Newbie here. With questions on getting started

[UK Printed Mugs]

I second Justin and quite frankly we have stuck with the sawgrass ink and sawgrass printers. We have never had one issue and have superb support for our suppliers.

[bigj2552]

Have to say BigJ that's really bad advice for a newbie and you should think back to when you started out as well.

A lot of independent research has been done with many of these so called 'cheap' inks and I can tell you for a fact that many do not work. Some work fine to start with and give the impression that all is well. Further down the line they dry out and destroy the Ricoh head. Many sellers are selling standard non gel based inks,vat their own admission, for use in Ricohs.

Best advice from a newbie is get the Ricoh 'Supported' setup, get up and running straight away, tried and tested, ready made profiles and a heck of a lot more from SG. You have lots to learn on your sublimation journey and you'll soon cone to realise the extra pennies per print are well spent. Once you're experienced you might decide to try cheaper routes, products etc. But to start with I wouldn't bother.

Advising a newbie is no place to get into the politics of this and serves to offer no useful information whatsoever.

A better saying I think is, you get out what you put in.

thats your opinion justin.....and i aint suckin up to the boss and agreeing with you lol
i am thinking back when i started out....i/we done it the hard way and learned a hell of a lot more than going the so called support (way over priced) route m8.
also i dont know how you can say its bad advice, when ALL the info one needs is either on here, and most def on youtube when using ciss, other inks, profiles, printers etc etc :rolleyes:...oh sorry, that means people have to WORK, and use there brains to find out a solution...oh my !
taking the time to learn at the start, pays off down the line, as one learns every time something mess's up....
but like i said....thats you opnion

as for inks, i did specify sublinova inks....which arent the crap ones, as you have used them your self..

everyone to there own world bud.....

[Justin]

as for inks, i did specify sublinova inks....which arent the crap ones, as you have used them your self..

But not in Ricoh just to clarify, i used them in 2 wide format printers....both of which are now dead

[ukuwi]

On my journey so far I found one problem to be trying to test different papers with only a profile written for one of them (the cheap one) £6 +vet or something close to that and it out performed all the top brands buy a margin, which led me to conclude just how important these profiles are, maybe I will send off for another couple of profiles for the other papers just to see how they perform against the cheap Chinese one, but a new profile for each paper can get costly especially as I am happy with the results I am getting, or maybe like the saying goes " if it ain't broke, don't fix it.


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[Justin]

Save your money and just use Trupix

[Paul]

as for inks, i did specify sublinova inks....which arent the crap ones, as you have used them your self..

everyone to there own world bud.....

You missing the point here!
Nobody said every ink is crap except sawgrass. All they say is, for newbie is better off to start easy and learn as they go and not create themselves a loads of problem to learn how to fix them .

[ukuwi]

Although it has been a fairly steep learning curve so far and I'm sure I still have a lot to learn, and maybe I did it the hard way, but my long term goal was to get highest quality with the lowest cost and I think I have achieved that.
I get very poor results from Trupix papers and other similar priced papers probably because I don't have an icc profile for those papers, especially colour saturation, so for me I am glad that I did not go down the Sawgrass route though I was very tempted at times. And being forced to have a greater understanding of how to set your system up for optimal results was time consuming but ultimately worth it I feel.


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[The gza]

Reading these post I obviously have a long way to go but as a newbie I do agree it's best to start with a system that's proved to have as lil problems as possible.
Right now if I tried to go against the grain and had problems I wouldn't know where to point the finger.. Is it a problem with my paper, the ink, too much heat, not enough to heat is it the icc etc etc I would rather start with a system that 9-10 cats say works, then make adjustments. I also agree just because it's expensive doesn't mean it's great and cheap doesn't mean crap.
Either way sounds like am gong to be chucking a lot in the bin :frown:

[ukuwi]

Using tried and tested methods would give you a faster return for your investment, the route I have taken I have to factor in the time and money spent testing and how long my ink will last by comparison etc, i am hoping to be in this for the long game as I enjoy this industry so that also has to be factored in over a longer time period, nonetheless its a great feeling when you are getting good results and you feel that your products are ready to sell to the public.

[nibz33]

As a relative newbie I have to say that from a cost point of view I would have given up at the very beginning without the support of Sawgrass' tech team, they really helped me at the start when I was learning to sublimate onto slate. It was turning into a costly exercise scrapping blanks while learning about temperatures and pressures, at that point it was good to know that the printer (Ricoh) and ink (sawgrass) were compatible and set up automatically and all I had to suss out was the temps, time and pressure. I would definitely recommend this set-up for us newbies