Octi Tech release New 3D Sublideck

[Justin]

[Stitch Up]

Would be great if their website worked - or is it just me?

[Justin]

I did wonder, they sent me an email about sublimation coatings and the link didn't work

[Paul]

work fine for me

[Justin]

Octi-Tech.com is working fine. The links in the advert won't work as it's just a picture

[Stitch Up]

Wasn't working earlier - honest

[JSR]

I read about this kind of thing being trialled a couple of years back when I was starting out. It's not exactly taken the world by storm in the meantime.

However, at £8995 RRP (before VAT presumably), it's not exactly something you could dip your toe in - particularly given that there are no easily-available coated 3D objects to sublimate, so you'd have to get into all that "coat yourself" area as well.

Once you get beyond that initial feeling of "oh, cool, I can print my own computer mice", you suddenly notice the price...

[Stitch Up]

My feelings exactly. The video makes it all look rather 'experimental'. How one could make a profit on such a large capital outlay with such low output volume defies me!

Anyone done the sums?

John

[paulhirst]

Hi All

Just came across this forum nice to see one with a UK slant rather than the large USA ones

Hope you don’t mind if I add a few comments about the Sublideck machine

The Sublideck system is not really aimed at the standard giftware market it is more of an industrial machine that is meant for larger operations that have a desire to decorate repeated numbers of the same parts. Previous versions of these machines have been around but the difference with our system is that it uses IR heat as opposed to convection heat which gives the benefit of faster transfer times which means that you can decorate thin walled plastics a lot quicker which giving less distortion. There is a huge demand from large industrials out there to be able to decorate their products "Mass Customization" One computer company in the last 4 years has invested millions of dollars into a similar system to ours just to decorate laptops... GPS PDA'S Mobile Phones Household appliances anything really that has plastic on it can be considered for decoration so I agree that you would certainly struggle to get a return on the machine if you were doing mugs etc but if you were printing 5k USB memory sticks or hard drives a day its a no brainer

Nice to meet you all

Paul Hirst
Octi Tech

[Stitch Up]

Good morning Paul and welcome to the forum.

It's always good to hear the voice of a manufacturer, distributor or seller on here - thanks for taking the time.

Perhaps the video on the website doesn't do the product justice - to me, it did appear to be a rather cumbersome process. If it showed several dozens of commonly used products e.g. mobile phone skins being created it might have struck a different cord with me.

I can see many applications that would even appeal to me. I doubt I'd ever be into the 1000's a day of the same item, but certainly 100's for a unique market where the selling price would also be rather unique

I'll never compete with the 'big boys' who create tens of thousands of the same item for large corporate organisations BUT, there is a much neglected market out there of smaller companies who wouldn't want tens of thousands of the same product - a couple of thousand maybe.

The capital outlay for the machine is high, but compare that to the common solvelt printers from say Roland, Mutoh etc etc or even the Gerber printer I have - cost new about £16,000.

I would like to know more about the actual product creation process from print to final product - lets take your example of a USB stick.

Look forward to hearing from you.

John