# My thoughts on SGIA Orlando 2013



## Airbrushdude (May 14, 2013)

Having spent almost two decades working in the printing industry,I have worked several large events over the years from the vendor side, but this was my 1st event as an attendee, and I must say I really enjoyed it. We went into this deal with one thought in mind...To narrow down our DTG research to one machine. 

We thought we had narrowed our selection down to 2 dtg machines based on our online research over the past several months, but instead of finding a clear winner to purchase, we found ourselves asking even more questions, and walking out of the show with 3-4 dtg mfgs in the running. Not to mention a ton of other apparel decoration options for us to concider.

Needless to say we were a little overwhelmed by the wealth of information available, and returned home with lots of new info to analyze, as well as new questions about our business goals to discuss, but I will share with you the prints we had made on the dtg machines we looked at.

I created an image just for printing at this event...I used some bright colors that I knew would be difficult to reproduce, then saved it as a 12"X12" 300 dpi jpg and let each vendor we had interest in give it a shot. From a quality of image reproduction standpoint, the Neoflex was the clear winner, with Belquette Mod1 coming in a very,very close 2nd place.

Neoflex accuracy of colors and detail was the best....Belquette produced almost the same but it took them a bit of tweaking within their rip software to achieve nearly the same result. The accuracy of color print from the Brother GT3 series machine wasn't even in the same ballpark, but their print had a much heavier hand and did not show any issues when I gave it the old "stretch test", whereas the Neoflex and Belquette both showed a lot of tiny tears in the ink when I stretched them...albeit mainly in the areas of light ink coverage. 

I will add, that we were highly impressed with the Belquette Edge pretreat machine, and the overall work flow they have developed throughout their process. I also liked their platen registration system, whereas the Neoflex platens just sit on the base with nothing to hold them in register should the unit get bumped accidently. That was probably the biggest downside we saw to the Neoflex, otherwise I really liked the triple platen setup and the ability to print up to 42" in length....I can see myself printing down the leg of blue jeans or large canvas prints with the additional print area of their machine.

Both the Brother GT3 and the new Epson F2000 printer laid down a substantially thicker layer of ink, that would seem to me to be more durable over time. however Brothers rip software was an additional $1200 or so, and it just didn't seem to produce the results I expected, but I was impressed by the speed of the print, as well as the speed of curing time compared to the other printers we viewed. 

I wasn't able to get a print of my image from the Epson F2000 mainly because their booth was swamped with folks and we were somewhat limited on time that day. I will say the images they were printing looked amazing, although one of the images they were printing showed to use over $4 in ink. they are gonna have to work on that, but I believe they've got a good machine once they get all the bugs worked out, and can get their ink cost down. The fact that Belquette is now a dealer for the F2000 and will be able to utilize the Edge pretreat machine is a plus that could weigh in their favor.

I will end by saying that the folks at the Brother, Belquette and the All American booth were extremely helpful and went out of their way to answer our questions. They seemed less like salesman and more like technicians and end users and we can't express enough how helpful they were. At this point we are working on our business plans to see if we can figure out which system will fit our needs the best, and once we decide I'll post it here. 

Here are the pics of the original image I created in Photoshp and the tees that were printed for us by Neoflex, Belquette,and Brother....Please forgive my crappy camera...it did not represent the actual colors as well as it should've....the shirts actually look better then these pic represent.


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## jgabby (Mar 29, 2007)

Very nice feedbacks


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## 23spiderman (Jun 26, 2008)

the floating platen design on the Neo is quite nice once you get used to it. we use marks on the bed to identify where each platen goes. this allows us to quickly remove one or all for a job and then put them back as needed. just a few examples: when printing hoodies, i like to remove the middle platen and place my garment 90 degrees from "normal" (on the 1st and 3rd platens) so that the hood can lay off the end of the bed and the pocket area can lay in the middle of the bed. then in the 3rd platen, that garment's hood lays in the middle of the bed and the pocket area lays at the back end of the bed. this way those areas are well below my print surface assurance no head strikes. since there isn't much room on each side of the bed, it's nice to be able to rotate your items to lay off the end and in the middle of the bed. i do the same when printing the sleeves of a long-sleeved shirt. also, it's great for long pieces of fabric or canvas, etc.

they rarely get bumped accidentally, and if they do, it's easy to fix. also, i've made the mistake of not paying attention to a seam that was sticking up too far. instead of the printer grinding against my garment, the platen was able to slide with the printer's movement. i caught the mistake, and while the shirt was ruined, no damage was done to my platen or the printer because the platen was able to "float". it's really not a downside, once you get used to how to quickly put them on and take them off. sorry for the long post; just wanted to share my experience.


