Alright I gotta know... Digital Squeegee questions...

[Admiral]

Whats the 3 screens?

I'm not the one to ask as at the show we were interested in about 10 other M&R products and this one is not in the works for us so I didn't get into it much.

There was a white base, then flash,  cool downs, then a sort of top white flash, cool downs, then I believe a binder for the ink from the Digital Squeegee.

[sqslabs]

The video shows the digital squeegee being great for high color art, but has anyone seen a simple spot color print with it? I doubt customers will come around to the idea of paying $600 for artwork anytime soon, so I'm interested to know if this machine can handle the spot color stuff as well and still look good.

Also seems a bit counter-intuitive to set up three screens and the digital squeegee to print a spot red on black, but maybe that's not what this is for.

Not trying to rain on the parade, I just have trouble seeing this as a machine replacement for the shops that mainly run 1-4 color prints with the odd high color here and there. But maybe I'm having trouble seeing the big picture.

[JeridHill]

This isn't the first of it's kind, it's just a bigger more expensive version. The biggest issue with this currently is you can't do one off's when dealing with white ink. The beauty of direct to garment printing is the ability to do one offs. The best high volume DTG printers give you the ability to do 1,000 shirts with a 1,000 different designs. In my opinion, if you invest in high end automatic screen printing equipment, what's the point of having a digital crossover other than adding something different to the design, like foil, leather or puff ink, etc. Just creating a white underbase only suits the large volume screen shops that could do that with the right film seps and registration system.

There will be people buying it, but the reality is, it's an extremely limited market. Even Kornit's new platform the Vulcan stops you from doing more than one design, you have to run the same job because of the way the platens step. So even though these are cool innovations and awesome to look at, I personally think it's the wrong direction. Again, the beauty of DTG is a one off design, anything else that detracts from that takes the edge away from DTG.

[Homer]

this is incredible, but I guess I don't understand the point of it? at 500k, you are talking big/high volume shops, not us little guys. The larger shops that could afford this investment, aren't they typically set up with multiple high color count presses? Isn't DTG for small run / one off type stuff?


Although, thinking out loud here, you could downsize your presses, move into a smaller building, save on labor, chems, imagine the savings on tape...

[T Shirt Farmer]

I was not that impressed with print quality, muddy colors and lacking crisp detail IMO.

[Maxie]

I was at Long Beach but unfortunately did not look at the M&R machine.
I have a Kornit Paradigm and we print a white base flash and then print digitally.
Why do you need three screens?
We also get good results printing discharge with the digital on that.
Making a screen and registering it is quite slow so it's not designed for small runs unless printing on light shirts where no underbase is needed.
It's great for printing digital with effects, puff, foil or printing a small digital design within a larger screen print.

[zanegun08]

I got a sample shirt from the Digital Squeegee from SGIA New Orleans.  I didn't make it to the show, but should be at Long Beach 2018 and hope they will have an even more improved version there.

I'm super interested in the technology, for me it isn't even a competitor to DTG.  A well equipped shop should have all three technologies.    The issue with traditional DTG, unless you invest in the technology to automate the sales, you lose money or potential to make real money by being tied up on small profitable items.  The makers of the DTG machines should invest in a sales platform for their customers so that they can spend time printing and get orders online.

Ok, back to Digital Squeegee, the print sample I have feels great, almost like Silicon, it is super smooth, colors are vibrant, however the print was engineered for the show, does not have huge coverages of hard to achieve spot colors in the CMYK range, however the gradients are super smooth and overall look is awesome.

This would be perfect for the jobs we struggle with, which are simulated color process jobs at around 80 - 400 pieces.  Of course it can print more, but we spend a lot of time setting up, tweaking colors, print orders, ect. to get a simulated process job looking sometimes just good enough, when this could have the job done quickly.

Also, we have the potential to work with a large streetwear company who want to go more print on demand to lower their overhead of inventory, however I don't think they would be happy with the print quality of a Kornit, or smaller DTG when they are used to traditional screen printing, in this case we could offer them similar results on their existing graphics but do them in much smaller runs (48-72 pieces) to keep a much lower inventory overhead, and also be able to turn restocks quickly as well.

Looking forward to Long Beach to spend some time at the booth and see what this thing can do.  I saw the Kornit a couple years back at Hirsch / MHM but the print looked not much better than a digital heat transfer.  This M&R print looks and feels more like a traditional screen print.

Price is a bit steep, but realistically labor is more expensive and if we could speed up those difficult jobs it isn't that bad.  I head they have a slower 250k range version, but that was just hearsay and I won't know until Long Beach.

[244]

I got a sample shirt from the Digital Squeegee from SGIA New Orleans.  I didn't make it to the show, but should be at Long Beach 2018 and hope they will have an even more improved version there.

I'm super interested in the technology, for me it isn't even a competitor to DTG.  A well equipped shop should have all three technologies.    The issue with traditional DTG, unless you invest in the technology to automate the sales, you lose money or potential to make real money by being tied up on small profitable items.  The makers of the DTG machines should invest in a sales platform for their customers so that they can spend time printing and get orders online.

