Printer upgrade

cajunhillbilly said:

I am looking to upgrade from a Ricoh SG3110 to a wide format printer. Any suggestions?

Click to expand...

I don't have experience to share...yet. But I can tell you the main printers in the 44" category to consider. We recently went through this exact same thing. Unless you have mega $$ for a > 44" Mutoh these are your options if you go the new route (there are also older printers if you want to go that way). The top contenders for us were the Epson F6070, Epson T7000, Epson 9890, Epson 7890 and Mutoh RJ-900x. We also looked at the Epson 9890 & 9800 but they were ruled out because of speed, and the 9700 which was ruled out to the large number of posts I read on here about issues. In the end it came to a coin flip between the F6070 and the T7000. The T7000 with conversion to J-Teck sublim inks being about $1500 cheaper than the F6070 for most people. In the end, we ended up deciding on an Epson SureColor F6070 because of the year warranty and deal we got on it at a show.

If you're looking at hacking a wide format and doing sublimation with it, I would suggest talking to Daniel @ Digitally Driven. He was recommended to us by others on this forum. He's very knowledgeable and should be able to help you with the conversion.

I did the same thing that you are trying to do. I went with the Epson 6070 as we'll for the following reasons:
1) it comes with the rip software. If you buy a used machine about 50% come with the software you need.
2) Epson makes everything for the machine and it's very competitive. The ink and sublimation paper are all in line with other manufactures/ brands. I actually think the Epson sub paper is cheaper than most.
3) speaking of cheaper... A solid square foot (12x12) will cost you $0.18 per sq! That blows all the Ricoh machines out the water and a few of the other brands. That price of $0.18 also includes the cost of the paper.
4) Epson has a rebate going on right now where if you buy at least $1000 of paper they will give you back a check for that $1000. So that's what we did. It took them a month to send us our check but we now had tons of sub paper.
5) we have used this machine to do shirts, plaques, canvas bags, cell phone cases and many many more things with great results.

Cons: just one so far. We also make light switch covers that require us to put water on the back of the sublimation paper in order to get it to conform to the rounded edges. The Epson sublimation paper is too thin to take the water. The water about comes thru it and ruins every substrate. So, we still,use our Ricoh 7700 and the Text Print R paper for light switches.

Other than that the F6070 has been a rock star for us.