Printer to replace the Epson Photo 1500W for sublimation...

[malkram]

Will follow this thread. Do you think the profile you are going to make for the P600 will be suitable for P800 too ? Thx

[socialgiraffe]

Great post and really nice to see another supplier contributing to this great forum.

If you want someone to road test a printer for high volume then give me a shout. Currently printing about 1000 A4 Black only dye sub sheets a week. That is why I love the 1500 as it handles that sort of volume without any issue.

[InkExpress]

That's a great post to update us with, and perfectly timed for me. I was just discussing this afternoon with my wife about getting an A3 printer. I see another supplier sell a P600 converted for use with sublimation ink that they bundle with film that you print on rather than paper to 'sublimate' onto cotton. It only does light shirts at the moment because no white ink but it can be used as a sublimation printer as normal if you you like. It comes in at over £1k though.

I'll definitely keep reading here to see how you get on. But dont take too long lol ;-)

Hi Tubstar, yes I think the item you are referring to is the Reveal system for printing onto cotton. Our setup will be a 'standard' sublimation setup for printing on to polyester or polycotton materials as well as all other sublimation coated items.

I will be keeping this thread as up to date as possible as things progress with the printers we are planning to test.

Alex

Will follow this thread. Do you think the profile you are going to make for the P600 will be suitable for P800 too ? Thx

Yes, potentially they would be suitable for the P800. If we get good results with the profile and the P600 I would be happy to supply it FOC to anyone using the same setup on a P800 for testing. I may also look into getting a P800 to test myself depending on how things go with the P600.

Great post and really nice to see another supplier contributing to this great forum.

If you want someone to road test a printer for high volume then give me a shout. Currently printing about 1000 A4 Black only dye sub sheets a week. That is why I love the 1500 as it handles that sort of volume without any issue.

Thanks Socialgiraffe, we may well want to send a few out to test the water to see how they handle printing in the 'real world'. Hopefully the thread will be of interest to the forum users and keep them informed of whats out there as well as showing how we work in terms of testing the inks and printers before putting them out for general sale.

Alex

[JMugs]

P800.......ohhh I have gone from interested to Magpie mode of "OOOOOOOHHHHHHH New Shiny thing".....
Janners

[Boyan]

P600 is the default printer for DIY DTG printer, that should say something.

I am pretty happy with the 1500W printer for sublimation. For the money i believe its the best thing. Don't see any reason for more expensive models if not bigger printing area or roll set up. Though some of my friends around have gone to the Ecotank models, maybe for the ease of use.

I have had 0 issues with the CISS except that tanks unglued once. I know, it's in the manual to put something underneath. Now they are seriously glued to printer using heat gun. A little alcohol and could be easily removed without any mark.

So for me only the roll setup could make me buy a more expensive printer.

[Justin]

I agree that the 1500w is perfect in many ways but they're no longer possible to source and these are the only obvious solutions....maybe we should commission our own sublimation printer!

[InkExpress]

I agree that the 1500w is perfect in many ways but they're no longer possible to source and these are the only obvious solutions....maybe we should commission our own sublimation printer!

As Justin said, we are aware of how good the 1500W printer is / was. But as it is now end of life and unavaialble (unless you pay £500+ for one of the last new stock models on Amazon / eBay) the only options are the XP-15000 which currently has no CISS or RIC or the SC-P600.

As the SC-P600 is capable of using DTG pigment inks it seems to me to be a good basis to work from as we know the printing head can handle the high viscosity found with sublimation inks / DTG pigment inks. Its more a necessity that a good quality / stable A3 printer with 6+ colours is required which makes me look at the SC-P600 as a potential alternative. Granted its more money than the 1500W used to be but as they are on longer available it leaves very little choice in the market.

Alex

[Boyan]

What about China? They must have millions of printers in stock ? I am almost 100% sure they still produce even older models or have a stock of them. Not to speak of that they have their own brands of printers based on Epson parts. That they actually still produce. The parts, i mean.

[InkExpress]

What about China? They must have millions of printers in stock ? I am almost 100% sure they still produce even older models or have a stock of them. Not to speak of that they have their own brands of printers based on Epson parts. That they actually still produce. The parts, i mean.

