Printable View
Been searching for an A3 inkjet printer capable of using pigment ink.
Will only be using this for 10% of jobs I cant warrant paying too much. Anyone got any recommendations?
Have been looking at the Cannon Pixma ix6850 as it states in the description that the black ink is pigment ink so I presume this suggest that I can use
pigment ink in all colours?
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/printe...57323-pdt.html
Any advice would be great.
Thanks
i believe the black is pigment, but the colours would be dye inks
Yes thanks for that nash. Looks like its going to be a Epson Stylus Photo 1500W unless anyone knows of anything cheaper.
Pick an Epson inkjet which suits your budget, desired print size and ink colours, along with the build and print quality, then source the appropriate refillable cartridges and a good quality branded pigment ink.
All my A3 printers are Brother MFC-J6510DW, although I think there is a newer version.
For Dye Sub I run inks made for Epson printers because they can be left for weeks at a time if I am away and usually I can just print a nozzle check then away I go on return. Occasionally I notice a couple of blocked nozzles and a quick clean will fix it. The Epsons have very fine nozzles in the print heads, the holes in the Brothers are bigger ans just seem to stay cleaner. And at $199 these printers are disposable. You can also buy a huge size refillable cartridge set and they don;t (at the time of writing) need reset chips.
Although the Brothers are designed for dye ink, they are pretty good on pigment as long as you again, use pigment inks designed for Epsons because the bigger holes in the Brother print heads let the ink flow better. Unlike the Dye Sub printers, the ones I use for pigment do need a nozzle clean occasionally although usually telling the things to print half a dozen A4 pages will fix it.
I use one A3 brother for printing on canvas.
One thing to remember with Brother inkjets is not to turn them off. They need to be left plugged in and turned on 24/7. At odd times in the night mine turn on and do a quick maintenance clean completely unattended. I have no idea where the timer for this process is, but it is a neat trick. It means you rarely even need to do a print head clean. Mine have been switched on continually for several years and have done reams of paper including Dye Sub paper plus many, many A3 canvasses.
Thanks for the advice. Have read conflicting things about the brother printers & pigment ink but I think i'm going to take your advice rossdv8 and give one a try. Any on the pcworld link below that I should avoid or will they all do the trick?
http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/search-...-criteria.html
I can't see any I would avoid - But I can see one I would grab for myself. I don't think for most printing that we need much more than 1200 x 1200 (but I'm not an expert). At about 90 quid I would probably grabQuote:
Originally Posted by Markola
BROTHER MFC-J5910DW Wireless All-in-One A3 Inkjet Printer
- WiFi printing
- Apple AirPrint & Google Cloud Print
- 1200 x 1200 dpi
- Up to 12 ipm
Failing that I would go for the
BROTHER MFCJ6520DW Wireless A3 All-in-One Inkjet Printer
- WiFi printing
- Apple AirPrint & Google Cloud Print
- 6000 x 1200 dpi
- Up to 22 ipm
and of course there's the old stand by http://www.ebay.co.uk/bhp/brother-al...inkjet-printer
I've been lucky. I always get my A3 Brothers for about the equivalent of 100 quid (well, $199 Aussie dollars) on special. And I've had a great run with them.
Just remember - leave your Brother inkjet turned on and connected to power 24/7. It has a programmed automatic maintenance system. It won;t stop nozzle clogs, but it certainly reduces them. And remember, if you're using pigment inks you are running ink with chunks of solids in it through a print head that was designed for dye. At some point you have to do a head clean.
But I buy bulk ebay pigment ink and it is cheap enough that usually I just tell the printer to print half a dozen photos instead of doing a head clean. That saves filling up the waste ink thingy.
I use this type of cartridge. You can see the ink levels while they are in the printer and after a little practice you can refill them without removing them. Even my dye sub one is fine to refill like this.
You're welcome to PM me any time as long as you know my ideas are simply sharing my experiences - not 'gospel'. You might have completely different experiences from mine.
Many thanks for that, Really appreciated.
