Epson, Roland or Mutoh?

[artygirl]

So, do the majority of people use Epson? Besides the sawgrass issue is it any more expensive to run than other brand printers?

[pisquee]

If we ignore the Sawgrass cartel/protection racket, then a litre of professional/industrial sublimation ink will cost around £85-100, as opposed to Sawgrass Consumer sublimation ink which will cost you about £60 for 100ml
If you go for a non-Epson wide format printer than (as far as I am aware) will also need a RIP to drive the printer, you can use a RIP or just the standard Windows driver with an Epson.
As far as CISS systems go, for this level of printer, you use large (200ml+) refillable cartridges, or you can get bigger bulk feeds which take the ink direct from the litre bottles. You can, if you prefer use sealed carts from the ink manufacturers, but this route is more expensive (but still cheaper than Sawgrass)
The other thing you will need is an ICC profile to tie your printer, inks, paper, and substrates together - the ink manufacturers do supply some ICCs, but as there are so many wide format printers, it isn't possible for them to create enough ICCs for every possible combination, so you'd either need to get Paul on this forum to make one, or get your own profiling kit. This is only really the case if you go the Epson route without a RIP, as the ICCs used by RIPs are different from what Paul can make (and can be made by most affordable ICC profiling kits)