I-Made for Brown Automatic

rebkell · October 1st, 2012, 08:47 PM

We have an 8-10 Brown Electraprint and we're thinking about purchasing the I-Made software. Anyone have any experience with it and any information or feedback about it?

crazy mike · October 3rd, 2012, 08:08 AM

We have had our 6-7 Junior for 2 months and wouldn't be without the I-Made program.

cclaud3 · October 3rd, 2012, 12:14 PM

We have a 6/10 full size with 1 flash. It allows for more flexibility in production. Some jobs would not be possible without it.

jaquette · October 7th, 2012, 05:41 PM

I am also about to purchase this program can you explain in a little more detail why it is so good, how it has helped.

Tks

cclaud3 · October 11th, 2012, 12:19 PM

Ex 1:
Artwork is unable to print wet on wet, or you don't have proper screen mesh or art setup for it.
White screen in head 1, print, flash in head 2. print 2 colors in heads 5 & 6. Comes back around to head 2 for flash. Print heads 7 & 8 then finished.

Ex: 2
Or you want to print/flash/print white without a 2nd screen. You can print in head 1 flash in 2 and come back around to head 1 again. Also can set 2 strokes on 1st pass and 1 stroke on final pass.

Ex 3
If you're printing wet on wet and find that you need to swap the order of the colors due to picking-up/smearing, then you can change the sequence in the I-made program. IE, print head 7 on first revolution and print heads 4 & 5 on second revolution.

I believe the main reason for it is to replace the need for additional flashes and flash head location. You can also program a multi-revolution sequence with a stop at the end (and buzzer if you want). This allows you to go grab and fold the printed shirts then come back to the press when it's ready.

The best thing to do is run as much wet-on-wet printing with the least revolutions but sometimes it's quicker/easier to use the program if your in a rush or the art becomes problematic after the test prints.

rebkell · October 13th, 2012, 10:28 AM

Thanks cclaud3, that is what I was wanting to know. I had heard the sales pitch from Brown and I didn't really doubt what they said, I just wanted to hear from someone that has used it. Is it fairly easy to set up the above scenarios? The person I talked to at Brown said it was developed to help eliminate a lot of set up questions.

My understanding is that it's kind of like a macro, in that you sort of run the machine through the sequence of events and it remembers it, would you consider that about right?

cclaud3 · October 13th, 2012, 11:39 AM

Yeah, it came with my machine when I bought it. Didn't really know what it was or if it was a gimmick when they described it at the show. Now it seems like it would be challenging to do some of the jobs.

There is actually a hidden menu that you can input the entire sequence before printing a shirt which is nice. They told me about a few weeks into owning it. The normal I-made menu has you run the job around and it memorizes it like you said--just takes longer. They don't advertise that for some reason.

It even helps on the simple white jobs -print flash print. It's kind of like the revolver mode on M&R/Anatol but it has to go around twice. The machine doesn't automatically back step to head 1 from head 2. FYI, the machine does jog to the left under manual control but not in printing mode. Or you cut put a duplicate screen after the flash for 1 revolution around. But wouldn't make a lot of sense of low shirt count orders.

I think the print/flash/print would work under the standard machine mode, but you might have to press the start button again to send it around for the second revolution? I've never tried it under standard mode. I use imade for just about everything except one color/no flash jobs.

I'm not sure how much they're charging to add it to an existing machine but it's a nice thing to have.

dd2 · November 12th, 2012, 11:37 PM

Just purchased the Electra print and the I-made software. Only a few weks in, but so far it works as sold.....