This was exactly the kind of answer I was looking for - yes, all Thermal Heads but 'Bigger Holes' is what I was really hoping to hear even existed ! I can imagine that the resolution may not be quite as good as the Epson variety but in all honest who the hell would know ? especially on Canvass !
I caught sight of your other thread about the Brother Printers recently and had a quick look - this is the same really as the Ricoh, Cheap Machines (throw away) but will do what we want in the numbers we expect to produce ! I'm probably going to buy an A3 Brother after Christmas as it looks like I am not going to sell this Ink
I saw others offering Box Canvass for no money about the time I was hoping to start up with that - this is another reason I did not continue with the A2 printer project.
Im going to take the head out of that Epson 4K and dissect it for all to see before long - the bloody holes are too small I tell the.
Using FlexiStarter 10 and a Liyu SC631e & a Silhouette Cameo cutter. 2x Ricoh SG3110dn printers and Adkins Auto Clam press. Using Sublijet-r from Sawgrass. ..And I have gotten my money's worth out of this forum - saved Hundreds by being a Premium Member <-- IF you like this post PLEASE add to my reputation by clicking the 'Star' below this post on the Left
Nik, I know I'm sometimes seen as controversial here, and I'm prepared to be proved wrong. But having been in the tech side of the printer and computer industry for many, many years I watched the development of inkjet and bubblejet machines since they first became popular.
In 1991 the Universities were even stopping us selling bubblejets to students because they decided the Canon BJ200 (at $700 - the cheapest decent ink printer at the time) did not have the print quality of a laser.
Anyway, Epson have a wonderful system in the piezo print head, but in the intrest of finer detail they forst made finer nozzles, then moved even further into variable droplet size. And as far back as when we first began selling Epson, we had to advise customers never, never to use refilled cartridges. Every single Epson that hit the desk with a problem was using a refilled cartridge. The Epsons we sold where the customer used genuine ink without fail, would only appear once in a while if they had been left unused for a relatively long time.
Back to my thoughts on Brother. As far as I can determine, they use Epson patent piezo systems, but don't use such fine print head nozzles in their every day models as Epson do.
So my reasining, flawed as it probably is, is that I can get away with using ink formulated for Epson's tiny print head nozzles, in the brother's print head with larger nozzles.
At the resolutions you and I are printing on sublimated articles and on canvas, I don;t think the nozzle size makes much difference at all. I also suspect if you are using colour profiles (I don't - I have my own method) you will probably find very little difference using the profile for your Epson ink with your Brother printer.
Actually, I would be interested to hear who that works?
I also compared 4 colour and 6 colour printers and even on glossy photos I can't find any relatively normal person who can tell which is different. So I'm sticking with throw away $200 (or 100 quid) Brother printers.
But I am still wondering about the opportunities for an affordable A2 printer.
One final note. After some hundreds (many hundreds in my case) of prints there can be a paper feed problem in the Brother A3 machines, at least my MFC-6510DW model. As is the case with the cartridge lock sensor, I have found a pretty rough and ready fix (rough - literally with a bit of sand paper on the rollers).
