Printex Prism review

arttex

Thanks, Mike. Bring one bottle of some nice NZ's Sauvignon (or whatever you choose) and I will let you play with the Prism for a day.
No, seriously, you should consider coming with Adam for some short European tour.

Printwizard

Miso, if ever I was closed would definitely look you up! By the way, your prints are awesome, I would have so much to learn I may need to bring several cases.
FYI some people may not know your area is famous as a high end textile hub. Adam showed me some garments, beautiful cotton and manufacturing. Extremely high end quality.

Now I don't mean to be rude or to hijack this thread, but American quality seems much lower. The two worst quality shirts we print in here are Fruit of the Loom and Gildan. We don't try to sell them because you don't get so much repeat orders as you do with a more expensive and higheqr quality shirt. I sell 100 times way more shirts at $6.50, an I would Gildan or Fruits at $4.50 when customers feel the difference. Not to mention tubular loading.....

As printers many people look at the science of the print rather than the science of the substrate or shirt. There are many types of cotton, the longer the strands the better quality and they don't go fluffy. There are combed and brushed finishes and after treatments such as mercerising to give the softness. As well as weather the fabric is knitted in single thread or double thread, the needles per inch count or gauge of the machine, and the setup of needles and stitch tensions as well on the knitting machine. And yes quality costs a bit more. But it's easily seen and felt.
We bring in some really nice cotton tees from Bangladesh and its easily viewable the difference between them and Gildan. But what's funnier is printing a cmyk or tonal job on a coarse brushed short cotton tee and in front of the customer throw on a nice tee and the print quality even looks so much better, feels luxurious, and they never buy cheap again. We print and airfreight to the states for one customer for the last six years now, and so not every decision is about a three buck shirt. The better the cotton the flatter the surface and the nicer it prints, also less or no fluff and dust on the surface. No holes in the shirts, no twist, easier lining up, washes well and doesn't go out of shape. Not packed full of starch and doesnt scorch. People remember that when they go to buy again

Gilligan

Ftl is in mexico now... Trust me I know, we used to have one of the mills 20 mins south of me... Lots of ppl felt that. Damn nafta!

__________________
"you don't need a hook for the worms to dance."

jmd

I guess we know where and who the problem is now, don't we.

inkman996

Problem with America is not many want to pay the higher price for the higher quality apparel, trust me we wish as decorators to print on nothing but top shelf goods.

Anyways most of all out tees are not American well at least American made they are made all over the globe bust mostly south of our border.

Printwizard

I did my apprenticeship as a knitter, we owned a factory with about 500 staff manufacturing here a long time ago but went broke and liquidated a long time ago now, and as NZ led the way in lowering tariffs and import duties and forming free trade agreements no industry was hit quicker or harder than the clothing and footwear industries which is now limited to fashion and small runs, and only about five percent the size it once was. Most of our garments come from Fiji, China, Vietnam, India and low wage countries. My point is that an extra buck can buy a lot in terms of fabric quality and garment construction. It's also nice to print on quality fabric as you can get much better prints off it, as well as better margins. Different markets have different driving forces. I see that a lot at sourcing trade fairs in China and the like. Also HS codes on imports, we run metrics dividing the HS volume by population demographics. Some interesting things like the adage American women assuming aged 16 to 65 would buy 3.2 handbags per year, compared with one through most of Europe and Australia. It's the disposable culture. Same with umbrellas, cheaper metal mechanisms that buckle and get binned and buy three, rather than one decent one that can turn back after blowing out, as well as vented, fiberglass and plastic

arttex

Review continued...

One of the reasons we decided to buy Printex Prism was because of the large print area machine is capable to print. Those jobs were usually done manually and having an automatic press with print area of 40"x36" (alternating print heads) was a huge step forward to us.
So yesterday we did some samples for a major brewing company. Promotional t-shirts for the upcoming European soccer championship, full front and full back, to be printed on cut pieces before sewing.

The big screen (38"x26") is mounted.



To have uniform pressure with a squeegee this wide (24 inches), we added manual squeegee clamps on the sides, at the ends of the bar.



Because of some halftones in the upper part of the artwork, we used two red screens. (305 for the halftones and 195 for checkered flag in the bottom half of the t-shirt)



Size of the t-shirt cut piece was men's XXL. Just to get idea there is regular 16x22 pallet on the left to compare.


Similar on the back.


As you can notice we used alu frames here, so tension was something like 20-25 Newtons at the best. However, the prints were nice and uniform, with perfect registration. Heads movement was smooth (of course, we slower the print speed a bit).
Regarding the press in overall, no major problems so far. Sometimes, when printing jobs involving a 3D screen in it, we use shims or coins for higher individual off contact and here we did have an issue with a manual screen clamps. They couldn't be raised up enough to allow us enough space between screen and bottom of the screen holder to put something in between. So, as you can see on that right empty screen holder on the first picture, we unscrewed plastic foots from them to get enough clearance and we are now waiting for new, shorter manual clamps to be sent from Poland. Nothing big and for sure not an issue for regular central off contact prints, but if you want unbiased review where every single thing will be mentioned, here you have it.

Until the next chapter,

Dream in color, folks!

pushing ink

Did Robert Barnes sell you this and did he do the install? That maybe the difference.

arttex

No. I bought the press from Printex Poland. Polish crew did the install too.

pushing ink

That's the difference, No Robert Barnes!