I Image S

[Maxie]

I see that M&R have a smaller CTS I Image S.
Does anyone know what they cost?
Will it work with MHM pins?
Can someone who has one comment on the speed, quality, rip etc.
Looks like a great machine for smaller shops.     

[LoneWolf2]

Just placed an order for one today.
Pricing is very competitive with their show special going on until the end of the month.
Quality/rip is the same as the big boy model I believe, just slower and a few other small odds and ends I can't remember.
It can be made to work with the pin system as well if it's like the ST/STE models.

[Maxie]

What do they cost?

[Rockers]

Oh boy, I would love to get one of those.

[244]

What do they cost?

$29,995  plus install

[jvanick]

when our rocket launcher dies we'll be getting one of these for sure.

[DCSP John]

Would love any info possible on the I Image S.
Photos? Specs? E-mailed Alex and was lurking on the M&R site
for anything. Where can one access specifics?

Thanks.  - John

[Maxie]

Price is good, if leased over 5 years about $500 a month plus Int.    I think I spend more than that on film at he moment.
Question will it last five years, in the photographs it looks like it as as well made as the bigger models, just smaller.   
How much does it cost to maintain and what are the ink costs per screen?
If I had one I think I'd hang my Saati LED above it and have it explose as it finishes.
Hopefully it has some signal when the printing is finished that one could connect the lamp timer too.
Looks like a great option for smaller shops.
Rich does $29,995 rally sound better than $30,000?

[jvanick]

it's 'less than 30k' LOL

as far as a signal goes, it's gantry based, so you could likely just put a prox switch somewhere so when the gantry returns to the
home position it trips the timer for the led light.

biggest issue would be setting the different exposure lengths for different mesh counts, etc.

personally, I'd rather do like we do where we start imaging the next screen while the previous one is exposing.

[jvieira]

Has anyone got one of these running?

What's the difference between the S and the ST? Is it just speed? On these kind of machines, how likely is it for the printhead to clog if you don't do a certain number of prints per day?

[ffokazak]

We have an ST .

Difference is amount of print heads. ST can have up to three.

Also the obvious gantry system.

Best move I ever made was cutting my two head down to one head. M&R helped with the transition.

Reason is, you are only risking one head. If an employee strikes it, its about 1100$ . Not 2200$

Clogging, heads wearing out etc are part of ownership. get prepared to spend on new heads. We've got 2 years from heads before.

Plus, calibration Everything seems to slip a bit in our industry over time. it doesn't make it broken, it just needs calibration.

A one head machine is really zero calibration. there is nothing to line up. The image quality we saw from a one head machine is far more crisp than our two head setup ever was. Dots are perfect and there is less downtime.

If you are running 500 plus screens a day, sure you need the speed. But with a creative workflow, the single head didnt slow us down very much at all. Vs film it is still far far superior for quality, pinholes and time.

If I need to replace, the single head in the S wouldn't be a detrimental factor.

[jvieira]

Thanks. I've been out of the board for a while now - and actually out of the "big ticket item" purchasing game for a bit too - so it came as a surprise to me that M&R came up with the S which is in our price range. We don't do 50/100 screens a day, so 1 head is enough for us and it might be worth the change.

I see the obvious advantage with savings in film positives and inkjet ink (about $2500/year for us) and also see quite a few advantages in less steps for the overall production of screens.

Another thing I'm curious is how will the art department work. Even for spot color images, image separation is still a thing, right? You cannot get you customer file in there, tell it how many colors the file has and hit "print", right? I'll still need to have that one person in the art department separating colors and getting everything ready for the operator to print directly on the screen.

[dirkdiggler]

Thanks. I've been out of the board for a while now - and actually out of the "big ticket item" purchasing game for a bit too - so it came as a surprise to me that M&R came up with the S which is in our price range. We don't do 50/100 screens a day, so 1 head is enough for us and it might be worth the change.

I see the obvious advantage with savings in film positives and inkjet ink (about $2500/year for us) and also see quite a few advantages in less steps for the overall production of screens.

Another thing I'm curious is how will the art department work. Even for spot color images, image separation is still a thing, right? You cannot get you customer file in there, tell it how many colors the file has and hit "print", right? I'll still need to have that one person in the art department separating colors and getting everything ready for the operator to print directly on the screen.

Yes you will.

[brandon]

We have an ST .

Difference is amount of print heads. ST can have up to three.

Also the obvious gantry system.

Best move I ever made was cutting my two head down to one head. M&R helped with the transition.

Reason is, you are only risking one head. If an employee strikes it, its about 1100$ . Not 2200$

Clogging, heads wearing out etc are part of ownership. get prepared to spend on new heads. We've got 2 years from heads before.

Plus, calibration Everything seems to slip a bit in our industry over time. it doesn't make it broken, it just needs calibration.

A one head machine is really zero calibration. there is nothing to line up. The image quality we saw from a one head machine is far more crisp than our two head setup ever was. Dots are perfect and there is less downtime.

If you are running 500 plus screens a day, sure you need the speed. But with a creative workflow, the single head didnt slow us down very much at all. Vs film it is still far far superior for quality, pinholes and time.

If I need to replace, the single head in the S wouldn't be a detrimental factor.

This above. We do daily cleanings and we are only about 60 screens or so a day but be prepared for a yearly head replacement. Plus the service tech / hotel / airplane tixs unless you do it yourself. But that will be across all machines since they are machines. And when we do start to average over 100 screens a day we plan on two machines instead of a single faster one. Same reasons as above and if one goes down (which it will sooner or later) you still have the other. We still keep our film output running once a week and if I had a dollar for every time that machine has saved us I would be on vacation now.

[Zelko-4-EVA]

our 2 head i-Image ST has been running on the original heads since 2014.  we print about 60 screens a day. 

we have humidifiers running in the winter to keep the humidity around 40%.