I'm going to go for the BROTHER MFC-J5910DW at that price I have not lost a great deal if I cant get on with it.
One question I do have, is it worth buying the "heat transfer pigment inks" such as the Lovebright ink from lovecut?. Guess I could invests in a better quality in on the money I saved from getting the cheaper printer.
I suppose a lot depends on your experience. I am NOT running this as a business, although I started out planning to. I began doing photo T-Shirts using the original Brother dye ink that came with the printer. Now, if you are only planning to do shirts on a small scale, I will tell you now friends and I are still wearing shirts I printed using the original ink.
If you are doing shirts my first suggestion is buy the BEST PAPER you can afford. In my case I tried all sorts of papers from ebay etc, then discovered genuine JetPro SofStretch. The Neenah website is a pig to search. This link http://www.neenah.com/technical/heat...tructions.aspx will let you see their products. Then Google Search or a look few questions on this forum will let you find where you can get the stuff in your country.
My pigment inks I just buy off ebay in a litre or a half litre per colour. I just choose a 4 colour Epson as the starting point.
But if you plan to print for sale, I'm sure a few more questions will put you in touch with a bulk pigment ink supplier for Epson 4 colour printers. And while you're checking out ebay, buy a refill kit. Basically it is 4 syringes about an inch diameter and some clear plastic hose. But I soon got a different kit with 4 x 250ml squeezy bottles with nozzle ends. I find I use the bottles now more than the syringes.
As always this email is long winded. Just trying to help you avoid the mistakes I made.
Another thing while I remember. Bookmark hat link I gave you I'm pretty sure it has the instructions for JetPro papers for both white and coloured materials.
I mentioned I had success with using genuine Brother Dye inks for shirts. Done right, they wash for years in hot water with no special care. After 3 years some are fading now.
The reason I went to Pigment Inks was that my main product was not shirts. I saw an opening for printing on canvas. Which is the reason I bought the Brother A3 printer. And the other reason for the Brother was that if it was rubbish I could afford to lash out on an Epson.
But when I wanted to do Sublimation I looked at the options and read about Epsons and Head cleaning and decided the Brother had to be just as good. I get brilliant results and I don;t even use ICC profiles. However if you decide to play with DyeSub, I would recommend you use a profile. For ordinary heat transfer with pigment there are other ways to get better images and colours.
You're an absolute star!! I have bookmarked this thread and the link you provided, some great info on there and some interesting products.
Dont worry about your replies been long winded, You have been a great help and have saved me hours if not days. Hope I can return the favor one day.
I had decided to try a few papers including the jetpro soft stretch so I will give this a try first.
Dye sub is something I will get round to at sometime but for now Clothing is keeping me busy enough. Going to go get the Brother printer tomorrow and should have a trial run done over the weekend. I'll let you know how I get on.
Glad to help. Just remember these are 'my' experiences. Not everyone would agree with me. But at least if you don;t Like the Brother you've got an A3 printer AND you can scan with it. I even print wirelessly from my 10 iinch Android tablet to the Brother printers using the Brother printing app for Android.
You would be surprised how many useful little graphics apps are around for the Android, and what you can do with them even in a commercial sense. My Android tablets have more computing power and storage than the computers we used to use to print commercial jobs ten years ago!
I'm assuming you are working with graphic designs and text mostly. If you ever decide to work with transferring photos, either by Heat Transfer or by Dye Sub, feel free to let me know. I have learned a few very simple tricks that will save you hours in getting a photo to look really good for printing. And everyghing I do can be done with FREE software.
I use Linux, but just about every program I use can be got for Windows or Mac free and legal. GIMP for example does almost anything that Photoshop will do. Inkscape and Xara LX are free and do Vector graphics. ImageMagick lives in a world of its own. You write simple little scripts and it does everything while you make a coffee
For example, if I copy 4 photos from my camera to a folder and click a script I wrote to make Dye Sub prints for mugs (for a tourist area) I get this:
First it slices the four photos into the shape I use and it sticks them next to each other. Then it makes a text section and sticks that alongside and makes everything the exact size I need for a print to fit on a mug. I like a white border top and bottom on my mugs.
