Category: Equipment

TO USCUTTER WITH LOVE: Unboxing the Revolutionary New HP 110 Latex Printer

Posted on by USCutter

My mission (I wasn’t really given a choice if I could accept or not) was simple. HP had developed in absolute secrecy a new user-installable true wide-format digital latex printer for under $10,000. It seemed like a foolproof plan, to bring wide-format printing on all different media types – for applications ranging from wrapping cars, boats, and brick walls, to putting ads beneath people’s feet in grocery stores, to printing the custom wallpaper of your dreams – firmly within the reach of entry-level print operators and sign shops.

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User-installable true wide-format within the reach of any budget.

And HP’s premise with the new 110 printer was so bold, so revolutionary: that literally anyone could install this printer right out of the box (with no professional help whatsoever) and be printing within hours. But this claim still needed to be tested. All they needed was a guinea pig, someone who fit their profile of the “clean slate”.

And this is where I enter the story. The crate arrived on a blue summer day.

I knew we were getting in a new product. A new wide-format printer for entry-level users which was shattering the ground floor on pricing for these machines. A claim that a printer like this is “user-installable” is big. First of all it has to be easy enough for someone who’s frame of reference is a desktop printer; and second of all, how much cheaper is it if you can save thousands on the installation fees and associated travel that comes with the requirement that other printers of this ilk be installed by a certified technician?

The crate was big, large enough to hold a jungle cat. Everyone stood around and oohed and awed. My boss helped me take off the top, revealing the neatly packed contents beneath. But soon it was just me, the screwdriver, and the instructions.

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Hardest part right here, folks.

 

The challenge was clear. Could I be the “literally anyone” that they required to complete this task?

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User-installable and serviceable low-cost printheads.
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No service tech needed – JUST THIS!

Hours passed and the machine was taking shape, whirring to life. I installed cartridges, printheads, all the while receiving prompts directly from the printer. I downloaded the RIP from the cloud. I had my fair share of hiccups, first and foremost of which was my failure to properly latch the print carriage. What was supposed to take 3 hours ended up taking me 6. But the point is, after all was said and done, that probably the hardest part about the whole installation process was opening up the box and finding the instructions. Welcome to the age of affordable accessible wide-format printing: the new HP 110 Latex Printer has arrived.

BE AN UNSTOPPABLE SUCCESS WITH HP LATEX PRINTING TECHNOLOGY

Posted on by USCutter

Wide format digital printing technology is now within the reach of your home-based business, and the cost of entry is dropping every day.
HP Latex inks are dry instantly, odor and fume free, and last 3 years outdoors unlaminated.
Let your clients print the custom wallpaper of their dreams.
Wrap cars, boats, and brick walls with digital media options from HP and Orafol; there’s literally almost nowhere now where your message can’t be seen.

Come see us at the Seattle Small Business Expo.
Come see us at the Seattle Small Business Expo, or call us anytime to schedule a demo in one of our showrooms.

If you’re in the Seattle area on July 16th, go ahead and stop by our booth at the Small Business Expo at the convention center (#506). Or give us a call anytime, 1-425-481-3555, to schedule a demonstration of this equipment at our Redmond or Memphis showrooms. They are available any weekday with an appointment, and attending one makes you eligible for BIG DISCOUNTS! Call now for more information!

A BRIEF HISTORY OF PRINTED GARMENT TECHNOLOGY FROM SILKWORMS TO DTG

Posted on by USCutter

For thousands of years, man has sought to enhance his image through colorful decorative clothing. Wikipedia states: “Screen printing is a form of stencilling [using a silk mesh] that first appeared in a recognizable form in China during the Song Dynasty (960–1279 AD).”

Virtually the same technology is still used today for mass-production runs of printed garments, using stencils and polyester meshes on giant octopus-shaped presses.

A modern manual screenprint octo-press.
A modern manual screenprint octo-press.

But surely, somewhere between silkworms, the Song Dynasty and Destiny’s Child, there’s been other methods developed for transferring ink designs to garments?

USCutter supports four alternatives for the decoration of fabrics, with each method having its upsides and limitations, and dependent on the style of ink printing you prefer.

SUBLIMATION:

Specially formulated inks, via application of heat and pressure, are chemically transferred from the printed media and infused into a polyester or polymer-coated substrate. Mugs, mousepads, and more can be decorated in photo-realistic detail. Unfortunately, these inks are not compatible with cotton or dark-colored fabrics. UNTIL NOW. Check out this video for a work-around using sublimated graphics and certain Siser heat transfer vinyl products to create bright vivid exotic textured graphics on cotton and dark colors.

Sublimated graphic on a contour cut glitter vinyl piece.
Sublimated graphic on a contour cut glitter vinyl piece.
Glitter texture and vibrant ink infused into the vinyl for long-lasting washability.
Vibrant sublimation ink infused into the glitter effect vinyl for long-lasting washability.

HEAT TRANSFER PAPER:

You CAN print on cotton and other fabrics, dark or light, with any inkjet or laser printer. Our popular line of Joto paper products allow you to transfer printed media directly onto the surface of the garment. The whole image, including the background, is transferred; this is not a problem on light fabrics, so the image doesn’t need to be cut or weeded. However, for images to be placed on dark fabrics, contour cutting and weeding is necessary to avoid transferring the white background.

PRINTABLE HEAT TRANSFER VINYL:

For solvent, eco-solvent, or latex printers, there is a wide array of different finishes, textures, effects, and other properties like stretchability for print-and-cut materials from vinyl manufacturers such as Siser and Hexis. These products function much like standard heat transfer vinyl, but allow you to show off your high-quality inks on custom garments of all kinds.

DIRECT TO GARMENT:

What if there was a way to print directly onto a cotton or cotton-poly blend t-shirt, dark or light, with no stencil, no masking, no cutting, no reversing, no backgrounds, no size limitations, no middlemen of any kind? It seems like a no-brainer. The Epson F2000 might be the most significant contribution to garment printing history since the silkworm. All the consistency and vividness of screen printing with high-quality Epson inks and white base layer for colored fabrics puts virtual warehouses of inventory at your fingertips minus the manual labor and inflexibility of stencil production.

In this enlightened age for garments, no matter what equipment you have running in your shop, USCutter has all the supplies, ink and media options, for you to put high-quality designs on fabrics of all kinds.