He ain't Epson, he's my Brother...

[JSR]

Has anyone tried using Brother printers for dye-sublimation?

It seems odd that Sawgrass only support some Epson and Ricoh printers. Epson printers, with their tiny ink tanks, require the fitting of a CISS with great ink tubes flapping away all over the place.

Brother printers, like the Ricoh, have their inks remotely mounted. The printers are invariably cheaper than Epsons (my MFC-5890CN cost about the same as a B1100 but it comes complete with scanner, card reader, colour screen, fax and all manner of other things).

Also, there are third-party refillable cartridges for some Brother printers (such as my MFC-5890CN) that can hold 80ml of ink (not the tiddly 9ml of Epson printers). A printer with remote-mounted 80ml cartridges would do away with any need for the square-peg-in-round-hole nature of a CISS.

Oh, yes, and before you ask, I've just had confirmation back to an enquiry I sent to Brother - and they replied: "Our inkjet machines use the piezo type of printhead." So the printhead is the same type that's used on Epson printers.

There seems no logical reason why Brother printers should be ignored. Does anyone know if any tests have been done on Brother printers and if there's a reason why they're not used for dye-sublimation?

[Justin]

Something Paul was going to look at....any updates Paul

[Paul]

not yet but after couple of PM's with Jonathan am definetly going to try that

[Justin]

Good on ya Paul, expect a review pretty soon! Always pushing the boundaries eh?!

[Ian M]

I'm getting all excited & giddy now.........hehe

Oh by the way Epson have now replaced the S21 with the S22 which looks a bit like a D120.

Ian

[Justin]

Oh by the way Epson have now replaced the S21 with the S22 which looks a bit like a D120.
Ian

At around £35 inc. vat it looks like a decent printer, hopefully better build quality than the S21.

[bms]

Does anyone know if any tests have been done on Brother printers and if there's a reason why they're not used for dye-sublimation?

I think you'll find that the Brother printers will work and you can probably profile them as well. I believe Sawgrass have tested these and offer the reason for not supporting these as the entry level Epson printers - build quality and reliability. No doubt there will be discussion about the rights and wrongs of this, but that's where this stands as far as Sawgrass is concerned.

[JSR]

Does anyone know if any tests have been done on Brother printers and if there's a reason why they're not used for dye-sublimation?

I think you'll find that the Brother printers will work and you can probably profile them as well. I believe Sawgrass have tested these and offer the reason for not supporting these as the entry level Epson printers - build quality and reliability. No doubt there will be discussion about the rights and wrongs of this, but that's where this stands as far as Sawgrass is concerned.

Forgive me if I'm being a bit naive, but it strikes me that "supported by Sawgrass" comes down to just providing a profile. It's up to the end user if they want to use the printer as there are plenty of refill cartridges around.

I don't see what the stumbling block is. It's not like Sawgrass are responsible for the printer or anything like that. If "build quality and reliablity" was the issue then Sawgrass wouldn't support any desktop printer (but then, their patent only applies to desktop printers so they kind of have to).

I don't see other third-party ink manufacturers, for instance Jettec, saying "sorry, we're not selling ink for Brother printers due to build quality and reliability".

From an end-user's perspective, it's difficult to understand their reasoning.

[bms]

Don't shoot the messenger

[JSR]

Don't shoot the messenger

I'm not blaming the suppliers. You can only deal with what you're given. I think that's understood by everyone.

I can't help but feel that, if there was more competition in the marketplace, the end user would have more options.