Mlink in the building.

[GraphicDisorder]

Brandt I think what your doing is good for us that are looking hard at DTG and will be newbie's at it real world testing, right now I still on the fence of which machine we want to buy plus we are looking at coast and what machine id best for the money we have to spend.  I know the Mlink is out of our range but does sound like a nice machine, but does not sound like the push and play as Rich said it was or I must have missed something, because I believe somewhere here you said the brother was a little easier to operate.  I'll be sending you a shirt soon with a design just to see if can do what we might expect to print in our shop once we get off the fence and make our purchase.

I want to use them both some more before I give final answer on use but yes my initial thought is the Brother is a bit easier to use. You just send it a file to print, hit the button.  Couple more steps on the Mlink. We are talking seconds difference though so don't read super far into it. 

[GraphicDisorder]

Ok, we had a minute at lunch today to do a quick test.  Info as follows:

Same type of garment. Same time of day printing at the same exact time in fact pretreated on the same exact pretreat machine right before printing. Same exact file, print size and so on. This is down and dirty we fired up both machines for the first print neither printed anything prior to this other than a nozzle check and to be fair the Brother printed NOTHING yesterday. Transparent as it gets.

First image both garments laying next to each other. Left image is the Brother, right image is the M&R.

Time to print: Brother 5:07 seconds, M&R 5:10 seconds. So the Brother from go button to ready to take shirt off is 3 seconds faster. Note worthy, the M&R is printing faster but it takes more time to pull the pallet in and begin printing than the Brother, it also waits longer to spit it out than the Brother.  Also I did forget to check the resolution on both but I think they both were in 1200x600.  Ill double check that.  That could affect time of either and if they were not the same id want to do this again.

Now what we see as far as image quality. The Brother, has better detail in the grey tones. The Brother has a blue tone to the grey and the M&R has a slight red tone to its grey both look fine though. I will point out one drastic area below in the last image where the grey has more detail, left is still Brother, Right is M&R.  Red ink on the M&R is better and closer to on screen image.  The M&R White is better as well.  Other issue. The this artwork has a shadow on the artwork that fades from black to shirt color.  The Brother handles this correctly. The M&R does not, it prints the shadow but put a halo around it.  Keep in mind we did nothing the artwork we printed it on each. So we'd have to figure that out on the M&R. We did have this issue on the Brother day one as well and I cant remember what we did to fix that so we may need to look at that for the M&R as well.

The cost to print. Brother used 1.62cc of CMYK, and 11.70 of white.  The M&R used C= .201, M=.346, Y=.214, K=.776 and white = 4.58.   All in Brother used $5.52 in ink, the M&R used $1.49 of ink.  These prices are pulled TODAY from both M&R and Brother. So this is up to the minute.  Again we are assuming both machines are telling the truth on ink use.

You decide, id take the M&R at $4.03 less to print with better white and the red is more correct. I can fix the shadow in some artwork I am sure.

Also neither of these factor in pretreat cost, so that is additional and id have to do some maths on that. 

I will do many of these if we can find time. Ive mentioned we are covered slammed right now so this test is all I have time for today.

[bulldog]

Are there any third party RIPs that could be used with the Brother that would be more efficient?

[mimosatexas]

What the cause of the irregular speckling in the white lettering on the brother side?  Neither white looks great, but that could be shirt choice, pretreat, print settings, etc

[GraphicDisorder]

What the cause of the irregular speckling in the white lettering on the brother side?  Neither white looks great, but that could be shirt choice, pretreat, print settings, etc

Not sure to be honest. Tired to give a equal test best as we could. We can start playing with each machine to get the most ideal print at some point and then compare costs but that's not really apples to apples then. I remember on first day with the brother we tried a print at 1200x1200 and it actually used less CMYK I think it was but more white, but was slower and really didn't look much different.  So there are a lot of ways to play with these things and change the way they print.

Are there any third party RIPs that could be used with the Brother that would be more efficient?

No idea on that one. Ink cost are still 3x roughly on Brother ink so even if it was using exact CC's, still cost more to print. 