.http://www.dyesubforum.co.uk/vbforum...tid=3000&stc=1
Then the script continues and cuts through the haze that is just somethign my cameras do.
Next it makes all the details nice and sharp adds a bit of colour enhancement to work with the sublimation inks (weird saturations because I don't use an ICC profile).
http://www.dyesubforum.co.uk/vbforum...tid=3001&stc=1
So all I do is copy 4 photos to a folder and wait 2 minutes while everything is done for me. Then I come back and do a test mug. If I am happy with it, I give it a name and file it.
Then next time I want to do a mug of the same town, I just choose a new mix of photos. If I'm doing a different town, I edit one line of text in the script file.
It may not be useful for you - but click on each image and compare the original straight from the camera, and the second one after a simple enhancement. You'll see what I mean about making photo detail sharper. It is about 3 clicks in Photoshop or GIMP. The only reason I write programs to automate stuff is to save me mouse clicks :-)
Thanks for the great info and advice. My Brother printer arrived today. Just waiting on the inks, cartridge and paper. I will let you know how I get on. If all goes well I will be buying a second brother printer for dye sub.
Thanks again your advice has been invaluable.
Just a quick catch up, Thanks to the great advice from rossdv8 I decided to take the plunge with a brother MFC J4510dw. Pigment inks arrived today. Took a while to get the printer to recognise them but after a bit of trickery I'm all ready to go. Got some of the stretch pro? transfer paper from Yolo and some inkjet printable flock. Going to have a play about tonight and I will print the results sometime tomorrow.
Done a couple of test prints on plane paper, initial results were not great, struggling to get a nice deep red but improving with every tweek. Playing around with the settings in corel draw to get more vivid colours. Its amazing what you forget over the years.
Ross, Im impressed with your colour enhancement techniques, they look great. However should I decide to do products featuring my hometown (Hull) I will be working with mostly Grey's and murky brown.:rolleyes:
Get Paul to do you a custom ICC profile, and then you will have a lot less tweaking to do.
I think pisquee's advice might be the way to go.
I have to tweak my colours a little to print with Dye Sublimation inks, however, for ordinary transfer printing you shouldn't really need to tweak colours to use Epson pigment in any Brother inkjet.
I got similar images from genuine Brother dye ink, Brother compatible dye ink and Epson compatible pigment inks. The only difference is that the cheap Epson inks clog occasionally. But it has not been a problem over the few years the printer has been running the pigment as long as the Brother printer is left turned on 24/7.
That activates the self maintenance function, usually some time in the dark early hours of the morning. I have never found anything in Epson's manuals or tech support to tell me any way to set a time for this. And it is difference from printer to printer. If I am sleeping in the workshop it used to be amusing to suddenly find myself waking up because I could hear a printer running in the middle of a dream. Look around and there would be a blue light form the LCD display and the sounds of self maintenance.
Then the other Brother printers in the room would all go off one after another. Until that happened I didn;t realize my HP colour laser had also been doing this for years. It's like a little orchestra going.
Anyway, that doesn't help your colour problem. A long time ago, Paul put together a neat test pattern for Dye Sub mugs. http://www.dyesubforum.co.uk/vbforum...g-for-everyone
There are a lot of test patterns available through a Google Image search. I like Paul's because it has a mix and is mug size. irrelevant for what you want, but it does have skin tones AND nice solid colours. So printing it out and looking a the reds, blacks and greys will give you a pretty good idea of what you are getting.
Also, in my Printer Settings when I print I can choose a Colour Mode. I can choose 'Natural', 'Vivid' or 'None'.
Now I don;t know where they are in Windows or Mac, but I'm sure there will be similar options. If you are printing a red and you want it nice and bright, perhaps try the equivalent of 'Vivid'.
