EPSON SC-F100 & SC-F500 quality issues

[JMugs]

Doesn't sound too good. If my old ricoh sg 3110 can produce clean crisp images you really would expect a newer and considerably more expensive printer to surpass it. I have just had my last 1500w die, it was better than the ricoh on bigger photo prints, but general mug printing was fairly comparable.
Janners

[mrc1312]

No it doesn't sound good, and I really doubt there is much that can be done about it but I will update the thread when I hear anything back from EPSON.

My thoughts at the moment are that I will keep the SC-F500 since for fabric substrates the results are amazing and this is mainly what I will use it for.

As for the SC-F100, I can't really justify keeping it if I can't get a mug out of it that is of a sellable quality. I actually found some mugs the other day that I made using my first ever sub printer which was an ET-2700 and it has none of the issues and is half the price.

[JMugs]

Fingers crossed for you that all works out well one way or the other.
Janners

[pw66]

Do you think that part of the problem cold be that epson ink isn't as good as sublinova?

[mrc1312]

Do you think that part of the problem cold be that epson ink isn't as good as sublinova?

I don't think so. I think that it's just the way the F100 & F500 print the lighter colours.

I'm not an expert so this could all be wrong, but from my own research I've looked into how the printers work, I figured out that they use dithering and halftoning to create thousands of different colours from only 4 actual colours of ink.

Dithering/halftoning uses many tiny little dots to make up each colour. I think what is happening is on small designs e.g. mugs the dot pattern for the light colours too spaced out as when printed the dots are visible, which then transfers over to the mug with a grainy effect.

When printing darker images, the dots are much more dense and there is no visible dithering/halftoning.



What has basically happened is as someone said above I have made the mistake of underestimating the L1800, which with being a 6 colour printer as well as having a much higher resolution 5,760 x 1,440 DPI compared to F100 (600 x 1200dpi) and the F500 is (2400x1200 dpi) it just a better printer for printing anything that requires a high level of detail.

I'm still going to see it through with EPSON support and see what level 3 come back with. The latest update from them is they are planning on running some tests on the F100/F500 at their facility and I should be hearing back from them early next week.

[pw66]

I can't believe the stupidity/arrogance of Epson now that they are trying to move in to the small format Dye Sub market.
For the last decade the industry has made the 1500w/L1800 dynasty the go to non Sawgrass desktop printer to use due to its build quality and top class print quality. Epson ignore that, make the L1800 unavailable in the key US and Western European markets, and introduce the F100.....

You can lead a horse to water.
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[gazfocus]

To be fair, the F100 is built on the ET2710 or similar and I’ve not seen any of these issues with those printers. The F500 is built on the T3200 I believe. This is going to be either an issue with the OPs specific printers, or a driver issue. Because I know of people with the F500 and get awesome results. I also see a lot of people with the low end Ecotanks in various Facebook groups and those are fine also.

Obviously, a standard ecotank doesn’t have such a restrictive driver so that is probably where the issue stems from.

[mrc1312]

Just thought I'd update this thread as I'm not really getting anywhere with EPSON, they have printed out the same file I sent them and they printed/pressed it onto textile fabric for 1min/170c and apparently it was fine.

I have replied saying that the issue is only visible on hard substrates and they need to test it on a mug or similar. Not had anything back from them yet and it's been a week so far. I've noticed that there seem to be a couple of other threads on the forum regarding issues with the SC-F500.

[mrc1312]

To be fair, the F100 is built on the ET2710 or similar and I’ve not seen any of these issues with those printers. The F500 is built on the T3200 I believe. This is going to be either an issue with the OPs specific printers, or a driver issue. Because I know of people with the F500 and get awesome results. I also see a lot of people with the low end Ecotanks in various Facebook groups and those are fine also.

Obviously, a standard ecotank doesn’t have such a restrictive driver so that is probably where the issue stems from.

True, I did use to have a ET-2700 and it was ok.

I've used a couple of RIP software trials which bypass the driver using their own settings, and didn't really get much improvement if any at all.

[UK Printed Mugs]

Any update from folks on the F100? As a mug company we are needing to move from SG400 but we are not getting any good colour accuracy from SG500 or Epson L805. One would of thought a dedicated sublimation printer would be designed to give perfect prints but also heard F100 is not accurate AND does not allow for custom icc profiles. F500 better apparently but we want to continue using pre cut mug paper. At a loss as to what printer is best to go forward printing accurate colours onto mugs for clients.