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## Smalzstein (Jul 22, 2008)

I must agree the floating platen design is the way to go, it gives so much versatility.


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## BretMy (Nov 2, 2013)

Floating platen the only way to go to save time and effort, worth every penny.....


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## opolis (Feb 18, 2009)

Very nice review. Thanks. Also do you know the different print speed times it took each machine to print your design?


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## Belquette (Sep 12, 2005)

Good question as real production speeds do need to be factored in.


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## JeridHill (Feb 8, 2006)

Well, since we came in a very, very close 2nd, it looks like we have to work a little harder in getting things to print without tweaking. We can do the tweaking ahead of time and save them as presets for click, click print and of course ease of use for the user. We are up for the challenge!


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## Airbrushdude (May 14, 2013)

opolis said:


> Very nice review. Thanks. Also do you know the different print speed times it took each machine to print your design?


We did time the print speeds of each machine, but to be honest I don't recall what they were exactly...I do recall the Brother printed in something between the 2-3 minute mark and cured in like 90 seconds or so, and the other two came in somewhere double that time. But for our needs the quality of the print overrides the speed, so for now this is a non-issue with us since we don't foresee large volume printing on these machines.


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## Airbrushdude (May 14, 2013)

JeridHill said:


> Well, since we came in a very, very close 2nd, it looks like we have to work a little harder in getting things to print without tweaking. We can do the tweaking ahead of time and save them as presets for click, click print and of course ease of use for the user. We are up for the challenge!


Jerid, your equipment was such a close 2nd, it was virtually a tie in our eyes, so don't fret. However it would seem that tweaking and creating presets ahead of time would be great for repeat projects, but extremely difficult to do for that walk in that wants a one off shirt printed.


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## allamerican-aeoon (Aug 14, 2007)

Michael.
Glad you had great time for weeks. While you are relaxing I did business at Puerto Rico and now I am at Frankfurt Germany airport lounge reading fantastic thread  and having morning coffee. 
7am here. Philly is 1am. I am here for Aeoon production meeting for next few days. NeoFlex and Aeoon prints out same quality. Next time we will print with Aeoon for you. 
Cheers to TSF members! Especially to DTGers  beers are on me always.


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## JeridHill (Feb 8, 2006)

Airbrushdude said:


> Jerid, your equipment was such a close 2nd, it was virtually a tie in our eyes, so don't fret. However it would seem that tweaking and creating presets ahead of time would be great for repeat projects, but extremely difficult to do for that walk in that wants a one off shirt printed.


The tweaks would be on our end, not yours. So it's a matter of just choosing the preset and print. It is how RIPs work, and when done right, it's no work on your end. Thanks again!


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## cavedave (Dec 5, 2006)

Hello,

I printed the shirt for you on the Brother and when I did so I was using a photographic print mode.

We do also have what we call Graphic print modes, as this image was still in my queue I printed it again using both Photo and Graphics so you can see the difference (sorry not the best focused image, but you can get an idea about the colors).
By default all the Queues are setup for Photo mode but you can easily select a Graphics option as either the default or on a job by job basis.

The difference between Graphics and Photo is down to the rendering in the ICC, Photo uses a perceptual rendering intent and is best for real life photos, while the Graphics mode uses Relative.

I always explain the difference between the two modes as follows.
Graphics can make some images loook better, make the images pop and give greater saturation. But it can also make some images look worse particularly if trying to do specific color matching of things like spot colors as it can cause hue shifts and is not so good for skin tones
Photo is safe, all images will print with reasonable quality and in general overall gives the best quality when prining a mixture of different types of jobs.

I should have used graphics for this example as its not a photo, but I was doing about 10 things at once when you came by.

