really good overview of the new EPSON F3070 printer

[blue moon]

I've mentioned most of these features, but the video gives a nice explanation of how they work.
https://youtu.be/bs30swmy4ts

pierre

[T Shirt Farmer]

Informative thanks, surprised there is no clamping hoop for garment it must be a none issue?

[rusty]

Yeah this is great to see.

IS there no need for pre treating?

[tbarnes]

Thanks for sharing.

Following post because I am curious about pre-treating as well. They seemed to completely skip that topic on the video.

Thanks again.

[whitewater]

This thing is $56,000  - how do you make money with it? What is the business plan for this?

[blue moon]

still needs pretreatment and it does have a hoop that can go on top of the garment. we are using it, but can go without it.

pierre

[blue moon]

This thing is $56,000  - how do you make money with it? What is the business plan for this?

you have to print in volume to make it work. with retail pricing it could be a smaller number though.
Don't forget that you can shift some of your press work to it, too. 4 color 24 piece should be cheaper, easier and faster on DTG then on your auto.

pierre

[zanegun08]

Pierre, are you doing primarily spot color work, or photographic?

I think DTG excels at photographic but from what I've seen leaves a lot to be desired for spot colors.

Who did you purchase through? 

I want to try to get some samples, I think having one of these would be dreamy for the right application, the price point is much better than a Kornit or M&R, and is more industrial than the lower priced units, and hopefully ink cost is much lower than brother.

I still don't know if it fits our current business model, but we probably turn away work that we could do DTG easily. 

If they ever figure out no pre-treat, that's when I'm 100% in if I don't have to sell my soul for the entry price.

[blue moon]

as an FYI, we have some sample fully pretreated shirts here and have been doing the testing. It does not look good right now, there is not enough pretreat on the shirts or the storage/travel or who knows what is impacting it. BUT. . . more companies will have those available and with time we should have a usable product. RTP is available now and should be good, but they are expensive. FOL and Sanmar are coming out with shirts in the next few months.

Once those shirts are out, you will be able to print anywhere on the shirt straight out of the box.

pierre

[blue moon]

Pierre, are you doing primarily spot color work, or photographic?

I think DTG excels at photographic but from what I've seen leaves a lot to be desired for spot colors.

Who did you purchase through? 

I want to try to get some samples, I think having one of these would be dreamy for the right application, the price point is much better than a Kornit or M&R, and is more industrial than the lower priced units, and hopefully ink cost is much lower than brother.

I still don't know if it fits our current business model, but we probably turn away work that we could do DTG easily. 

If they ever figure out no pre-treat, that's when I'm 100% in if I don't have to sell my soul for the entry price.

we are still setting up. there are 8 different software programs we have to get working together. As of yesterday we finally have the whole process functioning. Now it's just a matter of adjusting the steps and polishing the web site. We also have to build and test 54 queues for the RIP (different shirt configurations based on material, brand and color).

a lot of what we are doing would not be of interest to many shops, but we have to get the prints dialed in so they look as good as our screenprinting work. Many shops would just go with standard presets which are not an option for us. I am guessing we have another month of setup and testing. Matt is working on the print quality and I am doing the software integration part.

when we are done, we will able to process the whole order by using the bar code scanners. Everything will be automated to the extent possible.
Right now the process is:
-receive the blanks and tag with bar code labels,
-scan the shirt at pretreat station so it deposits the fluid in the shape of the art rather than a box.
-next it goes in the dryer.
-then it's moved to the EPSON where a bar code scanner gets the correct art for that shirt and starts the print process.
-through the dryer again
-QC station at the end of the dryer. scan the barcode and confirm it is right. if there are multiples in the order it will assign a bin to wait for the rest of the shirts. Once the last shirt passes QC it goes to shipping.
-another scan and it pulls the address, reads the scale and spits out a shipping label.

each one of the processes only takes a second or two. loading the shirt on the EPSON takes more time than any other human action. 
The really cool part is you can print shirts in any order. If somebody has 2 shirts with abc design and 1 sweatshirt with xyz design, you can print one after the other. scanning the barcode does all the work. you can mix and match any way you want. Only 22 shirts showed up out of 24? Get those 22 done today and finish the last 2 when they show up...

pierre
 

[blue moon]

Pierre, are you doing primarily spot color work, or photographic?

I think DTG excels at photographic but from what I've seen leaves a lot to be desired for spot colors.

Who did you purchase through? 

I want to try to get some samples, I think having one of these would be dreamy for the right application, the price point is much better than a Kornit or M&R, and is more industrial than the lower priced units, and hopefully ink cost is much lower than brother.

I still don't know if it fits our current business model, but we probably turn away work that we could do DTG easily. 

If they ever figure out no pre-treat, that's when I'm 100% in if I don't have to sell my soul for the entry price.

we purchased through Lawson and could not be happier! I had issues during the sales process since the unit was not available and the info was rather scarce, but once the printer showed up at the door, they were all over it. Calls every day to make sure everything is good. When we had a minor issue with the printer they got EPSON to replace it. I told them there was no need, everything was working, but on Lawson's insitance they got  us a new printer. And no, nothing was wrong with the printer, it just took few days to set it up instead of few hours. That speaks volumes about both Lawson and EPSON!

it will print spots or photos no problem. I think that's the case with any modern DTG. You do have to spend a little bit of time to dial in the ubase so the colors are right. We have the CADLink RIP and we purchased the color calibration module. Still have not set it up, but all the colors for our customers have to look right.

send me some shirts and some art and will print samples for you. As of right now we have the queues configured for the black G2000, NL3600 and NL6210 and indigo NL3600. If you send anything else, we can print, but you will get the testing shirts.

I'll have the store with sample shirts up in the next few days.

pierre

[cleveprint]

Pierre, what pretreatment machine are you using that sprays in the shape of the artwork? Or is that a feature of the printer? (I have not looked into this model as we have the previous model Epson) That is our biggest turn off for our retail clients is the "pretreat box" that it leaves on garments. We've started getting better at it, but certain colors garments its unavoidable.

[blue moon]

Pierre, what pretreatment machine are you using that sprays in the shape of the artwork? Or is that a feature of the printer? (I have not looked into this model as we have the previous model Epson) That is our biggest turn off for our retail clients is the "pretreat box" that it leaves on garments. We've started getting better at it, but certain colors garments its unavoidable.

we have the Belquette T-Treater. As far as I know, it is the only one that was doing pretreating in the shape of the art and unfortunately it is no longer being made.

pierre

[cleveprint]

very cool if that works. wonder why they discontinued it. sorry for derailing the thread!!!

[brandon]

56K is no where near what some of the other units out there are running and so far this is approaching what those units do.