Again in Linux, and I would imagine also in Windows or Mac, I can adjust the colours R, G and B from -0 to +20 or -20 and gt some differences.
But I have never found this necessary with any printer that was not using sublimation inks. No matter whether I am running dye or pigment or even bulk cheapo ink cartridges from the shopping centre.
Try printing Paul's test image and maybe adjusting it either at the print stage, or in Corel or something until you get the colours you expect.
If you need Bulk Pigment Ink I have a full set HERE which I cant use..
I dont have the need for so much much ink. I wish I did have.
Thanks for the info rossdv8 I do like the look of the brother printers might have to give them a go.
Update: So I have been using the Brother MFC-j4510w A3 printer for over a month using pigment ink. Printed out over 150 a3 sheets without much problem.
My main concern was blockages, so far I have had none. I have been using a High quality pigment ink from cartridge logistics. They claim this has extemly fine pigments and is formulated for brother printers. Who am I to argue its worked a charm.
I have encountered two small problems..
I did have a problem getting the printer to recognise the one of the refillable cartridges. I got around this by installing the origanal cart then when the printer was happy remove and reinsert the refillable.
Secondly without warning the printer gave me an error that one of the inks needed replacing. I tried my trick again but this time the printer states the cartridge is empty. Not too sure how to sort this. Do i need a chip re setter?
Well as many have mentioned Brother printers can indeed be used with pigment inks but the path can be rocky. For the £99 I paid for my printer I'm more than happy or will be when I figure the empty print issue.
Will update when I solve this issue.
Sorry to hear about the cartridge issue. I'm interested because I use a couple of the earlier model MFC-J6510DW printers pretty heavily and feed all sorts of stuff through them including canvas and cardboard.
Regarding your thoughts on replacing the 'chip'. One of the neat things about the Brother printers are that they have bigger holes (nozzles or whatever) in the printhead than the Epsons, which is why said in early posts I run Epson compatible ink only in my Brother printers. I decided I may as well allow for smaller pigment particles to pass through the bigger holes. Even then, I do get some minor nozzle clogging. But nowhere near as much as I used to get with Epsons.
The other neat thing is that all the Brother printers I've had so far have had no cartridge chips. Instead there is some sort of sensor inside the cartridge that sends information to the printer about ink levels. If I remember correctly i think it is a float type device.
Something else I mentioned in a previous post is the importance of making sure you put the set of little clear funnel lookng things in the correct holes. These let air flow into the cartridges and filter out some of the dust in the room. You would be amazed at how much paper dust can be in a room.
Anoter point is that the most common pigment cartridge that seems to clog for me is the magenta cartridge. The black does once in a while, but magenta is fairly often, say once a fortnight. The sublimation cartridges rarely ever seem to cause a clogged nozzle even if I have been away for a couple of months overseas.
I rarely remove the cartridges for refilling. I just carefully pull the coloured bung and top the cartridges up once they are a bit below the level of the label.
So from the operator, towards the back of the machine on the cartridges there is:
Label
Pretty coloured bung in the hole nearest me
Clear plastic filter in the hole further away from me
The other ends of the coloured bungs sitting loose
The little coloured clips that hold the cartridge in place
When you use the extended length cartridges there are soem other things to remember:
The cartridge door has a switch in it. A little plastic curved piece of plastic was supplied with the long cartridges. This MUST be in placeat the lower right of the door opening to trip the switch. I have a small screw, screwed in to keep it in place.
The plastic things you press down to lock the cartridge in place also seem to have a switch in them. You MUST make sure they are correctly 'clicked' up when you put a new or refilled cartridge in place. If you don't, you will get a message on the display telling you that cartridge is low on ink and the printer might fail to print, even though you know you have a full cartridge in place.
THAT Last bit is worth reading again. I have one cartridge slot that occasionally tells me I am low on ink. I replace the cartridge with another and often it works, but I put my refill back in and it says it is low again. I picked up on it when I tried a spare brand new cartridge and got the low ink warning. Does that sound familiar?
