Looking to purchase a printer for printing custom designs, need something that can print onto tissue without
bleeding & also would need to print at least 6foot long by about 20" wide, Anyone have any ideas as to what
printer is used by the people already in this business.
The Epson Stylus Pro 7600 to 7880 with Ultrachrome inks or the HP Z2100 or Z 3100 with Vivera inks. Both come in 24" models. The kind of media you use will determine the image quality. I find feeding the media is a lot easier on the Epsons since it is done more manually. The HP Z series have an auto feed that can be very finicky about what you are trying load into it. The image quality that you can get on both the Epsons and HPs is excellent. You will find the colors will change some on the image when you glass the board. Creating a calibrated workflow can fix this but you’ll need calibration equipment and software and some time spent on trial and error. A plus in this department the HP Z series come with a built in photospectrometer which allow you create custom paper profiles. There is 90.5" limitation in Photoshop so if you want to print longer you will have to invest in a RIP or tile your image in Illustrator. I’ve been told that you can also tile in Corel Draw . Be ready to spend money on ink cartridges. When you print big you’ll burn thru a lot of ink fast.
Thanks for the help Atomized, are you using these printers yourself, i was wondering if they could also be
used for say vinyl car stickers, is the ink (uv)colorfast, if i invest in one it would be good to think it could do
other stuff too. I use corel at the moment for designs so it should work for me with these printers, what is RIP?
Sorry for all the Q’s it just there isnt much info out there for these machines.
I use an Epson 7600 24" and an HP Z3100 44". Both printers use water based inks and are designed for the fine art/photography Giclée market. The inks are pigment based and UV resistant. The vinyl car stickers and vehicle wraps are usually done on industrial large format solvent based sign printers like the Rolands that cost anywhere from $15,000 to $100,000. You can print on adhesive backed vinyl media with water based inks but you must seal it under a clear film to protect it from the elements. A RIP (Raster Image Processor) is more powerful print driver that has features not found in the regular print drivers that come with the printer software. In the case of these printers it’s usually a postscript interpreter.
Here are some links:
http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/jsp/ProImaging/ProductDetails.do?sku=SP7880K3&BV_UseBVCookie=yes
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/ga/WF02a/18972-18972-3328061.html?tafcjnef=fy08&ppc=DSp71849747
Cheers for those links Atomized that gives me a good bit of info to mull over…
Any good contacts for tissue roll supply, its hard to find anything like this here in Ireland.
The Epson 7600 sounds like the right one to get. Can you get the lam paper by the roll?
http://www.mindspring.com/~dba-interwest/www/web10.htm
Also you might try experimenting with non woven interfacing commonly known as Pellon. You can find that at any sewing/fabric store. I’m pretty sure that’s the “fleece” stuff some are using.
Here’s an idea. You don’t need a 20" wide printer. Use the boards stringer / stringers to break up the design. Print your artwork for one side of the stringer then the other. So if your board is 20" wide you will only neet to print approx. 10" wide graphics. I have an epson 1280 that will print off a roll. It is only 12" wide…but that’s plenty if you ude the stringer to break up your design. Besides…the stringer will show through the rice paper anyway.
Just a thought. Layup might be a little more difficult, but when I do cloth inlays I usually use the same technique…and it works fine.
Seems they dont make the Epson7600 anymore so it looks like the 7880 is the one.
Tried to contact the link you gave for the tissue but had no response, are
they still in operation? On holiday? or maybe they dont want to ship to Ireland & are
ignoring my mail? Is this the only contact for the tissue rolls?
I just finished talking to the lady at Interwest and apparently they’re shy about dealing with orders from outside the USA. You could try calling the phone number listed on their web page and see if they’ll do it anyway. They import the paper from Japan, so there must be some company there that sells it. The 7600, we’ve had for a few years now, it uses 7 color cartridges. The 7800 and 7880 where the models that followed it, they use 8 color cartridges. You may find a used 7600 or 7800 by searching online.
I got a reply from them at last but … heres her reply HI Sorry I did not reply sooner. I don’t sell outside the U.S. since I cannot verify Visa info. What others have done was to have someone in the U.S. order the paper and then ship to the person overseas. Is this possible for you?
Nancy I dont quite know what she means by verifying visa, i buy stuff on the net all the time from sellers in the US, ebay etc. She also didnt give me any hint of her prices, so im still in the dark in more ways than one. As i dont know anyone in the US who can do this for me, i think i have come to a dead end…
Thats too bad. It’s kinda a mom & pop operation from what I can gather. I just bought 50 feet from them for $40 push tax and shipping. You may try experimenting with Pellon which is a non woven fabric called interfacing which comes in all sorts of weight and textures, some of which looks just like rice paper. You can usually find the stuff at fabric/sewing stores. It comes off a roll and is usually sold by the yard. I think that’s what the Freaks of Fashion guys in Germany are probably printing on.
Thanks for talking with Nancy, Those freak guys use a kind of material like fine silk, i got a few free samples off them last year but they were
pretty expensive & it tended to frey at the edges. Im still trying to track down a supplier of the lam tissue.
Managed to get Nancy to supply me the tissues, she was really helpfull in the end.
when loading into the epson 7880 using the heavyweight silky paper are you using a backing sheet
or feeding it in by hand without the backing paper sheet/?
I have an older Epson 2200 and I use a backing page with silky heavy but it bleeds…and doesnt hold a sharp line
Any solution for this?
You can do it both ways. The quality of the print has a lot to do with the settings you use. I’m on a 7600 with a PC and I’ve had more consistent results using a backing sheet. I’ve also printed without one by turning down the suction. If the ink is spreading an giving you rough edges or puddling, try increasing the drying time between passes -or- lower your print resolution -or- back off on the color density -or- any combination of those three.
I figure I should follow up and show some pics on the image/edge quality that you can get. The body of the board is air brushed and the flowers are printer output. The blue pin line is painted on the sanded hotcoat before it’s glossed. Notice on how completely transparent the SilkyHeavy ricepaper becomes when glassed.
Hello
I would also Love to be able to print my own “larger” decals…
After reading your posts, it seems you got a printer and was in a testing stage.
If you dont mind telling me, How did it go ? and how much did you pay for the setup (not including wasted materials)
One suggestion I can give you is, they make these modified print cartriges that are basically tube fed from large bottles of ink
It looks like they just put a small tube into the refill hole and the other end into a glass jar of ink.
The people I know with these say they buy the ink about 500mls at a time for about 20$
and the cartridges run about 20$ each too
with 8 cartridges yes its an expencive setup , but gotto be much much cheaper in the long run.