We looked into sourcing alternative versions from other market areas; the 1430 for example is the US/CA version of 1500W. The trouble with foreign models is the need for a power inverter or converter and the lack of support we would get from the foreign distributors. As an individual buying 1 or 2 units it could work but we work on 100+ of any particular model so a lot of capital would be at risk.

Alex

[InkExpress]

Progress with Epson Surecolor SC-P600-

Started working on the Surecolor SC-P600, for now this will be our main focus A3 printer until things start to develop with the XP-15000. We ordered a brand new SC-P600 which arrived late Friday afternoon so didn't have a chance to get started until today. First thing we noted with the new SC-P600 compared to our previous one (purchased a few years ago) was that Epson must have made a hardware change to the printer as were unable to modify it to run on a chipless firmware.

This is not the end of the world, and the printer works perfectly well on the standard chipped cartridge ink system setup we have sold for a number of years an it works very well.

Ink System-

We started by making the ink system, we make the majority of our ink systems to order from component parts we hold in stock, This way we can spec our own system, tubing length and orientation of the tubes to make it as neat as possible. Once completed the system was filled with Inktec Sublinova Smart DTI sublimation inks included the Light Black (LK) and Light Light Black (LLK) inks.

Its been mentioned in a previous reply to this thread that the SC-P600 uses Matte Black (MK) and Photo Black (PK) ink channels, for this only the standard Black (BK) Inktec ink is required and both ink tanks MK/PK are filled with this ink.





Fitting ink system-

With the ink system filled with ink it was on to fitting the system. As the printer was brand new we decided to fit the ink system for hte initial ink charge rather than the genuine Epson inks, this would mean not having to worry about recharging the ink lines to remove the standard ink and draw the sublimation ink through.

Fitment is extremely easy on the SC-P600, the ink cartridge cover is removed by pushing the cover to the left to 'pop' the hinge point. The cartridges clip into their corresponding slots.

We also have some neat lasercut acrylic inserts to press the microswitches to tell the printer the ink cartridge cover and main cover are both closed.





Testing and making ICC profile-

As expected the initial nozzle check pattern was perfect, we left the printer on the PK (photo black) ink channel choice. Other than allowing varying paper types to be selected there is NO need to change the printer from PK to MK ink channels, it prints exactly the same on both ink types and only wastes ink changing from one to other.



We have started to make the ICC profile as I can immediately tell the inks are too far from the original to allow the printer to be used without an ICC. We have decided to make a 'Premium' profile over a standard profile. A premium profile uses 4 swatch sheets in total whereas the standard only 2. Each sheet contains 510 individual coloured swatches so the profile will be generated from 2040 individual colours we hope this will give further improvement over a 6 colour printer such as the 1500W.

The profile swatch sheets are printed using the Adobe ACPU which is a utility to allow for colour management to be turned off, something that is no longer available on later versions of Adobe Photoshop. Having no colour management whilst printing the swatch sheets is imperative.

Profile Swatch sheets-





When printing the profile swatch sheets we set the printer to 'Epson Glossy Paper' (this is because the printer is using the PK photo black ink channel) paper choice makes no difference to how the printer prints. It just ensure the printer produces a good quality finish. ICM was turned OFF and quality was set to MAX Quality.

We did however find that on MAX quality the sublimation paper bulged and curled under heavy ink saturation causing scuff marks where the printing head caught the paper. This was simply resolved by changing to 'Quality' rather than MAX Quality setting.

Scuff marks from MAX Quality mode shown below-



With the 4 sheets printed it was on to transferring; we opt to heat press out ICC colour swatches onto bright white sub coated aluminium sheets. These have the brightest, whitest coating and are also perfectly flat like a sheet of paper so are idea for sublimating on to for this purpose.





Colour swatches following heat pressing process shows a good ink release as we expected and good solid colours on each swatch. The 4 swatch sheets will now be scanned and a profile generated using the X-Rite color profiler. Hopefully we will have the ICC profile ready towards the end of the week and can then begin testing the printer and its capabilities on various substrates and papers (standard sublimation, high release papers and 3D film)

We will update you all as soon as we have further developments.

Alex