Sometimes I have to click the cartridge firmly into position several times to clear the message.
I suspect you might have found the same bug.
Hope this is of some use.
Cheers,
RossD.
Yes the cartridges do have a float inside. The printer throws a bean of light lat reads the ink level. This is thwarted by a black bit of plastic on the refillable carts. However on mine they also have the chip. I presume this counts the amount of runs the cart has done? Still messing with it to get it working again. I have a feeling that the carts I bought were not the best and the company I bought them from give zero support and almost never answer their phone. Swapping the chips around a couple of times looks to have done the trick.
Still had no blockages and printed almost 200 a3 transfer sheets.
I just checked my old original cartridges and the refillables. No chips in either. That means the later model brother you bought must have chips :-( Bummer. I hate printer chips. For now though the only problem I've had in hundreds of pages on all the Brother 6510 printers is the cartridge sensor and the magenta clogging occasionally on the pigment printer, and some odd paper feed problems on the one I use for A3 Dye Sub.
I print a lot on canvas, and so far the Brother 6510 I use for that has been brilliant.
Just another thought on the Brother A3 printer, in my case MFC-J6520DW running Epson compatible pigment ink.
I don't buy from this mob, but they advertise high quality inks and their 480ml bottles are pretty good prices. I have bought ink from the USA and postage wasn't bad.
http://www.inksupply.com/arcink_mispro.cfm
Also, as I mentioned in an early post. Leave the Brother turned ON all the time. It will waste ink, but not as much as an Epson. One of mine does its self clean about 11pm, and the other, some time in the early morning. You can;t change the timer as far as I know.
Also, if you do a standard nozzle check each day, you probably won;t have clogging problems as I do. Sometimes I leave mine a week or two while I'm away, or for a month or more if I'm overseas. So I deserve problems, even though I'm lucky.
On the control panel press Menu
First item on screen should be 'Ink Management' - Press OK
Next you should see 'Test Print. - Press OK
Next it should say 'Print Quality' - Press OK
Then it should say 'Press Start' - Press the GREEN start button (Colour)
It uses stuff all ink, and you get to see the nozzle check. If one set is not showing properly, do a clean. As I've said, with mine it is usually Magenta, but once in a while if I have been overseas for a month or more there might be others. Very rarely it is black.
The other thing to do is obvious. Load the Brother with A4 paper and use it for your day to day printing. And print colour pages regularly.
For a start, you'll notice odd colours if anything is wrong, and also you will keep ink flowing through the nozzles.
I use cheapo ink. I mean really cheap Epson compatible pigment ink. I expect chunks of stuff to float around in it. Once in a while I let the cartridges get low remove them one at a time, and flush with cleaning fluid.
I don;t know if it is a good idea or not. but I do it pretty religiously once each year or two.
Once again Rossdv8 Thanks for the pointers. I have been following your advice and so far no blockages. As a result I am up and running at a fraction of the cost. So far the brother has more than paid for its self and I'm going to get another for dye sub. Have a great Christmas.
Hi Markola,
I was looking at possible replacements for my Brother 6510 printers yesterday just out of curiosity, and I saw Brother MFC-J6520DW are on sale for a couple of hundred dollars. So if mine were to die today there's a chance to replace them and have all my ink cartridges simply interchangeable. The new ones even look prettier.
Let me know when you are going DyeSub. I would suggest you get an ICC profile made by Paul, because you wil probably be doing what I do and putting Epson dye sub inks through the Brother printer. I'll give you some settings to try in GIMP (like Photo Shop, but free). These settings will let you print out some test prints. If you have a flat bed press, you can do what I have suggested in other threads on the forum. Buy some cheap 100% polyester WHITE bed sheets and cut them up and use the pieces to make test prints. Much cheaper than wasting blanks.
And if you PM me when you can I'll give you my email address and make a suggestion for something else to do in Pigment if you keep it under your hat.
