Nicholas Hellmuth | April 2011 Textile Printers › comparative-reviews... · 2012-08-07 · “Dye sublimation ink” is the technical name for the ink to print onto transfer paper

Nicholas Hellmuth | April 2011

China Sign Expo, Guangzhou 2011

Textile Printers &Heat Transfer

Dye Sublimation Machines

Textile Printers & Heat Transfer Dye Sublimation Machines


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Textile Printers &Heat Transfer Dye Sublimation Machines

Introduction

90% of the disperse dye direct-to-fabric printers were at the D-PES expo in Dongguan, the same week, one hour away from Guangzhou.

But there was one or two comparable printers at Sign China Expo in Guangzhou, and there were several heat transfer units there which were not at Dongguan.

Because most textile printers were at Dongguan, and not at Guangzhou, this report is only a few pages. What was available at Guangzhou was mainly LED and LCD signage. For wide-format inkjet printing, Dongguan had most of the printers and 80% of the ink companies. Guangzhou, however, had 80% of the media and substrate manufacturers.




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General comments: Direct to fabric printers

“Disperse dye” is the technical name for the ink used to print direct to fabric. You then sublimate it in a heated system, usually at the bottom of the printer.

“Dye sublimation ink” is the technical name for the ink to print onto transfer paper. You take the paper and feed it through a heat press parallel with the polyester fabric. The image is transferred from the heat press to the polyester.

The color has more pop from true dye sublimation ink via a heat press. But you have two steps: printing on a printer; and heat transfer on a heat transfer machine. So your time and machine costs are more (result is better color).

If you use the absolute world’s best disperse dye ink. If you use the absolutely best sublimation system (for direct to fabric) you can come close to heat transfer quality. But most people use cheap ink, cheap sublimation system, cheap polyester, and don’t use the proper RIP or software.

I can’t keep track of how many times I see weak colors coming out of on-board sublimation systems. Yet when I see the booth of Century Star, their colors really POP.

When I see a booth of DigiFab (in America) their colors are among the best. So it takes good equipment, a really good RIP software, the best ink: and experience if you wish to achieve the best color.

General view of China Sign Expo, Guangzhou 2011



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Dye Sub Printers at Guangzhou expo, 2011

FINA

FINA is a brand name of Aeromatrix. They use FINA and ORASIGN in China since they are not allowed to use the brand name Infiniti. For a year or so these brands were associated with the Honghua factory (Hangzhou Hon-ghua Digital Technology Stock Co.) that originally made Infiniti and Challenger printers. But if I understand it, that factory now sells their own printers under the Atexco brand. Infiniti and Challenger printers are made in the Universal factory in ShenZhen.

This is typical of printer politics in China. Brands come and go; facto-ries come and go; alliances come and go.

The FINA catalog featured the name of standwell (sic), a company I have not heard of previously. What is worth pointing out is that who-ever the factory is, they continue to use the Xaar 126 and Xaar 128 printheads. Some models of FINA printers use more modern heads, but those two models are about ten years old.

They show zero UV-cured printers, and one standard textile printer, in typical configuration: a normal printer perched atop either a Cen-tury Star or a Shanghai Color sub-limation unit. In this case it is from Shanghai (SAER).

ORASIGN booth.



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Mimaki JV33-160

TrendVision ink booth exhibited the Mimaki JV33-160 printer at their booth, and a NM-X1700 heater.

TrendVision exhibits Mimaki JV33-160 printer.

Mimaki JV33-160 printing media samples at TrendVision booth.



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Mutoh ValueJet 1628TD/2628TD

Mutoh ValueJet 1628TD dye sublimation printer.

Heater in front of the Mutoh ValueJet 1628TD printer.



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TwinJet

TwinJet is the brand name of Inkwin ink company. The name of the model is TX-1816. Like many comparable printers it uses Epson DX5 printheads.

The best way to sell your own ink is logically to sell your own printers. DuPont tried this starting in 2004, but they selected a UV-cured printer that was immature and so ex-pensive to repair that DuPont had to exit the market for UV-cured printers within about four years.

