrates you will need different profiles for each if you want your colors to be consistent.
If you are interested in the subject you can find more information on these sites:
Wasatch SoftRIP Inkjet RIP Software, Raster Image Processor Large Format Inkjet
INTERNATIONAL COLOR CONSORTIUM
I hope this helps,
Milabix
I have three 9600's.....they are work horses.
Once you are able to work on a printer yourself, there is nothing stopping you.
Try almost any of your main dyesub dealers for consumables....many are desperate to make good deals during this stage in our economy. But make sure you feel out there Customer Service skills. make them EARN your business.
Hope this helps
Jae-
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