About to buy I-Image S...

[merchmonster]

Super juiced about this purchase. The only part I'm not 100% sure about is how our workflow might change and how to accommodate. Does anyone have any tips or tricks to share re: CTS?

[Dottonedan]

For one, smaller shops sometimes don't save jobs by job number.  They may have Toms auto 2015 and 16 etc.  But if you have a customer that does sports for schools all year for 5 years, you could have Michaels Ad Spec Football helemet  etc.

It's way too hard to locate jobs that way so a good way is like this:
MM17578-Fball helmet. (Merch Monster 2017-Job#578) Fball helmet.

When you get this machine, you can load jobs in by typing in mm17578 and it goes right to that job. The load it.

The most common thing people overlook is having a good (fast) and reliable network server and some don't have a network at all. No back up process for art files. If you don't, and don't know anything about it, contact an outside service provider like an IT/Network service.  You can use Dropbox or google drive, but it's not as reliable. I mean some shops do that with no issues, while others, get disruptions in the file send process.  Some people buy another PC for the RIP to run on. Not needed. It can run on the PC that is on the machine. You cannot run the Color Print program on a MAC if you are a mac art dept. so use the PC on the machine.

Confirm where it's going in your shop and make sure you have it cleaned out and enough room for the Tech to get it in there (before) he gets there. Ive gone to some installs where they had the room full of other equipment where mine was to go and that added another day. If it needs to go into a room with a 32" door, let them know that ahead of time. If they need to take the table out, it will add more time to the schedule and they already get there mid to late in the afternoon after travel.

Have your power in the room and your network connected into the room and ready to power on once he gets there. That will give you more time for training.

[TH Apparel]

we just got our installed a couple weeks(which Dan was a huge help answering all my annoying questions).
All of our art files are numbered to coincide with the design number through shopworks/onsite.

We do not have our networked...we just put all of the files on a flash drive and transfer them that way(at least for now).

Our biggest issue is tape on the screens.  About half of our screens will not work on this right now.
We're slowly retaping everything and trying to keep up with the tape better.  Any little thing sticking up and it won't print.

All in all though it's awesome...the detail is so much better.  We're getting screens to press a lot quicker.
A huge improvements over the vellums we were using.

[T Shirt Farmer]

Did you take a thorough look at wax machines

[merchmonster]

Thanks Dan good stuff. We have our act together in terms of files being named with job number which corresponds to printavo job #, and it's going into a corner of our screen room which is pretty clean. We have double doors on the room because I had to disassemble my msp3140 to get it in and out of our old screen room and I decided not to do that again. Also I plan on having a 220 outlet in the room before install

The only question I have is about the networking. Are you saying that some people put the files in a folder in Dropbox and  Then that folder syncs onto the I-image computer? That would be my preferred method since we use box and my main separator is in Mexico.

Are you suggesting to have a dedicated file server where we would upload files to?and would the i-image automatically pull files from that folder? I.e. My computer > file server > I-image

For some reason I thought you could just network the I-image computer and send files directly there

[merchmonster]

we just got our installed a couple weeks(which Dan was a huge help answering all my annoying questions).
All of our art files are numbered to coincide with the design number through shopworks/onsite.

We do not have our networked...we just put all of the files on a flash drive and transfer them that way(at least for now).

Our biggest issue is tape on the screens.  About half of our screens will not work on this right now.
We're slowly retaping everything and trying to keep up with the tape better.  Any little thing sticking up and it won't print.

All in all though it's awesome...the detail is so much better.  We're getting screens to press a lot quicker.
A huge improvements over the vellums we were using.

We're still using statics!! Haha and we are looking at upgrading to better statics.

USB sounds slow I have to do it with my 2 dtg machines and I hate it

[merchmonster]

Did you take a thorough look at wax machines

When I talked to Douhitt at iss they said tech support was kinda far and they didn't have a unit I could see on the west coast.. My screen print technician always tells me "stick with the winners"

[TH Apparel]

we just got our installed a couple weeks(which Dan was a huge help answering all my annoying questions).
All of our art files are numbered to coincide with the design number through shopworks/onsite.

We do not have our networked...we just put all of the files on a flash drive and transfer them that way(at least for now).

Our biggest issue is tape on the screens.  About half of our screens will not work on this right now.
We're slowly retaping everything and trying to keep up with the tape better.  Any little thing sticking up and it won't print.

All in all though it's awesome...the detail is so much better.  We're getting screens to press a lot quicker.
A huge improvements over the vellums we were using.

We're still using statics!! Haha and we are looking at upgrading to better statics.

USB sounds slow I have to do it with my 2 dtg machines and I hate it

USB isn't too bad for now at least until we get everything networked...
We got rid of all our statics years ago...now I wish we could go back and buy them with the permanent block out instead of all the rollers.  Although the rollers are super easy and cheap to restretch.

[markdhl]

Sorry for the bad information but i have a LOT of units on the west coast and close to your exact area.  Many are OPEN accounts and would be glad to show you the differences.  Douthitt has the longest proven track record in the market place.

Anyways, if you still want to compare just call me direct at 313 515 8635.  Most tech support is done remotely but i do have tech support that covers that area.

Mark Diehl
Douthitt Corporation

[T Shirt Farmer]

Did you take a thorough look at wax machines

When I talked to Douhitt at iss they said tech support was kinda far and they didn't have a unit I could see on the west coast.. My screen print technician always tells me "stick with the winners"

Also take a look at Exile which is what I have, there support has been world class with my account. Fell free to give me a ring of you would like more information they have a tech in SoCal

[zanegun08]

Also take a look at Exile which is what I have, there support has been world class with my account.

Another shout out for Exile and wax.  Although I think about 20k more expensive than the I-Image S, in the ~3 years we have had ours, we've had very few technical issues that weren't solved over the phone quickly by tightening or loosening a screw (head alignment) or turning a pressure valve (ink feed), the thing is a workhorse, and simple minimal maintenance compared to an inkjet based printer which we were early adopters of both technologies but wax has been great.

Exile has also been up to Portland multiple times to upgrade our unit at no cost, and developed software based off our input, and the workflow is easy working off TIFF's rather than a proprietary software / file extension.

Also, Douthitt has renowned support, you can reach Mark by phone anytime and he is a great guy, can't go wrong with either Douthitt or Exile if you can swing the extra cost up front.