DuPont also attempted to sell textile printers. But the printer was too complex and eventually got a bad reputa-tion due to unhappy end-users. So for a second time Du-Pont abandoned the wide-format inkjet printer hardware world. Now they sell only textile ink.

Since InkWin has capability to make their own textile ink I would assume they are using their own ink and not that of DuPont or Sensient.

InkWin rebrands printers from Astarjet and comparable companies. You can see this simply by looking at the TwinJet and then looking at other printers at the same Guangzhou expo. Only difference is the color, the brand label, and perhaps minor difference specifications. But not many ink companie have their own printer factory: they simply rebrand. This is natural and the way everyone does it most efficiently.

Inkwin Ink booth exhibits their Twinjet TX-1816 textile printer.



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Heat Transfer Machines at Guangzhou expo, 2011

Eastsign

Eastsign more often exhibits honeycomb sandwich board material. I do not often see their full range of thermal transfer equipment.

It would be interesting to learn if they are OEM manufacturer for any comparable equipment sold under other names in Europe or America.

Eastsign is headquartered in Hong Kong.

NoteInclusion of a brand name and photograph in a FLAAR Report is not an evaluation and not a recommendation, neither actual nor implied.

We cannot initiate an evaluation until we have visited the company headquarters and factory. The next step is to visit a customer site and learn how the equipment works out in the real world.

We have not visited any Chinese manufacturer of heat transfer machines, so the list below is a list, but not a recommendation pro or con.

Eastsign heat transfer machines.



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Pengda

Wixi Pengda had a booth both at D-PES in Dongguan, and at the Guangzhou sign expo.

Their Model POD-1700 looks almost identi-cal to the Eastsign EOT-1700. So clearly both machines are made in one factory.

The black POD-1800XS looks similar to systems I saw at D-PES. I will have to look through the more than one thousand pho-tos to see what brand they were under. Of course it may have been in Pengdas’s own booth there!

Back view of the Pengda heat transfer machine.

Pengda heat transfer machine view from the side.



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FLAAR is interested in printing on textiles

We have a long range interest to receate 4th-9th century Mayan fabrics, especially women’s outfits worn in the royal courts and in high status ceremonies in the palaces (as pictured in murals and on funerary vases).

So we are interested in learning how to print on fabrics, especially on cotton (since the ancient Maya raised cot-ton, which is an indigenous plant in Mesoamerica, as well as it was also in Egypt). The Maya also made cloth from the bark of the fig tree. In other parts of Mexico there was probably cloth from various plants of the maguay fam-ily (sisal and so on). I would defer to a historian of clothing on this point.

So our comments on textile printers originates from our own interest.

FLAAR Reports on Textile Printers



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You can find these and more reports at: www.wide-format-printers.NET

These are some of the most

Recent FLAAR Reports (2008-2010)

Introduction to UV Curable Inkjet Flatbed Printers

Most recent UV Printers

There are also even more available from 2009 (some of which are still pertinent).

This is a sample of the

FLAAR Reports on UV for 2010-2011



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UV Printers Manufactured in China, Korea and Taiwan

You can find these and more reports at: www.wide-format-printers.NET

These are some of the most

Recent FLAAR Reports (2008-2010)

Comments on UV Inkjet Printers at Major Trade Shows 2007-2009

UV Flatbed Printersat Graphics of the Americas

TRENDS in 2010

Sign & Digital UK

TRENDS in 2010UV Flatbed

Printers

Wide-format printersFlatbed Cutters

Milan 2010Viscom

Wide-format printersand related

Reklama Moscow 2010

Wide-format printersand related

VISCOM

TRENDS

Frankfurt 2010

There are also even more available from 2009 (some of which are still pertinent).

Here are examples of the TRENDS level of

FLAAR Reports for 2010-2011

Documents

Nicholas Hellmuth | April 2011 Textile Printers › comparative-reviews... · 2012-08-07 · “Dye sublimation ink” is the technical name for the ink to print onto transfer paper