Best regards

-David


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## trendytee (Oct 20, 2008)

Airbrush dude ,
Did you look at the Free Jet?

Trendy tees


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## opolis (Feb 18, 2009)

Airbrushdude said:


> We did time the print speeds of each machine, but to be honest I don't recall what they were exactly...I do recall the Brother printed in something between the 2-3 minute mark and cured in like 90 seconds or so, and the other two came in somewhere double that time. But for our needs the quality of the print overrides the speed, so for now this is a non-issue with us since we don't foresee large volume printing on these machines.


I hear a lot of people say this when they are buying a dtg machine that quality of print is the #1 deciding factor in the printer they choose. Imho almost all dtg brands produce a high quality print that 99% of people buying the shirts will think the print is outstanding and better then most prints they have ever seen. Remember almost all of the time your customer isn't doing side by side comparisons with another shirt from another dtg printer. I think it is most peoples goal when buying a dtg printer to build up a business of where they are keeping their machine busy at all times. So time of print seems like it should be a way bigger factor than most people look at when buying a printer to me. 

I look at it this way. If it takes printer A 3:30 seconds to print a shirt, and printer B 4 mins to print a shirt with printer A you are printing a little over 2 more shirts a hour. If your avg profit is $5 per shirt(low end in dtg) thats a profit of $10 a hr, $80 an 8 hr work day, or $20,800 per year lost for a print quality that 99% of customers don't know the difference. Losing that 1% of customers that need a fine art piece printed on a t shirt doesn't make up the difference for me.

Just when I see these posts of people comparing printers I always see quality of print brought up but a lot of time other factors are left out. I think far to many people get caught up in quality of print. 

I'm not saying offer your customers a crappy product, I'm saying that most dtgs printers create a print that will far surpass your customers expectations. So I think the other factors should be weighed more heavily. Just my 2 cents.


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## allamerican-aeoon (Aug 14, 2007)

Zag, I agreed many of your posts but not this time. If $10/hr is goal why do anything? More over why be a TSF member? No one's dream is $10/hr. is yours? If so call me. I am serious.
Research, invest, take risk, work harder than normal workers instead better just surf for Job classify section. I am sure many $ calculators are different than yours.
Cheers! Beers are on me always.


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## jgabby (Mar 29, 2007)

Opolis, the problem is customers expectations increase each years.

So beeing sure to buy the best, is a kind of secure for the future.


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## Belquette (Sep 12, 2005)

allamerican said:


> Zag, I agreed many of your posts but not this time. If $10/hr is goal why do anything? More over why be a TSF member? No one's dream is $10/hr. is yours? If so call me. I am serious.
> Research, invest, take risk, work harder than normal workers instead better just surf for Job classify section. I am sure many $ calculators are different than yours.
> Cheers! Beers are on me always.


This is quite an insult as for many people $10/hr does make a difference and was calculated on print times of 30 seconds which the machines that printed this art are farther apart in print times (not to mention white ink maintenance and costs ) then just 30 seconds.
That would yield much more then $10/hr, and that's just based off of running 1 machine...

Zag, you are right on all of your assessments!


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## JeridHill (Feb 8, 2006)

Michael, thank you for your posting on this topic and your thoughts on SGIA. Trade shows are often difficult because obviously you want to perform your best and still be able to address questions someone might have. That being said, I can see this topic is swaying away from the original intention of your message. So in accordance with that, I started a new thread to keep yours on track.

http://www.t-shirtforums.com/direct-garment-dtg-inkjet-printing/t270345.html#post1535849


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## allamerican-aeoon (Aug 14, 2007)

Jerid,
Conditions are same. If you are hectic others too. While you are hectic face customer sincerely and take time for show your best is stands for "The company to trust".
If my neighbor's yard is rain mine also. Never just your yard.
While we satisfied him obviously you did not meet AA's level.
Every loser has reasons why and every winner has no words except smile. Loser always find excuses while winner does not.
Cheers!


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## Belquette (Sep 12, 2005)

allamerican said:


> Jerid,
> Conditions are same. If you are hectic others too. While you are hectic face customer sincerely and take time for show your best is stands for "The company to trust".
> If my neighbor's yard is rain mine also. Never just your yard.
> While we satisfied him obviously you did not meet AA's level.
> ...


