help

[bms]

Ricohs have their problems too. Some inexplicably die for no admitted reason apart from something to do with Sawgrass ink cartridges. If left on they automatically run a head clean using up your expensive ink whether you want them to or not, if you turn them off for long periods they don't do this but then can clog like any inkjet printer, or fail to start at all due to the cartridge bug.

I've yet to see any evidence that a printer failing is something to do with a chip from Sawgrass. Allegations such as these need evidence to back them up, as opposed to 'my printer's died, have used sublimation ink, therefore must be the sublimation ink caused my printer to die'. Causality is different to association.

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Plenty of posts on T-Shirt forums about the Ricoh problems, some of them have been collated into one post here I don't have time to trawl through them all and pull out the keys bits, as there are a lot of threads/posts. But I would advise anyone considering buying a Ricoh for sublimation work to have a read through them and then decide if it's a road they want to go down.

[Paul]

If there is no ink included how on earth can you achieve what they say?

and this one...

The package provides everything YOU need to begin making a profit with our sleek, stylish and functional printing and pressing equipment.

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I presume they can provide sublimation ink, but to stop attracting attention from SG they don't mention it in the ads.

[bms]

Plenty of posts on T-Shirt forums about the Ricoh problems

Agree there are posts from Ricoh users whose printers have failed. Again, a bit of a jump to believe causality of ink cartridges causing the problem rather than a mainboard problem with the Ricoh printer. Lots of misleading information there, probably from disgruntled users, but my experience has been (from selling hundreds of Ricoh printers) is that (a) the problem existed, (b) it's less than 1% of [our] users and (c) Sawgrass honour the warranty and have sorted problems out for customers very satisfactorily. With any technology you're going to have some having problems and those having problems are going to much more vocal than those not having problems, so one way of reading the post is that 56 people worldwide have had problems - wow that's a seriously low number!

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I would read it as at least 56 people (mostly in USA) who are part of t-shirt forums have had problems, who had a mixed experience of support from Ricoh, Sawgrass and Conde, with each seeming to blame each other, and none of them admitting there was a problem for a long time. There was a post from Conde on there, which I am sure did state that there was an issue with the Sawgrass carts affecting the mainboard in some way.
Ricohs were pushed as an almost magic miracle sure for sublimation printing by Sawgrass and their dealers, which would be faultless, and not clog. When some started to fail, there was silence, and they kept being pushed whilst there were known problems that no one was admitting to. Equally we later find out that the reason they don't clog is they run auto head cleans, which is not so miraculous, as an Epson can be set to auto clean/print to a schedule with the right program.

[Mossy88]

When i was first starting out which wasnt long ago, i was looking at these sorts of printers with all the ink systems but go for a ricoh with cartridges easy! just like everyday printers none of that messing about.

[TjCanvas]

Hi
We started with an S22 printer but we have alot of experience with printers, however if we would of found this forum and the amazing members before purchasing we wouldn't of got it in a million years. I have to agree this isn't a printer for beginners, having said that i'm not sure experienced would look twice. We had some brilliant results from the S22 but having upgraded to the Ricoh it puts it to shame.

I would strongly recommend looking at supported systems paying more pays off in the end, especially if you start doing alot of prints. With the S22 eventually the print heads will start dropping larger partials of ink which results in numerous head cleans and reprints which becomes tedious and slows production time significantly.

You get what you pay for, but if you Pay a little more you get ALOT more, more importantly you get the support which when starting out is priceless.

[guarddog14]

thanks guys , much appreciated,

[newsgroupmonkey]

Some of this is experience and some of this is hearsay but I'll add my twopenneth worth.

Firstly, when I was buying a cheap at-home setup, I looked at buying everything from one supplier and getting a discount by doing so. I contacted this particular supplier and compared with other suppliers* they appeared to not only know what they were talking about, but also offered realistic advice (what sort of kit would be great for starting off compared with a pro-setup). They weren't just trying to sell me the most profitable or expensive items, but what I would actually need.

In the end I found it cheaper to buy second-hand decent kit. It turned out the vinyl cutter I bought had originally been bought from this supplier. The guy selling it was singing their praises, saying how they helped him set it all up properly. In the end, he never used it in anger, but was more than happy with the service he received.

So I found myself phoning them asking for some advice on vinyl type and even though I hadn't bought it direct, they were still more than happy to help.

So I guess the upshot of this post is, they're a decent enough supplier. They'll give you plenty of support and I'm pretty sure they deliver what they say they will.

*When I talk about other suppliers, there are a couple of UK based suppliers of chinese cutters who speak "chinglish". I have some very "interesting" emails.