[3Deep]

I don't know they both look good, for that matter both would be great for customer's because I don't think they will nitpick as much nitpicking is going on now...I would take either machine from what I've seen and I think Brandt has done a very good job on the info thus far for being a newbie at DTG .  I just got off the phone with Epson and ask about ink cost for there F2000 $207.00 for a 600ml cart and that's white ink cost as well, just a rough guess you could get 400 to 500 printed shirt's depends on print size, so Brandt what ml are the cart's for the Brother/MLink and ink cost for each?

[GraphicDisorder]

I don't know they both look good, for that matter both would be great for customer's because I don't think they will nitpick as much nitpicking is going on now...I would take either machine from what I've seen and I think Brandt has done a very good job on the info thus far for being a newbie at DTG .  I just got off the phone with Epson and ask about ink cost for there F2000 $207.00 for a 600ml cart and that's white ink cost as well, just a rough guess you could get 400 to 500 printed shirt's depends on print size, so Brandt what ml are the cart's for the Brother/MLink and ink cost for each?

The Brothers are 380cc carts. M&R is 1000cc I think.  All that info I have down stairs, my office is upstairs.  It will have to wait.

[blue moon]

I don't know they both look good, for that matter both would be great for customer's because I don't think they will nitpick as much nitpicking is going on now...I would take either machine from what I've seen and I think Brandt has done a very good job on the info thus far for being a newbie at DTG .  I just got off the phone with Epson and ask about ink cost for there F2000 $207.00 for a 600ml cart and that's white ink cost as well, just a rough guess you could get 400 to 500 printed shirt's depends on print size, so Brandt what ml are the cart's for the Brother/MLink and ink cost for each?

The Brothers are 380cc carts. M&R is 1000cc I think.  All that info I have down stairs, my office is upstairs.  It will have to wait.

Brandt,
thanx for all the info!

pierre

[Gilligan]

Forgive me for late chiming in here, we sponsor Shop with Cop each year and that event was last night.

I have been nothing but transparent, you are asking me about heat pressing and I am still talking about printer differences still. I haven't yet paid much attention to the heat pressing time (maybe because it hasn't been an issue?).  I will report fully when we are actually running production and I see what heat pressing times are and I will discuss both machines times and if I see either machines required time as an issue. I was having conversations with Marco or others when almost all of the heat pressing was going on.  I have been concerned first and foremost in this order:

1. Quality of Print
2. Cost of Print
3. Speed of Print

Heat press time isn't even on my radar yet but it will be shortly.

I wasn't suggesting you weren't being transparent.  I was only stating why I was stating what I was stating.



That M&R looks better for the car and the white, but the details in the road get lost where as the Brother seems to shine better there.


I'd also say that it's hard to call anything apples to apples.  I mean, right now this is "what they look like right out the box" which is ok, but as Islandtees pointed out, that isn't where you will be 5 years from now on these machines.

Now if you could get them to print out as identical a print as possible, I'd rather call that "apples to apples" because now we are looking at what it takes for machine A. to get the print vs machine B..  Time and cost.

Also, I think heat press time is as big of a factor as print time.  Though right now that seems negated by the fact that the brother printed faster anyway.  I'd want to double check your resolution though.  Wouldn't be fair for the M&R if it was printing at a higher resolution.  And if that higher resolution equates to less ink usage then that wouldn't be fair to Brother in that regards.

Just my thoughts!

[shellyky]

M&R is $230 per liter (1000cc) CMYK,  and $250 on White.

the reason the white text on brother print looked irregular is because we used settings that produced best results for sim process--for the spot color areas we probably should have turned it down a notch or two, it was kinda pooling up. (we boosted the highlight white in other words and likely should not have as much for this particular design)

yes.  both were printed same resolution.

[GraphicDisorder]

Forgive me for late chiming in here, we sponsor Shop with Cop each year and that event was last night.

I have been nothing but transparent, you are asking me about heat pressing and I am still talking about printer differences still. I haven't yet paid much attention to the heat pressing time (maybe because it hasn't been an issue?).  I will report fully when we are actually running production and I see what heat pressing times are and I will discuss both machines times and if I see either machines required time as an issue. I was having conversations with Marco or others when almost all of the heat pressing was going on.  I have been concerned first and foremost in this order:

1. Quality of Print
2. Cost of Print
3. Speed of Print

Heat press time isn't even on my radar yet but it will be shortly.

I wasn't suggesting you weren't being transparent.  I was only stating why I was stating what I was stating.



