Inkjet printers and RIPs dominate new products at SGIA

Oct 27, 2008

Suppliers of digital apparel decorating equipment and traditional screen printing gear were a small but important part of SGIA 2008, held Oct. 15-18 in Atlanta. Several brands  — Brother, Kornit, M&R, Roland and others — made news with important product introductions.

Brother's workhorse GT-541 has a new sibling, the dual-platen GT-782 that includes a white ink set for printing on dark garments — a long-awaited development from Brother Inc. Like the 541, the high-volume machine requires no RIP. It uses Brother's proprietary inks and boasts an extra-large print area — 16" x 18" — on each platen. The first prototype was printing two shirts at once at the show (they can print the same or different artwork). Pricing will be around $50,000-plus, depending upon the package configuration.

Kornit's state-of-the-art printers do require a RIP, and the company has made that process much easier by unveiling its easy-to-use QuickP RIP software. Until now, Kornit owners typically had a dedicated PC using third-party software to RIP files and send them to the printer. QuickP changes all that. Running directly on artist's desktops, it has a very short learning curve, with simple-to-master tools for image configuration and location. QuickP allows an operator to adjust image color, size, location and rotation, and output TIFF files directly to the printer. A Media Wizard that auto-adjusts settings for various types of substrates is one of many other features. The software will ship with new Kornit printers and can be purchased to retrofit installed machines. Kornit also announced that its 933 inkjet add-on station for automatic carousel screen printing presses is out of beta and shipping. The Israel-based company also said it had moved its world headquarters into a new, 20,000-square-foot building.

M&R Sales & Service — the screen printing industry's largest full-line manufacturer of presses and other equipment — is no longer on the sidelines of the burgeoning inkjet garment printing game. M&R Digital unveiled the impressive iDot Digital Textile Printer. It's built on the Epson 4880 platform — as are many existing brands of inkjet garment printers. However, M&R re-engineered the entire mechanical platform of the Epson, and came to SGIA with a machine that has too many unique features to list here. Among them, are CMYK and white inks (in cartridge or bulk), cleaning cartridge set, an included PC and monitor pre-loaded with iColor RIP software. The iDot also boasts a proprietary high-resolution servo encoder, custom firmware from Mitsubishi and beefed up hardware that gives it unprecedented repeat registration accuracy — a system the company calls Absolute Position Technology. The $18,000 (approximately) machine also has an extra large print area (16" x 20"), and ships with three different pallet sizes.

Roland DGA Corp. rolled out another easy-to-use software package, but this one isn't a traditional DTG RIP. R-Wear Studio software powers the unique EGX engraver that apparel decorators use to make templates for custom rhinestone transfers. It also can create multimedia designs that incorporate rhinestone embellishments and heat transfers using vector-based designs, logos and lettering printed by the GX-24 cutter/printer. "With R-Wear Studio, you can create a wide variety of rhinestone templates quickly and inexpensively, eliminating the need for outsourcing," says Rick Rivera, product manager. "The software supports a library of 500 hot-fix rhinestones…[and] displays a job's cost on the fly, allowing users to calculate profits and manage rhinestone inventories."

Other developments:
• Mimaki USA Inc.'s GP-604D inkjet printer won DPI Product of the Year in the direct-to-garment category.
• SGIA, which as has for many years published evaluations of graphic printer specs, output speed, maintenance, quality, etc., announced it now doing the same for inkjet apparel printers. The member-exclusive reports provide objective equipment evaluations of all printer brands that volunteer to be tested, according to SGIA. PDF reports and test images that SGIA staff printed on each machine can be downloaded here. — T.M.

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