We are in the market for a new 64" wide sub printer, and the dealer we've been talking to are steering us towards HP's Stitch printers. Sublimation printers which still use thermal print heads (which only cost a few £100 rather than £1000, are user replaceable in 20 minutes!)
Sawgrass' patents which have expired, covered them for sublimation ink which was protected whilst in a thermal print head (they gave up on this when Epson released printers with piezo heads)
So, seemingly, HP have taken what SG had tried to go with, and when the patent expired have run with it.
Interestingly, is that gives HP, for the moment at least, a closed market on their printers - that there won't be alternative inks for their printers for a while at least, although the prices quoted are comparable to other pro level bulk litres of sub link. They also have their own transfer papers to.
The user replaceable heads appeals - the old Epson 9600s we have seem to go on forever, and aren't too much of a pain to clean dampers and swap heads. We have two Epson 11880 with blocked heads or dampers that we have given up on.
Also, there is built in spectros on the Stitch - but I am yet to find out how that works as the colours are obviously different before transfer.
I have had test prints sent, and have transferred them to our lampshade fabric (very tight weave poly satin) and the quality of print is OKish - the resolution is there, but colours are washed out with a definite pinkish hue to them - compared to the same files printed on our 7 colour 9600 with our own ICC profiling. I will definitely need to know we can keep doing our own profiling.
That is my other concern, and why we got our artwork printed onto their transfers papers for us to put onto our fabric - moving from 7 colours back down to four which I vowed never to do after we moved from 4 colour (Epson 4400) nearly 10 years ago.