Brother printers for sublimation use.

[JSR]

Does the A3 model take the larger A3+ papers or is A3 the max? The Ricoh will only take A3

I've just checked and it seems to be limited in width to A3 paper, so if A3+ is important then my MFC-5890CN would not be a good option.

Is there much that requires A3+ these days? I used to use A3+ when I did the 300mm diameter glass clocks, but suppliers stopped selling them. We've seen this gradual drift away from 13" wide paper when the 1400 came along to replace the 1290S yet didn't support roll paper which the 1290S did.

The maximum paper size for the A3 model is 11.3" x 17.0" (user-defined), or "double-Letter" (or Ledger/Tabloid) size paper of 11"x17" (pre-defined) which, I imagine, is the same as the Ricoh.

I've just noticed that the Ricoh GX7000 sells for ~£600. What does it do to justify that price? Cook the dinner?

[JSR]

Excellent review and very interesting reading.

Brilliant work Always interesting to see alternative products and ideas being tested.

what a exelent review jonathan!

cracking review mate - thank you for taking the time to do this.

Brilliant review Jonathan & also brilliant work too.

Thanks to everyone for your positive feedback. It's reassuring to know that I'm not alone in my curiosity of exploring other printer options outside of those offered to us at the moment.

I have to say I now feel vindicated in my previous posts that a Brother printer should be able to print using sublimation inks.

I recall you mentioning it in another thread, Ian. Great minds think alike!

The starting point of all of this came when Brother replied to my question regarding which type of printhead they use in their printers. Without that, I probably wouldn't have experimented. So kudos to them for taking the time to answer what must have been a bit of an obscure question.

And, of course, a whole heap of thanks (again) to Paul for the loan of his profiling device - without which, this experiment would definitely not have happened for some time to come (unless he did it himself ).

[Paul]

I've just noticed that the Ricoh GX7000 sells for ~£600. What does it do to justify that price? Cook the dinner?

And bloody good diner too for this price

[JSR]

I've just noticed that the Ricoh GX7000 sells for ~£600. What does it do to justify that price? Cook the dinner?

And bloody good diner too for this price

Especially when you consider that, for around £900, you can get the Epson 3880 - which is a 17" wide printer (unsupported, of course). If you can justify £600, then you can justify £900.

[Paul]

is 3880 can print on canvas too? this may be on my christmas list

[JSR]

is 3880 can print on canvas too? this may be on my christmas list

I've no idea. Ever since the 38xx first came out (the first 17" Epson below £1000), I've always wanted one but there's no way I could ever justify it.

Incidentally, if you're serious about getting one, you might like to figure out if you can get it via the US for cheaper.

On Amazon.co.uk, the cheapest price for the 3880 is about £920 (the Amazon price is £1,000); yet the price on Amazon.com is $1,175 - which is just £750. It's one of those examples where the exchange rate is pretty much ignored and Amazon just change the $ sign to a £ sign.

[JSR]

Some speed test results -

Using the settings for Plain Paper and quality set to Normal :

DCP-195C : 1min 6sec (via USB)
MFC-5890CN : 51sec (via Ethernet)

Using the settings for Inkjet Paper and quality set to Photo :

DCP-195C : 4min 21sec (via USB)

I'm printing on this latter (slower) setting to achieve the quality shown before. The Plain Paper/Normal settings are, in comparison, not good enough for what we want. For putting a photo in a document/letter, the quality's okay - but not for anything else. The computer used is a netbook running an Intel Atom 1.60GHz processor, 2GB RAM, and Qimage for printing.

The test document was a sheet of Letter paper with six images on (suitable for three mugs). It's not a full sheet, as you'd use for a mousemat. The printer sped up and slowed down depending upon where it was on the page - I think it slowed down between the end of one image and the start of the next, as though it required more thinking time to analyse what it was printing. I guess we should use "5mins per page" as a rule of thumb.

As I said before, that's pretty slow but I don't think anyone printing frequent bulk orders is going to be looking at this printer anyway. If you had a lot to do, you'd have to print on one day and press the next. Or buy a second printer...

[JSR]

Following on from the review, I've compared the current range of Brother printers.

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Those that use the LC980/LC1100 should work fine with the set-up mentioned in the review. I don't know what the LC985 cartridges are, so it might be best to avoid those printers.

For anyone who's ever wanted an A3 scanner, the MFC-6490CW is a very good price at the moment. Normal price of A3 scanners on their own is usually much higher than this MFC. For those who are after a cheap A3 printing option, the MFC-5890CN is down to £135 - which compares favourably with the Epson B1100 that currently goes for £165-£175 without the scanner on top.

All prices shown are from Misco.co.uk (you will need to add a little for postage) except for the DCP-195C which is the Amazon.co.uk price. Some of the other printers are available from Amazon.co.uk but only via third-parties and for wildly differing (and some incredulous) prices.

The DCP-197C looks pretty much identical to the DCP-195C. I haven't yet found a difference between them (even the RRP is the same).

All models are likely to suffer from the slow printing issue.

[NASH]

but how is the print quality compared to an epson

[JSR]

but how is the print quality compared to an epson

Hi Nash

When comparing the two mugs side by side, you cannot tell which was printed by the Brother and which was printed by the Epson.

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I am, quite frankly, stunned by the quality of the Brother print because I truly hadn't expected it.

The main point of note, however, is that you can get a decent quality out of the Epsons at a faster print speed (using the "Plain Paper" settings - I use "Matte", but that's just me). For the Brother, the "Plain Paper" setting is really only suitable for pictures in documents. For the purposes of sublimation, using the slower "Inkjet Paper" setting produces the same quality as the Epson.

(Either that or my eyes are worse than I thought!)