Exile FreeStyler CTS

[Rockers]

Any of the fine ladies and gentleman here have any experience with the Exile FreeStyler  CTS? At the price they offer I can see us pulling the trigger on one of those. Don`t see my wife agreeing to purchase any of the M&R units not even the smallest one:( But at $15,000 for the FreeStyler who can say no. Any of you have seen it in action in Long Beach or any other trade show recently, or even better maybe someone here is a proud owner of this unit?
Would need pros and cons.

Cheers.

[SI]

your resale value, will be next to nothing if you decide to buy one.  Speed will be your main issue with this machine, I almost bought one and then found a used Douthit for close to the same price.  I would check the used market, you can probably get a used M&R or other higher end machine for close to the same price

[Maxie]

I also got exited when I saw he price, really affordable.
There were two at Long Beach, Lawson had one that was printing with bands, they said is was because of the conditions in the hall.
Exile had one (the heads are identical, made in Italy with a HP head) but couldn't demonstrate it, they had no screens.
I was in England and went to the Exile office in Luton for a demo.
I decided not to get one, not happy with:
Quality of print, if you do mostly simple spot printing it's ok, not good for high end Seperatlons.
Speed, it's slow, once again ok if you have a small shop.
Cost of printing, high compared to other systems, you have to buy the HP head/cartridge.
I'll carry on with film until I can afford a wax printer.

[willy35]

I saw it. very plastic feel, only 1 small desktop printer HP head and only 1 channel is used, and print per screen given to me was really high.
You can not have LPI greater than 65 LPI.

Not for me, On the other side my business partner was totally impressed with it, I mocked him up 

I prefer the M&R entry level, it is not the same league, it is 2x more expansive, but the print speed is not the same as well, construction is more industrial, and you have this solid feel...



Here is my video link

https://youtu.be/R1YQprMQc_M

[Rockers]

I saw it. very plastic feel, only 1 small desktop printer HP head and only 1 channel is used, and print per screen given to me was really high.
You can not have LPI greater than 65 LPI.

Not for me, On the other side my business partner was totally impressed with it, I mocked him up 

I prefer the M&R entry level, it is not the same league, it is 2x more expansive, but the print speed is not the same as well, construction is more industrial, and you have this solid feel...



Here is my video link

https://youtu.be/R1YQprMQc_M

So I`ve been in contact now with Phil@ Exile. He gave me the contact details of several shops that run that unit. Some of them doing up to 50 screens a day with it so it can`t be that slow. With the 4 printheads it can do an A3 image in around 3 minutes. For halftone work it`s recommended to use only 2 heads max which will of course make the process slower. Spending almost $30,000 on an i-Image is out of question right now and we don`t do 50 screens a day.Closer to 15-20. Still undecided but I`m leaning towards the purchase of the FreeStyler. If things go crazy and we get into the 50 + screens / day range then I`m sure we can as well afford to buy an i-Image.

[Nation03]

Any estimate on what the cost per screen is with the ink it uses? It'll be a while before we need to do 50 screens in a day, but I still want to get away from film sooner then later.

[Rockers]

Any estimate on what the cost per screen is with the ink it uses? It'll be a while before we need to do 50 screens in a day, but I still want to get away from film sooner then later.

The cartridges are $80/pc and can do 100-120 average sized screens. That`s what I was told

[Dottonedan]

Ya gotta admit tho, even at that slow speed, it's faster than some film printers.

There is a machine that fits each customer.   Sure, the price of ink is very high, and it prints slow, but like he said, he's not going thru 50 screens a day. Maybe this is a good fit for where he's at right now. Any DTS is a good DTS over film.

[Prince Art]

I'll add my two cents to say that if it's of acceptable build quality (i.e., you won't have to fix it very often), and it produces sufficient quality, and the cost is friendly enough, there's a place for it. It doesn't have to have the best feature set available; if it has the right mix of features, compromise, and price, it will be beneficial to a certain niche within the industry. I say this as someone with a tiny shop who is keeping a close eye on CTS, even though the price is at this point too high for me. There's no way I need the same throughput of the shops who currently utilize these machines. But a high screen production rate isn't the only benefit to CTS; of great interest to me is the elimination of innocuous tasks - it streamlines shop operation as a whole. You could give me a CTS with output times that only match the time it takes to print AND TAPE UP films, and I'd still be gaining time & quality in many areas, and pushing the need for another employee farther down the road.  Now improve my screen production rates even just a little, and do it at a good price, and you've really got my attention. I'm intrigued by the FreeStyler, hope to learn more about it (good or bad), and hope more options come to market with small & medium-sized shops in mind.

[Maxie]

One advantage of the HP cartridge is that the cartridge is also the head so you don't have problems with blocked heads, etc.
I worked out that the cost of printing a screen is the same as the cost of film.
I am doing more Sep's. CYMK and  simulated and what I saw was that this printer does not print a good dot, especially up to 5 and 95% plus.      If you print mainly spot and are happy with dots from 10 to 90%
It's a good machine.

[Dottonedan]

and for that matter, I can't get my Epson 1430 to print a good 5% dot.    I am not loving that thing. And the ink cartridges,  Pfft. They must be designed intentionally to keep you buying, but that's another story aside from DTS.

[Nation03]

I'll add my two cents to say that if it's of acceptable build quality (i.e., you won't have to fix it very often), and it produces sufficient quality, and the cost is friendly enough, there's a place for it. It doesn't have to have the best feature set available; if it has the right mix of features, compromise, and price, it will be beneficial to a certain niche within the industry. I say this as someone with a tiny shop who is keeping a close eye on CTS, even though the price is at this point too high for me. There's no way I need the same throughput of the shops who currently utilize these machines. But a high screen production rate isn't the only benefit to CTS; of great interest to me is the elimination of innocuous tasks - it streamlines shop operation as a whole. You could give me a CTS with output times that only match the time it takes to print AND TAPE UP films, and I'd still be gaining time & quality in many areas, and pushing the need for another employee farther down the road.  Now improve my screen production rates even just a little, and do it at a good price, and you've really got my attention. I'm intrigued by the FreeStyler, hope to learn more about it (good or bad), and hope more options come to market with small & medium-sized shops in mind.

I agree 100%. I'd like to see more budget friendly CTS machines for the smaller shops. I'm going nuts storing and organizing the film right now and I'm extremely small. Even if it's at around $1 per screen, that isn't bad compared to the headaches it will free up. But if I'm spending $30k+ on something, it's going to be a newer auto before it's CTS.

And Dan, I'm with you on the 1430. Mine has been a nightmare since day one. Refilling the carts has turned into an hour long process trying to get them to reset. Not sure if my chips are just shot or if it's a conspiracy on Epson's part. 

[mk162]

Even when we used film, we didn't store it.  It didn't make sense with the amount film costs and the amount of time to file and pull from those files.

Not to mention the space.

We filed them back when we used a stat camera.  It was such a bigger process then.  When we switched to the 3000 and then the 4800 it just made sense to print new film, unless you rerun the job all the time.

[Colin]

So,here is another angle on the direct to screen equation:

How fast are your setups right now?

Will a tri-lock type system give you noticeable improvements?

Will those improvements in set up speed actually create more revenue for you?

[Doug S]

Absolutely faster.  I can print atleast a 3rd more shirts in one day on a 6 or 7 setup day with cts then I could with film because of the decreased setup time.  Setup is much faster with the triloc and dts.  Not to mention, I can count on one hand how many pin holes I've had in the last 6 months.