Ok, back to Digital Squeegee, the print sample I have feels great, almost like Silicon, it is super smooth, colors are vibrant, however the print was engineered for the show, does not have huge coverages of hard to achieve spot colors in the CMYK range, however the gradients are super smooth and overall look is awesome.

This would be perfect for the jobs we struggle with, which are simulated color process jobs at around 80 - 400 pieces.  Of course it can print more, but we spend a lot of time setting up, tweaking colors, print orders, ect. to get a simulated process job looking sometimes just good enough, when this could have the job done quickly.

Also, we have the potential to work with a large streetwear company who want to go more print on demand to lower their overhead of inventory, however I don't think they would be happy with the print quality of a Kornit, or smaller DTG when they are used to traditional screen printing, in this case we could offer them similar results on their existing graphics but do them in much smaller runs (48-72 pieces) to keep a much lower inventory overhead, and also be able to turn restocks quickly as well.

Looking forward to Long Beach to spend some time at the booth and see what this thing can do.  I saw the Kornit a couple years back at Hirsch / MHM but the print looked not much better than a digital heat transfer.  This M&R print looks and feels more like a traditional screen print.

Price is a bit steep, but realistically labor is more expensive and if we could speed up those difficult jobs it isn't that bad.  I head they have a slower 250k range version, but that was just hearsay and I won't know until Long Beach.

The machine will be in Longbeach. You have your pricing confused. We have three versions. The highest priced unit is 325k Medium speed unit is 199k, and the slowest version is 149k. Design at the show was chosen to show standard base print with various digital top coats.

[T Shirt Farmer]

IMO...Full color images DTG is the bees knees, if you do a lot of corporate works and need to hit 2995 Blue or 187 Red or any spot color consistently you are in for a world of hurt.

[244]

IMO...Full color images DTG is the bees knees, if you do a lot of corporate works and need to hit 2995 Blue or 187 Red or any spot color consistently you are in for a world of hurt.

If our patent pending software recognizes that a color cannot be produced using its basic colors the rip will send a file to the i -image to print a screen for that color in hybrid mode.

[JeridHill]

If our patent pending software recognizes that a color cannot be produced using its basic colors the rip will send a file to the i -image to print a screen for that color in hybrid mode.

Now that is an incredible feature!

[zanegun08]

The machine will be in Longbeach. You have your pricing confused. We have three versions. The highest priced unit is 325k Medium speed unit is 199k, and the slowest version is 149k. Design at the show was chosen to show standard base print with various digital top coats.

Good to know, like I said pricing was hearsay, those are much more reasonable.  The sample I got I think was different than the football design that was also running at the show.  Here is a cell phone pic of the print which I think is more vibrant in person due to jpeg / web compression.  Only area's of concern are the CMYK in the squeegee not being very vibrant, which leads to wonder how large areas of spot colors would look.

If our patent pending software recognizes that a color cannot be produced using its basic colors the rip will send a file to the i-image to print a screen for that color in hybrid mode.

Will this also suggest printing a spot color if we aren't running an i-Image, being able to do a hybrid and print some traditional screen printing with some direct to garment would be perfect, things like small text, or large coverages of spot colors, or special effects of course but that typically when we go sim process it is because the full image is sim process, don't have a ton of hybrid type images.

Super excited to see this in person, what benefits would are there to having on a styker vs a Gauntlet III, on a Gauntlet III do you have to take out 3 heads for it to fit in?

[Alex M]

That print came from the DS-4000
M&Rs mid level machine running around 450 per hour.
It was by far the most impressive ver of their DS so far.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[244]

The machine will be in Longbeach. You have your pricing confused. We have three versions. The highest priced unit is 325k Medium speed unit is 199k, and the slowest version is 149k. Design at the show was chosen to show standard base print with various digital top coats.

Good to know, like I said pricing was hearsay, those are much more reasonable.  The sample I got I think was different than the football design that was also running at the show.  Here is a cell phone pic of the print which I think is more vibrant in person due to jpeg / web compression.  Only area's of concern are the CMYK in the squeegee not being very vibrant, which leads to wonder how large areas of spot colors would look.

You have to take out three heads regardless of which press you use. I cant speak for other CTS units, only ours.

If our patent pending software recognizes that a color cannot be produced using its basic colors the rip will send a file to the i-image to print a screen for that color in hybrid mode.

Will this also suggest printing a spot color if we aren't running an i-Image, being able to do a hybrid and print some traditional screen printing with some direct to garment would be perfect, things like small text, or large coverages of spot colors, or special effects of course but that typically when we go sim process it is because the full image is sim process, don't have a ton of hybrid type images.

Super excited to see this in person, what benefits would are there to having on a styker vs a Gauntlet III, on a Gauntlet III do you have to take out 3 heads for it to fit in?

[ZooCity]

IMO...Full color images DTG is the bees knees, if you do a lot of corporate works and need to hit 2995 Blue or 187 Red or any spot color consistently you are in for a world of hurt.

If our patent pending software recognizes that a color cannot be produced using its basic colors the rip will send a file to the i -image to print a screen for that color in hybrid mode.

Now that's the way to do it!  Nice work on this.