Very productive comments ....now back to DTG: Quality Vs. Speed


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## BandPrints (Feb 4, 2007)

I think everyone is bringing up good points. We have found great success and run our machine 10 hours a day 7 days a week currently. Potential buyers should be asking deeper questions such as how many units do you think you can output an hour and what is actual (we have found 10-12 darks and 20-24 lights if smooth) or what print quality do your customers expect? Such as 1440x720 CMYK prints to get more per hour out or 1440x1440 CMYK prints to maintain the highest quality for all the customers. Don't get me wrong, the printer is the key part but many people overlook the logistics of DTG that we have spent the most time on. How does the garment move through the sorting to pre-treat phase and move to print with the least amount of work possible plus the cleaning and up keep of the machines. 

As beginners get better they can cut their highlight white to 0% and base white depending down to say 85% which saves a fair amount of ink. But in the end, it all comes down to how well the shop handles the machine and uptime. With a strict routine all of the machines described above can have the highest percentage of uptime which will have a higher ROI than print speeds and ink costs. An extra 5-10 minutes a day of a routine cleaning will save hours if not days down the road of down time that cannot be brought back.


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## Airbrushdude (May 14, 2013)

cavedave said:


> Hello,
> 
> I printed the shirt for you on the Brother and when I did so I was using a photographic print mode.
> 
> ...


Well it seems obvious from the pic that the GT3 can give a better looking print then what was printed for us at the show. I wish I had that in my hands for a better comparison. And in your defense, the Brothers booth was our 1st stop that day and it was a very busy spot at the time we arrived.

I do have one question...I seem to recall reading somewhere that the GT3 was capable of printing accurate PMS color. Is that correct?


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## Airbrushdude (May 14, 2013)

trendytee said:


> Airbrush dude ,
> Did you look at the Free Jet?
> 
> Trendy tees


No, and I don't recall seeing one anywhere, but it was a huge show.


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## BandPrints (Feb 4, 2007)

We use FreeJet products and like them. I think every printer you find there will be pros and cons, not to mention a user becomes bias over a period of time since they know their particular brand or machine the best. I am more excited about the increase in advancements across the board that are coming about compared to three years ago when I started to look into going DTG.

Also other than print quality a few components you want to decide on will be bulk or bagged ink system, ink brand (many epson are dupont and this plays into the feel of the ink) and what your primary print sizes will be.


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## EricDeem (May 7, 2011)

Sorry for my late response to this threads Michael...It was a real pleasure talking to you at the NeoFlex booth at SGIA. The difference in the prints is MUCH more dramatic than what the images show...I saw them first hand and I was quite amazed at the variations from printer to printer. Of course I knew the NeoFlex would be victorious!! Let me know if I can answer any questions you might have about the printer or its use in a production environment.


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## Airbrushdude (May 14, 2013)

I wanted to post an update to this thread....Last week I received a couple of shirts from cavedave that he was kind enough to reprint using the correct mode on the Brother GT3, since he had pointed out that the shirt I got during the show was printed in the wrong mode.

Well, all I can say is the difference in the two prints are night and day....the reprinted shirt looks far more like what I expected from the GT3, and it looks much more like the original image plus it passes my stretch test. 

Posted are the two shirts that were printed so you can see the drastic difference in the two prints.


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## EricDeem (May 7, 2011)

I'd be very interested in what retouches they did the artwork if any? The fact that the person operating the printer at the show didn't print it in the correct "mode" would be a major concern of mine. That excuse might work on a customer buying a $20 tshirt but that is unacceptable to me for a manufacturer selling a $30,000 printer.


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## BandPrints (Feb 4, 2007)

It looks more than night and day to me. Did they print it in "production" mode at the show and in the highest quality possible at the showroom? Not sure how they can have such a difference, unless as Eric said, the image is drastically changed prior to printing.


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## allamerican-aeoon (Aug 14, 2007)

Bottom line is no touch up. Touch up is belong to Skill of Photoshop not Machine or RIP.
Art goes in print as provided. No time to screw around with art.
Adjusting color with studying art is not stands for what does machine can do. If it is "Master of Photoshop's" are the Best printout? None sense.
Do me a favor, Send me the art work. I will re-print for you month later.
Monitor color also can be a factor too.
Cheers! Beers are on me always.


