LF Printer and Press on Ebay

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http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Large-Format- ... 2ec7e8a316

[Justin]

Very interesting That press looks tasty...oh, and useful of course!

What about these pisquee....?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Epson-9880-st ... 4ac44124a9
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Epson-9880-st ... 3cd148843f
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Epson-Stylus- ... 460edbf1ae
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/EPSON-9800-La ... 1c328a05de

What are the pros and cons of these printers for large format?

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7600 is the oldest of the list (smaller version of the 9600) large format in the eyes of Epson, and a grey area in the Sawgrass thing though. The 7600/9600 although old, seem to be somewhat of a standard due to being so popular, that there are many still in use. It's a 7 colour printer (black, light black, cyan, light cyan, magenta, light magenta, yellow.)

The 9800 and 9880 are newer models, both being 8 colour (adding light light black) With the 9880, Epson brought in their "vivid magenta" ink, which I doubt would affect sub work, as you'd just be putting sub magenta in and getting a profile made, unless the sub ink maker already had profiles.

The 7600/9600's tend to go on Ebay for around 300-500 and pop up all the time, along with that you'll need a set of refill carts (which are generally around 250ml each.

Your next step is choosing ink, the disadvantage of the 9800/9880 in this is that they use light light black and not all sub ink makers have this ink. For instance, Inktec produce it, but they don't import it into the UK/European markets. I guess that demand is too low.

I guess you could look at the list of Sawgrass licensees and do some reading up on each of them... BASF, Hilord Chemical, Huntsman (formerly Ciba Specialty Chemical), InkTec, J-Tech, Kiian Group, Kiwa Chemical, Mimaki Engineering Company, Nazdar and Sensient Technologies. The US users on T-Shirt forums all seem to go for J-Tech, lots of UK users go with InkTec and Lyson, but I would think it has a lot to do with what is readily available. Sawgrass' list doesn't seem to be exhaustive though, as they say their licensee list "includes" those companies, as it to say there is more. I know that Fuji isn't on that list, and they have their own brand of sublimation ink, but don't know if it's only for internal use of Fuji, or whether they sell it out too.

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Pros in general I would say are that you can legitimately use the better quality inks produced for industry/commercial printing and their better pricing structure, although I know plenty of people obviously ignore this rule and use these inks already in smaller printers, so to some degree this pro can be discounted.

Being able to print from a roll and have the printer cut off after the print is done - I love the versatility of this, not being restricted to cut sheet sizes. Again, the bigger choice of papers available at these sizes.

These printers are built to a much higher standard (my Mutoh IIRC rather than Epson themselves, although still use Epson's technology and print heads) they are more reliable, and better designed to deal with professional level printing. They are designed around, essentially what a CISS for a smaller printer is, but done properly, so there are large reservoirs for the ink, then long feed lines, running to dampers and then the print head. The difference here is though that the printer is designed to work this way, it isn't a hack, and there is a strong pump to suck the inks all the way. There is a removable waste tank/drawer, which you can easily remove, empty, and reset, and then put it back in to keep going.

[ssp]

Oh my that press.. I may just have to bid on those, solve everything in one fell swoop!

[bms]

Your next step is choosing ink, the disadvantage of the 9800/9880 in this is that they use light light black and not all sub ink makers have this ink. For instance, Inktec produce it, but they don't import it into the UK/European markets. I guess that demand is too low.

Fortunately Sawgrass do supply light black and light light black into the 7890 and 9890. ICC profiling is available for the SubliJet-E inks and both these printers run with CMYKLcLmLkLLk and a cleaning cartridge in the 9th chamber in either the MB or PB slot (both blacks not necessary for sublimation).

[bms]

Pros in general I would say are that you can legitimately use the better quality inks produced for industry/commercial printing and their better pricing structure

Hi Tim,

I appreciate that InkTec inks are cheaper in the 1 litre bottles for large format printing compared to Sawgrass and this can be objectively verified by finding it available in EBay for example, but where is the evidence for the 'better quality inks' assertion? Where can this be objectively verified and how are you defining 'better', i.e. what independent evidence is there for this? Just trying to avoid myths being developed and so long as there is independent, objective, verifiable proof that InkTec is 'better' (definition required here) then that's fine.

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I didn't mention InkTec exclusively, I listed all the licensees listed on Sawgrass' website.
There used to ba a FLAAR report on InkTec's Sublinova inks, but I can't find it on their website anymore, and Google Docs only has the first page, but that is the only independent report I could think of.
As a dealer for InkTec, I can't really seen to be impartial, but you as a Sawgrass dealer can't really be either.
Before we became dealers, we were just users, who had decided to invest in more expensive printers, and didn't want the problems we had had before using Sawgrass inks, with clogging etc. So, I did my research, looked at the different options, as for us, buying the Stylus Pros, was a big investment for us, and we didn't want to be risking putting junk ink in. We did consider first the cheap unbranded ink you see popping up all the time on Ebay, but dismissed them quite quick before deciding we needed something decent, not just any old junk. One of the things I liked about InkTec was that they had been around a good amount of time, and ink is what they did - they had a good range of professional bulk inks - they didn't just make sublimation ink, and they had their own range of printers, along with research into future tech like metallic printing. Similarly, I could have gone with Lyson, who, with their background in fine art and photography printing inks, are probably better, on T-Shirt forums, there are plenty people saying good things about J-Tech too. And certainly plenty more people claiming that companies such as these are producing better inks than Sawgrass in both terms of colour and reliability.
Another way of looking at it, is to see how many wide format printing companies actually use Sawgrass sublimation inks ... All the ones we've talked to in UK are using InkTec or Lyson. This can't just be down to economy of the inks, as Sawgrass Sublim is around the same price (not that I can't find anywhere selling them) but as their poduct aimed at the pro wide format market, would be the best product for comparisons, although I note, that that line doesn't seem to have the light light black needed for some printers either.
We only became the dealer for InkTec when we'd used the ink for a while and I knew it was something I believed in/trusted enough to sell on for other people to use, and due to us using enough of the ink that InkTec offered/asked us to come and be a dealer. It was most definitely that we were users first, if that helps in anyway dispell people thinking I may be biased.

[Andrew]

I find the likes of artainium and inktec to be no different. Both do what they are supposed to do. I also have Light Black LLB here currently. I don't think Lyson did the Light Black options.

[bms]

As a dealer for InkTec, I can't really seen to be impartial, but you as a Sawgrass dealer can't really be either.

I agree . I was just trying to ascertain where the impartial information was suggesting that one was 'better' than the other. It was just that you were suggesting one brand was 'better' and I was interested in how you came to that conclusion and how you were defining 'better'. These can be very amorphous terms without any clear definitions of what is being alluded to and then end users believe a myth that one brand is inferior to another.