i-Image STE on the way. Thoughts, advice, recommendations?

[cvreeland]

The STE is here! Got it off the truck last night & started unpacking it this AM. This thing is pretty solidly built. We won't have it installed until Wednesday or Thursday of next week, but I'm utterly blown away at the comparison of the LED array to our jiant vacuum frame & nu-arc exposure unit. I'm really psyched to get this thing going!

[dirkdiggler]

Now you can realize  what it means when people say, "I WOULD NEVER GO BACK TO FILM"

[jvanick]

a thought:

if you can afford a $450 or so toy, go on ebay and pick yourself up a Densitometer...

have your tech help you dial in your halftones with the curve settings.

while not strictly necessary, you'll even get better prints and gradients than you ever thought possible.

and as Jay says: "I WOULD NEVER GO BACK TO FILM"

[ericheartsu]

what does the densiometer do?

[jvanick]

lets you read your dot gain.. so a 50% halftone on your computer screen is a 50% halftone on a printed shirt.

on my I-Image slant model, I'm getting nearly 30% gain from 10% to 70% above 70% or so all the halftones are filled in... been working on adjusting the curve so it's nearly a perfect gradient from 3% up to 97%

[Gilligan]

lets you read your dot gain.. so a 50% halftone on your computer screen is a 50% halftone on a printed shirt.

on my I-Image slant model, I'm getting nearly 30% gain from 10% to 70% above 70% or so all the halftones are filled in... been working on adjusting the curve so it's nearly a perfect gradient from 3% up to 97%

WOW, 30% gain?!!  That's HUGE... where is this coming from?

[Orion]

...actually up to 38% percent dot gain for garment printing is not uncommon and should be compensated for in the pre-press process.

[mk162]

orion beat me to that...with the i-image we were around 40-45%...we had to cut back on the amount of ink.

we are also testing some new emulsion to see if it stops the spread of ink on the screen as much.

[Gilligan]

I was misreading... I thought he was getting that kind of gain on the screen itself.

[bimmridder]

And it's not just ink spread on the screen. More from pressures and substrates on press. Throw in inks, squeegee durometer, angle, speed, and on and on. And for what it's worth, you get the same kind of gain with wax. Our gain on that machine was north of 25%.

[Doug S]

orion beat me to that...with the i-image we were around 40-45%...we had to cut back on the amount of ink.

we are also testing some new emulsion to see if it stops the spread of ink on the screen as much.

I'm also going to test a different emulsion.  With the CCI WR14, I'm getting solid opaque in some areas and lighter in others on the same screen with the slant i image.  So far, I'm only able to print unidirectional and 1440 x 1440.  It's almost like the ink is watered down which I know it's not the case. 

[Orion]

And it's not just ink spread on the screen. More from pressures and substrates on press. Throw in inks, squeegee durometer, angle, speed, and on and on. And for what it's worth, you get the same kind of gain with wax. Our gain on that machine was north of 25%.

I would wonder if that spread is due to the velocity of the wax droplet when it arrives at the stencil or is it wicking. As for the wicking, my understanding was that the wax instantaneously dries as it hits the stencil.

[bimmridder]

On our wax machine, the wax does indeed dry immediately. It takes six passes of the print head to lay down the correct amount. The screen mounts vertically in the machine.. There are pluses and minuses to both types, in my opinion.

[cvreeland]

Zombie thread revival!

So we've had the thing up and running since about the 20th of January. We've imaged a bit over 2700 screens in that span of time, and we're settling in to it. It's certainly changed our workflow and disrupted the art dept's ability to do a final quality check of the film, but they're learning to make cleaner files in the first place, which is good.

We have a lot of re-orders in the pipeline, so they've been overburdened with their regular workload & trying to retreive old files & get them formatted correctly for the i-Image. We've kept our Nu-arc in place to handle the overflow, but we'll catch up some day.

Overall very happy with the purchase, though there are things I would change about the software, given my druthers.

I've written a fuller review of the unit here: http://art-wear.org/blog/?p=705

Thanks for all the advice & support in this thread - I think we made the right decision to go DTS, & I'm really glad we went with the M&R. The LED exposure unit is frigging awesome.

[sqslabs]

I think we made the right decision to go DTS, & I'm really glad we went with the M&R. The LED exposure unit is frigging awesome.

Great review!