Which Printer for Sublimation?

[gazfocus]

Before you reply telling me to search threads etc, hear me out.

When we started doing sublimation (10 years ago) we started out with an Epson workforce printer, refillable cartridges from eBay and Chinese ink that ‘just worked’ without a profile. We were new to the game and we were only doing a handful of mugs per week so all was good.

We quickly progressed to printing a few boxes of mugs per week, then a couple thousand a month, and bought various Epson Ecotanks, had Sublinova inks and had profiles made for our specific set up and all was great….until it wasn’t.

We wanted to move to printing on mug sized paper (238x98mm) and every Ecotank we tried fed the narrow sheets wonky so we eventually made the switch to Sawgrass and ever since then have run two SG500’s. The SG500’s have far outlasted any Ecotank we’ve ever owned and the one we use for mugs has, to date, printed 167k mugs and hasn’t skipped a beat.

However, while I personally don’t mind paying £36 per cartridge, I am sick of being tied to Sawgrasses terrible colour management (or lack thereof). For the second time now I have a genuine Sawgrass Magenta cartridge that has too much red pigment in it which has resulted in loads of mugs wasted, and while I know from experience sawgrass will replace the cartridge, the same can’t be said for the mugs etc. If I had a printer that I could profile, I wouldn’t have this issue.

I also want to add an A3+ printer to our business and have consistent colours but unless I buy an SG1000 I’m not likely to achieve that with the SG500’s in the equation.

So…in terms of printing on mug sheets, I’d really like to know what you guys are all using. Is there a decent Epson printer out there that can handle the mug sheets without being wonky?

I know I’m not going to get an Epson that will print 167K mugs without dying and that’s ok, but as I say, I’m just sick of Sawgrass at this point.


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[GoldRapt]

following.

[malkram]

Hello, I'm into phone cases sublimation.

I use an Epson 4800 (find a 4880 if you can) and a lot of big players in the industry still use this printer (the 4880) as we are speaking, because they also use Sublinova Smart inks which appear to be a standard of quality (at least for phone cases)
Newer models (4900, P5000, P5300, etc.) are not very suitable for Sublinova Smart inks because there is no Green.

[gazfocus]

Hello, I'm into phone cases sublimation.

I use an Epson 4800 (find a 4880 if you can) and a lot of big players in the industry still use this printer (the 4880) as we are speaking, because they also use Sublinova Smart inks which appear to be a standard of quality (at least for phone cases)
Newer models (4900, P5000, P5300, etc.) are not very suitable for Sublinova Smart inks because there is no Green.

Unfortunately the wide format printers such at the 4800/4880/etc are no good for doing mugs in the quantities we do unless you pair it with something like a graphtec cutter to cut the mug sheets from a role. It is something I considered a long time ago but decided it would be way too much faff to be worthwhile.

[UK Printed Mugs]

Hi Gaz. I have been trialling this printer for the past four months using mug paper and Sublinova Smart ink (not the ink it comes with which means all our printers use the same ink) and it is working a treat:
https://www.dyesublimationsupplies.c...mation-printer

Certainly not at fast as Ricoh's and the black isn't as black as Sawgrass but the most impressive desktop printer for mug printing I've used for quite some time.

[hadesign]

Hi, I have the epson SC F100 but aways had dithering when I printed light colours, is this not an issue with the sublinova smart inks? I was going to give up on it as I could not find a work around, I have a few sg 3210dnw which work great with prima ink but it's quite worrying that I can only buy inks from one shop, so looking to future proof.

[JMugs]

Ohhh well timed post. It looks like I may be back printing in the new year. My old Ricoh SG is still running after many years, but how much longer can it last. Just as I was pondering what to do this post pops up. It's like magic.

[JMugs]

Hmmm my SG3100 will need a full set of inks, and it's very old so may die soon.
I am just pondering this Printer as it's just for mugs and I'm printing my own designs, so no worry about artist upset over colours. Looks good value, have I missed something?

Cheers
Janners