Also, think about downloading a program called LibreOffice. It is completely free.
http://www.libreoffice.org/
Google 'LibreOffice Draw' to see lots of stuff about it, and also click Images and you can see some examples of what it can do. It is like an earlier version of CorelDraw and works the same way. But it is also a full Scalable Vector Graphics program.
Just another of those free tools that people just don't know about - so they spend a thousand dollars on commercial stuff. Even if you don;t use it for graphics it is a good office suite and has had things like one click PDF creation for many, many years. For a long time it did things you couldn't even dream of doing with MS Office.
Anyway, Happy Christmas.
have fun,
RossD
Ross and Markola
Have enjoyed reading this thread, mainly interested in the printer choices you made, I've got an Epson with standard inks, dye based I think, and have tried the Jet pro soft stretch transfer papers on some t shirts and have to say the results have been really good.
I know a lot of guys, in fact most of you recommend pigment and I understand the dye based should run and not last but seem to be ok.
I was looking at the Epson 1500 W with a ciss system rather than refillable cartridges should things go as I hope for the t shirts for image transfers (I do have a solvent printer with printable vinyl but actually like the look and feel of the ink transfered image better.
Bob
Any time you're reading anything I've written in a thread, please remember I am a hobbyist. Think market stall quantities. It would be a rare day when I would sell more than 20 canvases and 40 mugs. The average day is more like half that. So I can justify experimenting with stuff that should not work. And I like doing unusual stuff, like polymer coating pre-stretched canvas and sublimating to it.
So while what I write is about my practical experiences (and my experiences with Brother printers has been excellent compared to Epson) there are some really compelling reasons people relying on this work for a living tend to use Epson.
I usually can't see a lot of difference in the work I do because I work almost entirely with landscapes. But if you are working mostly with skin tones or with logos, you might want to consider using inks formulated for your specific printer, and even having an ICC profile done for your pigment printer.
I do a lot of canvas wall art. and the same think applies to canvas as does to Dye Sublimation. You get different degrees of white in the substrate. At the moment the canvas I have for my pigment prints is not as bright a white as the canvas I was using 6 months ago. So all my prints look just a little different.
Which meant I either need to change canvases, or, have a profile done to suit them.
Cheers,
RossD and Markola
I've also been following this thread with a great interest, and I must say it's been a treasure trove of great info. I'm a newbie that is very keen in getting into Printing T-shirts and canvas to start with and latter get into Mugs and ceramic tiles.
Initially I was thinking of getting an Epson Workforce WF-2650-DWF or other similar WF series which uses pigment ink. The main reason for picking Epson is the fact that since I live in Madeira Island we have an Epson Shop here if I need any maintenance.
But, after reading your very convincing and pretty detailed posts I'm now inclined towards a Brother printer. Problem is we don't have a Brother shop here in the island, so in case of maintenance I'd need to send to mainland Portugal which believe me, is always a bit of a hassle.
I'm particularly keen to know more about your canvas wall art. I take a lot of photos around the island so I have lots of great looking scenic shots of this very rugged, but spectacular island which I want to transfer to canvas. From what you say, you are using your Brother to print onto canvas, is that correct?
Would love to know more about this, if you are willing to share your experiences
Gil
Hi Gil,
If you look again at the beginning of this thread, I hope you'll see it is not an advertisement for Brother printers :-) The original poster was looking for ideas and I happen to use Brother because they have some A3 models which are priced cheaply enough to be considered throw away items if they break.
The only possible reason I can see for you to choose a Brother over the Epson Workforce WF-2650-DWF, is that some Brother printers are A3 size and I believe the Epson 2650 is only A4. If you plan to print small canvases I think A3 is a necessity. I tried A4, they look lousy. As you will see below, even A3 is small.
However, Epson have some A3 printers that are affordable. And you have a place nearby that sells Epson. It will probably cost you more to import Brother printers with no support than to use Epsons with support.
So some of the things you would need to ask Epson.
Can you get large refillable cartridges like the ones we use in our Brother printers?
If you can't, can you get an easy to install CISS?
Do they have an A3 model that will take A3 canvas sheets?
