[vermontgp]

I am a newbie planning to get into sublimation. I plan to do sublimation on ceramics, metal, and other hard substrates mainly. I have looked into Sawgrass and Epson printers. My main concern is color accuracy and density. Price is a concern, but quality is what I am looking for.

Sawgrass printers use gel based dyes with only 4 cartridges (CMYK) and a dye circulation system that reduces printer maintenance issues.

Epson 1430 utilizes water based dyes with a 6 cartridge system.

My questions/concerns are:

Does a printer with only 4 cartridges reproduce colors as accurately as a printer with 6 cartridges? Logic tells me no.

How much maintenance can I expect if I use water based dyes versus gel dyes?

If money was not a concern, which printer would you buy?

Thank you,
John

 

[Signature Series]

If I was new I would go with a Ricoh setup just because it seems they are pretty bullet proof. You do not see a lot of post on the forum from people having issues of any kind with Ricoh/Sawgrass. That would tend one to think either it is a more stable system and/or the vendors are doing a great job supporting it. As far as 4 vs 6 colors. If you were targeting professional photographers or the like maybe they would be able to tell the difference between 4 vs 6 vs 8 colors but for the average consumer they would not see it in most cases.

 

[Dekzion]

Plus you will be utilising the powerdriver which is free for Sawgrass users, it will allow you to change the settings for the ink within that, from a drop down menu, so that you are best set to press most types of substrate without worry.
Or you could go with Epson and faff about with profiles yourself.
I press glass for a pro photographer because he likes to back-light some of his stuff and he is always impressed with the quality. (I'm Ricoh and sawgrass with tru-pix paper)

 

[vermontgp]

Thank you! I am leaning toward Sawgrass.