DSF

Sorry missed you guys, popped on the stand Martin but you weren't there, should have left a card. Enjoyed spending time with stitch up and Angied, his neoflex plodded along happily the whole time.
Agree with logobear re it being geared up more for the "big guys" however I had a really eventful second day and found a few things. In particular a membrane pneumatic press. Having said that the NEC is more interesting for me to source my products.

forgot to say.... anybody seen this rhinestone stand??? Scottish one? cant remember the name, need to look through my carrier bag for card...
but they gad 25m flocking stencil material for £70. i think its brilliant!

Be interested in that if you can find the card paul.

Found a few really good things there.

The white laser system seemed pretty good. The printers they use are OKI301's which are about £94.00 online. They then basically put white laser in the black and yellow spaces and empty carts in the magenta and cyan and also tape over the LED strip. While Jason and I were there I pushed the button on the printer to take a look inside the machine, he soon stopped me saying that he would rather I not look inside which I thought was a bit unusual. There are three options, white, day glow white and flourescents. There are a few concerns I have about the whole system but in general it does look good and a possible addition to the bigger and better OKI711 white. Initially Jason and I were amazed at the quality and price, so much so that I pretty much insisted that I take Justin and Paul there first on the second day of visiting so they could be left speechless like I was!!!. However I will wait for Justin's thread to make more comments (both good and bad) as I have been thinking about these quite a lot since seeing them.

Other things that grabbed my attention, the new Fusion heat press from Stahls looked even better than I thought. The guy was offering to sell it to me on the last day but I kept away. I only wanted to pay a cheeky £1000.00 (for a £3500 heat press) but even then I figured it will not actually add a revenue stream to my business so would probably be a £1000 waste. For those of you who use a heat press every day and it is an essential/core part of the business it is the nuts.

Speaking of heat presses I was impressed with Mircotec. Their new machine is being imported by TMT and I have one on test here. First impressions are that it is a really good machine and a review of it will be coming. However I did manage to break it Seeing the machine on the Microtec stand I approached them about the bolt that had severed. The two guys that spoke to me were really concerned and spent about 15 minutes with me getting as much information as they could so that they could rectify the problem when they get back to China. TMT will be fixing the test one obviously but it is good to know that this machine has the technical back up in the UK and also what looked to me like a good back up in China.

For those of you who do vinyl banners there were some neat banner eye letting tools if you do not have an eye letter. This was an American company but apprently have a UK distributor. Website is www.bannerups.com Will give those who do wide format the option of doing banners without all the additional kit you need.

The forever papers for white laser looked pretty good. They are sold by Xpress and I may well get a box or two in for better testing.

If you make rubber stamps or think it is a good addition then Modico's stuff looked good. They were on the Grafitype stand so I presume they are the UK distributor.

There was a new flex company who Justin, Jason and I stopped at. I have a print and cut machine so did not pay much attention to it. Justin and Jason did and I saw them weed type that was 8mm (or 13mm I can not remember) high and very thin. It weeded lovely and very quick. Rep was a really nice bloke (from Essex like me!!!) and a price of around £5.00 a meter was bounded around although they was not sure. I am sure that Justin or Jason will be able to give you more info but it did look and feel good. The stuff is made in France.

Was very impressed with COPYFUN laser transfer paper. Especially the self weeding paper for white garments.This produce a really nice image on a white garment without the "square" block that you normally get. I tried to purchase any that they had there but they only had the BLUE stuff and I wanted what is know as PINK. They do not have a UK distributor yet but she did say that a company in Bristol were in the pipeline. Anyone know who that might be?

Listawoods had some new mug presses there which I liked the look of. So much so that I decided to purchase one and have a dabble. While I was on the stand there was a guy there that I think was the manufacturer representative. I spoke to him about what I think needs to be improved in terms of heat presses and he listened and said he would feed it back. Hopefully there will be some more machines coming out soon.

Sunfly announced that they are opening Sunfly Germany which is good news. Apparently this will be within the next couple of months.

Lastly, arguably the best thing about the show was the information I got from Jason about doming. He really is a minefield of information and together (more him than me!) we came up with some really neat ideas for possible revenue streams. Undoubtedly he saved me from wasting a grand on some doming machinery that I do not really need and I can not wait until tomorrow to move the ideas forward.

Sorry for rambling

So who had the white laser on an Oki 301?

Will keep you all updated on this with a review etc.

For me Fespa was a fantastic show, massively enhanced by the company of Simon and Justin, who's knowledge of dye sub and the industry I was in awe of. I learnt lots and came away inspired by the whole experience, with lots of ideas to follow up.

Further to Simon's post (Social Giraffe) the flex was from A company called Hexis. Hexis are one of the big names in the vehicle wrapping and sign vinyl market but I think this is the first time they have offered garment flex. The flex was very impressive for weeding small detail, has a matt finish and feels nice and thin and stretchy, it looks almost identical to the flex cottonridge supply which I was equally impressed with.

Fespa was good, i managed to get a heatpress from secabo, there heatpresses are amazing, getting it home on the train was.... fun

I also nearly bought a brand new epson SC-F6000 from inktec but there is currently no ability to reset the ink level so pointless.... also there ink is similar price to epsons anyway

Forgot to add...!

Sawgrass were showcasing a few sample garments. The thing that impressed me the most was the quality of the sublimation on garments that were 50% Polyester 50% Cotton.

They had a few coloured Gildan garments on show that they had sublimated with some lovely one colour designs which looked fantastic. If you are in the garment design/fashion side of things then it is worth experimenting on 50/50 garments for designs and prints that are not colour critical.

Why were Inktec selling SC-6000's, there are only 2 authorised resellers of the new epson dye-sub printers and neither of which are them!! The epson ink is nice and cheap at just over £100 a litre, it also happens to be made by Sawgrass for Epson