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## Airbrushdude (May 14, 2013)

cavedave said:


> Hello,
> 
> I printed the shirt for you on the Brother and when I did so I was using a photographic print mode.
> 
> ...


According to this post the print mode used to print my shirt at the show was photographic, when they should of used graphic mode.


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## EricDeem (May 7, 2011)

Airbrushdude said:


> According to this post the print mode used to print my shirt at the show was photographic, when they should of used graphic mode.


IMO...Photographic mode should be the highest quality of print possible. I think you are being told a salesman's story and they "improved" your design to print better. When you visited the NeoFlex booth at the SGIA show we did nothing but open your design and print it. Everything can be enhanced, over saturated etc with enough time in photoshop. However you should be looking for a machine that doesn't require those extra steps. I have "enhanced" a customers design before because I thought the print could use a lil more vibrancy but later regretted it because it was purposely designed to have a worn, vintage color to it. Now I simply print what the customer provides unless I am told to adjust it from the customers mouth.


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## Smalzstein (Jul 22, 2008)

Photographic mode often means lowest drop size thus low color saturation.


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## JeridHill (Feb 8, 2006)

Airbrushdude said:


> According to this post the print mode used to print my shirt at the show was photographic, when they should of used graphic mode.


That could definitely do it. I'd say the colors are night and day from each other and the final output does in fact look closer to the original. My hat off to them (if I was wearing a hat).


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## EricDeem (May 7, 2011)

Smalzstein said:


> Photographic mode often means lowest drop size thus low color saturation.


I apologize as I was not aware of Brothers terminology. My way of selling my service to customers is by saying the "difference between me and the screen printer down the street is I can produce *photographic* quality prints and they cannot." Thus why I assumed that photographic mode works = best mode.


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## DAGuide (Oct 2, 2006)

Dekay317 said:


> I think you are being told a salesman's story and they "improved" your design to print better.


Eric,

FYI - Dave does not work for Brother or a dealer of Brother. Dave is a programmer for CADLink - a software company that makes many types of RIPs for a variety of industries. CADLink has made printing software programs for many of the largest OEM dtg manufacturers / distributors. 

Mark


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## cavedave (Dec 5, 2006)

I am not a salesman, I manage the R&D at Cadlink for printing related products.

I didn't alter the design in any way what so ever (Eric you shouldn't speculate).

The difference between the two prints, was
the first print used our standard photo mode at 600x600 and the 2nd print was created using the 1200x1200 mode using a Graphics setting.
The difference between standard (Photo) and Graphics is only the rendering intent.

The difference in output is less to do with the resolution change and more to do with the different rendering intents. Graphics is much better for these cartoon style graphics where you want the colors to pop, photo would be better for printing skin tones and that kind of thing.

Its just a matter of what queue we select to print the image from, as I said I was very busy and just chucked it into the fast Black T-shirt Photo Queue and didn't really look at the graphic or think about it as I was doing several other things at the same time.
For the 2nd print again all I did was add it to the Best Graphics Queue, no other changes.

Best regards

-David


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## allamerican-aeoon (Aug 14, 2007)

Someone will test 2nd round  Maybe next show?
Cheers all! Beers are on me always.


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## 23spiderman (Jun 26, 2008)

Dekay317 said:


> I apologize as I was not aware of Brothers terminology. My way of selling my service to customers is by saying the "difference between me and the screen printer down the street is I can produce *photographic* quality prints and they cannot." Thus why I assumed that photographic mode works = best mode.


AnaJet uses this same wording with their FP-125 & Sprint printers. "Graphic" was the most realistic setting, "Vivid" upped the saturation and made your primary colors pop, and "Photo" was better for skin tones. however, they way they structured this in EK Print Studio, the "Photo" mode, by default, used the smallest dot possible, and put down the least amount of ink. it basically made it unusable for garments, so we would brighten and saturate our image with our art software and then print in one of the other modes. otherwise, you would need to do many passes of the print head to get enough saturation. i agree with you that it does seem counter-intuitive.


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