Can you get bulk pigment inks that are affordable?
By using Brother printers with Epson inks, you will lose some of the vibrant appearance of the colours. Especially if you choose to use the newest Epson inks, and if you can get a high quality white canvas. I make prints for a mass tourist market for people who buy on impulse, and are not looking for the highest possible quality. And I use my own photos, so only I know if the product is the same as the original. They are simple A3 hangings (not stretched). Just hung like a poster.
Here are a couple of rejects I kept from when I was experimenting with ideas and methods of hanging them. I have settled on a simple cost effective and more buyer friendly method since then, but it will give you an idea how the idea started out.
http://www.dyesubforum.co.uk/vbforum...tid=3172&stc=1http://www.dyesubforum.co.uk/vbforum...tid=3173&stc=1
BTW, the pictures are not blurry, my camera was not still :-)
Thanks Ross
From what you say and the questions you ask it looks like I have a lot of reading and research to do. I'll need to find out if the Epson WP models can print on canvas or not. The WP-7610 and 7620 are A3 and use pigment inks and cost between €250-€320, considerably more expensive than the equivalent Brother printers.
Madeira is a very touristy island and I also want to take advantage of this fact by making use of the thousands of photos I have taken over the years and canvas was my first choice.
Initially I read about using quality Neenah paper transfers onto canvas. Then I read your posts and became very interested in printing direct to canvas, but always thought that a fairly expensive printer was needed, which at the moment I can't really afford.
The method you use to hang the canvas is very interesting and very practical for tourists to take with as they don't occupy so much space as a full frame would. What are those 2 bits of wood attached to the canvas called?
You say that by using Epson inks the Brother loses vibrancy. Does it lose a lot or only a little?. How about good quality 3rd party pigment inks like OCP from Germany, will the Brother do well on canvas using them?
Thanks
Gil
Hi Gil,
I use a number of diffrent methods to produce my work. The canvas A3 prints actually got me started before I discovered Dye Sublimation. You can buy pads of 10 pages of A3 canvas, but it is sometimes hard to get really nice bright white. I think that, more than the less vibrant inks, is the difference for me. However, Epson has an ink called 'ultrachrome' and on really bright white canvas using a custom ICC profile it is specatcular. We have a member here w called Paul who can give you all the information you need about profiles and can create one for you for a very reasonable charge. Do some searches in the forum for ICC Profiles.
Again, the reason I use Brother is because I like them and because they are cheap here. Retail for an A3 is about $250 and on special $195. I can print hundreds of A3 pages then just throw the printer away if it breaks. So far though they are fine for me. The reason I'm suggesting Epson for you is just availability and service :-)
The hangers are based on the old idea of hanging posters on walls in the 1970s. Almost every shared flat had a modern poem called 'Desiderata' on the wall in A4, hung from plastic strip top and bottom. We also had bigger posters of bands and hippie stuff. Because the plastic poster strips are hard to get here these days, I tried wooden strips in a couple of sizes also. Some people actually ask for the wood, so now I do 3 different things.
I tried the idea of heat transfer early on (a few years ago) and discovered most canvas is treated with a coating to make the ink sit on top of the canvas. Applying a heat transfer (I used Jetpro SofStretch) often peeled this coating off. So I decided to print direct to canvas. There's a setting for that on Brother printers and I guess also on most others.
Here's another A3 wall hanging from my early jobs. Now I cut the ends of the hanger even with the canvas.
http://www.dyesubforum.co.uk/vbforum...tid=3177&stc=1
Here's one using Dye Sublimation. A3 print onto a pre-stretched canvas. The canvas has to be treated with a polyester coating first for this to work and be permanent. These are expensive, but popular with customers.
http://www.dyesubforum.co.uk/vbforum...tid=3178&stc=1
So basically, there is no framing and stretching to do. Just treat the canvas, then apply the sublimated print just as if you were printing a shirt.
By the way, they are only blurry because I'm using really low resolution images to post on the forum.