What printer for flags?

[Chunk]

I am wanting to offer personalised flags and would like some advice on a suitable printer for probably 5x3ft and maybe 6x4ft, It would be the cheaper style flags that you can get a the football for £5-£6 each. Can anyone recommend a good starting printer and place for materials.

[arko]

Hi Chunk. You are probably looking at some really expensive pieces of kit to colour print at that size. Maybe screen printing would be cheaper or if the designs are not too complex and have too many colours, vinyl layering would/could be an option. ....... or even sourcing out the work to someone who already does a similar thing.

[Chunk]

Hi Arko, thanks for the reply, I was thinking it was maybe a solvent printer job so it would be well out of my reach, but hoped there might be a cheaper option. It would be for quite detailed designs, was thinking about out-sourcing but I think there would be a decent market for these due to some of the customers I have. I would imagine to run at least 50-100 of each design but I have no idea if that is enough to be able to sell for around the £5 mark.

[arko]

I thought solvent inks were for vinyl printing. If you are printing onto canvas type cloth, you would probably be needing a different ink? And if you do source the jobs out to start with, it would give you an idea of return on layout, save the profit and then invest, after considering the viability, in a printer to do the job yourself.

[socialgiraffe]

Hi Chunk

You will be wanting something along the lines of a wide format Roland or Mimmaki with Solvent or Ecosol Max inks... Not cheap but do come up regularly on places like ebay :-)

You will also need a good sewing machine :-)

Good luck

[Chunk]

Thanks for the replies, I am not sure but I thought the solvent inks was used for most outdoor stuff now, was hoping for a cheaper option but as I feared it seems like the best option (for most things). Don't think I would have enough all round work to justify a solvent printer at the moment and I haven't used one before so I will start reading up on them for the future. A slight consolation is that we can do the sewing part :) (or I should say she can sew, lol)

[arko]

There you go... thats why I use this forum as well.... I learn new things most days.

[ArferMo]

Trouble with solvent printers is they DON'T like sitting around doing nothing.

[socialgiraffe]

I am not sure but I thought the solvent inks was used for most outdoor stuff now

It probably is, but then I suspect you would not be printing a flag unless it could go outside :-) You can dye sub them and Pisquee may be the man to talk to as I am pretty sure he can handle that size. The printing process maybe a bit more expensive, but I think the material will be considerably less than stuff for Solvent.

Trouble with solvent printers is they DON'T like sitting around doing nothing.

Old machines perhaps, but the newer machines are as happy as Larry to do nothing. I often think they are like the youth of today, take all your money but will happily sit around and not get off its backside and look for jobs :-)

[ArferMo]

Thanks that's good to know only down side is the newer ones cost as much as a bloomin car