That M&R looks better for the car and the white, but the details in the road get lost where as the Brother seems to shine better there.


I'd also say that it's hard to call anything apples to apples.  I mean, right now this is "what they look like right out the box" which is ok, but as Islandtees pointed out, that isn't where you will be 5 years from now on these machines.

Now if you could get them to print out as identical a print as possible, I'd rather call that "apples to apples" because now we are looking at what it takes for machine A. to get the print vs machine B..  Time and cost.

Also, I think heat press time is as big of a factor as print time.  Though right now that seems negated by the fact that the brother printed faster anyway.  I'd want to double check your resolution though.  Wouldn't be fair for the M&R if it was printing at a higher resolution.  And if that higher resolution equates to less ink usage then that wouldn't be fair to Brother in that regards.

Just my thoughts!

For sure its hard to call anything apples to apples exactly. They each rip differently (as clearly shown in a few prints now), they each print colors a little different and as I pointed out before one is even using Red ink instead of magenta.  Differences will be there. Of course someone 5 years later will be producing something different/better.  This thread really isn't about that yet.  My intention of this thread to was to highlight what a NEW DTG user could expect out of either machine right off the bat, we've all heard the horror stories. My prints will improve just like islands did im sure. My knowledge will as well and on we go. We've got very little time in this right now outside of training/testing during training heavy testing will come soon and then real world testing as we start selling some and seeing what could improve via feedback and so on. I've gotten a bunch of DTG samples in my day, some prints off BOTH of these machines are better than most of them and a few we've done are flat out some of the better ive seen ever off a DTG and that from "right outta the box".  I think ive tried to make it clear I feel both machines are very good.  I see differences in each positive and negative, ive highlighted each. Big one is I can't ignore the ink costs... period.  We haven't seen a single print yet come off the brother that wasn't multiple dollars and that is in any configuration. Just putting that out there.  Keep in mind we are also printing almost everything 13 inches wide and nearly 15-16 tall.  We actually expect to be printing 14/15 wide on production so ill be commenting in that contest.

Heat press time Alex lined out as pretty similar to the Brother yes? So no major diff. Heat pressing has yet to take up enough time that ive noticed it as an issue. I will address those times when I am satisfied with prints to the point of selling them. Which should be soon.

[GraphicDisorder]

Here's a good one they just brought me. Double sided print. Back is a 13x12 image.  Front around 7 inches wide.  Excuse the shitty phone pictures again, one image was taken down stairs an the other upstairs (different light) haha.

Was printed on the Mlink. Cost for this print? Front $.08  Back $.46. 

[CSPGarrett]

If I remember right the Mlink is using a Ricoh head using the new dupont ink made for it (not the epson artisan version).  A good epson DX5 head machine should have similar ink costs to what you are seeing on the Mlink for the black print above.

The biggest thing I want to see with the Mlink is the life span of the Ricoh head since they are made for this long use.  The best machine to compare the Mlink to would be the new Belquette machine coming out at 35,000.  This would be more like comparing apples to apples.

Also, lawson did sell a similar looking version of this machine years ago (I don't think it was a ricoh head).

The awesome part is that the head is staggered allowing for proper one pass printing.  I would also like to see how far you can push the artwork automation with scripting.

[Gilligan]

I just can't wrap my head around spending $20k today to save $3 a shirt tomorrow.

For someone that doesn't have a CTS yet I'd think that $20k would serve them better by buying one of those or something.

One way to think of it is, would you buy an embroidery machine for $20,000 if it only made you $3 per garment?

[GraphicDisorder]

If I remember right the Mlink is using a Ricoh head using the new dupont ink made for it (not the epson artisan version).  A good epson DX5 head machine should have similar ink costs to what you are seeing on the Mlink for the black print above.

The biggest thing I want to see with the Mlink is the life span of the Ricoh head since they are made for this long use.  The best machine to compare the Mlink to would be the new Belquette machine coming out at 35,000.  This would be more like comparing apples to apples.

Also, lawson did sell a similar looking version of this machine years ago (I don't think it was a ricoh head).

The awesome part is that the head is staggered allowing for proper one pass printing.  I would also like to see how far you can push the artwork automation with scripting.

The Belquette machine I have a sample off of, the new one. It was awesome print other than heavy banding in orange.