New Epson 24" F570 mini review

[dgberg]

Finally delivered yesterday after being on order for over a month. My 44" P8000 dye sub converted printer now has a companion.
Cost for the package $2495 with free shipping. The print speeds are very similar. All dye sub printing is with hi-speed off.
Quite light actually. Little over 50 pounds. Printer is 38" wide and 24" deep. Epson wanted $250 for a standard base. I purchased the rolling cart from Uline for $150.
The only directions with the printer is a small booklet showing how to install the ink. Everything else is on screen. Nothing about drivers, ethernet, you are on your own.
No difficulties here but if this is not what you do for a living you may need some help. The ink comes in 140ml bottles and you just put them in the proper slot and they will fill the tank.
When the tank is full with that color it self seals and you are done. The package comes with 2 full sets or a total of 1120 ml. of ink.Ink cost for replacements is .13 per ml. or $70 for the 4 bottles.
You also get 2 maintenance tanks. Replacements are $35@  There is a separate door for the cutter. One screw replacement right from the front.
Someone gave that some thought.On initiation the printer used up about 75% of the ink and the maintenance tank shows about 85% full.
The maintenance tanks are about a third of the size of the larger Epsons. The package comes with 3 rolls of Epson's DS Transfer paper A 24.4" roll and 2- 17's. 300 feet of paper, that is nice.
With the slightly oversize 24" roll (24.4") you can now sublimate to 24" metal prints with the proper bleed.
Very easy setup. It has Wifi but I used ethernet. Downloaded the drivers from Epson's site and printed my first mask template.
I made my own profiles for my P8000 but downloaded two from DTG that were made for this printer. One is for hard substrates and the second one for fabrics for the masks and gaiters we are printing.
I have to split the pictures up into two groups as we are only allowed 4 per thread. Dye sublimation is easy to setup if you are giving some thought to trying it out. Metal prints sell better than the canvas ones these days and you can do all kinds of apparel.
The only bad part about dye sublimation is the cost to match your press size to your printer size. You have only $2500 in this printer but a 32x42" Knight Maxxi press is pushing 12K. It also takes a good bit of space.
One last thing the add on warranty is only $131 per year. Too cheap to pass up. Any additional questions fire away.

Wanted to add one more thing about that cutter. After the print is cut off you have a small set of pinch rollers that hold the print in place to keep it from sliding on the floor if the printer is unattended. A slight tug on the print and it comes right out. Some really nice features on this printer.

[SigImage]

Thanks for the review, and the additional pictures! I'm pretty much sold on the F570. Have you done any side by side comparisons of the same image printed on your dye sub P8000 vs F570? I'm so curious how they compare for metal prints. P8000 with the Light inks vs F570 with CMYK only.

Good looking studio, and great use of the space. Just curious, are those the masks from Conde?

[dgberg]

I will run the tests and report back. My top interest as well. No I eventually cancelled from Conde. These are 2 ply poly with slot for filter. They were $1@ plus shipping. I only ordered 50 the first time as I wanted to see what they looked like. Excellent quality. I ordered 350 more. They are from Pakistan and take 10 days to 2 weeks to get here. 1000 free shipping. I paid $25 the small shipment and $50 shipping for the larger order. 1000 is too many for me. They have black or white banding. Purchased a 100 filters to sell but so far no one wants them. They like them thinner and easier to breath through.

[dgberg]

Here are the 8x10 test prints pressed on Chromaluxe metal
 between F570 CMYK and P8000 10 color. There is a subtle difference in the grays.. Sure going to bust a myth I had about CMYK being inferior.
I have some guys with this printer telling be the B&W are really good. That will be my next test.
I think you can tell the P8000 rocks were printed with gray inks and the f570 rocks with cyan.

[tharrington]

Thank you for all of this great information...and pictures!

[dgberg]

More than welcome. Did my first larger metal this morning with the 570 for outside my studio. Great colors.

[mcpix]

As long as we're talking metal prints...Did you ever find a way to touch up dust spots on metal? I figured out how to do it successfully on canvas, but not on metal prints.

[dgberg]

The only spots I get on metal is if a speck of dust gets between the Metal and transfer paper before pressing.
You then get a little white spot that does not transfer.
Dark colors are a little easier to touch up but if you have the gloss panels it is almost impossible to touch up without showing.
75% of my metal print customers are reselling their work and they are fussy.
That's ok but anything that is not almost perfect does not make it out the door.
Any defects in the sky I usually chuck. I now go over the metal blank with a JRS roller and wipe down the print lightly.
The JRS is a little too aggressive to run over those prints. Don't want to pull any ink off or you will get a dreaded white spot.
Chipped edges used to be a problem but I have fixed that.
My jointer usually used for wood has a helical head with individual carbide blades and works great on the aluminum.
Chipped edge take a light pass or two and the chipped edge is gone.
I have a radius punch with 3 corner sizes. I put the radius back on each corner with the proper punch.
One or two light passes over that back sharp edge with a good file and done.
We will be buying full sheets of Chromaluxe to cut into custom sizes many for unusual size panos.
Cut them a 1/16" oversize, run them over the jointer to remove the saw marks and radius the corners.
Custom upcharge for the extra work and you have a happy client with their custom pano size they could not buy anywhere else.
I am so upset with myself for not going with the larger press (44"x64") Last year when I purchased the 32"x42" it was a financial stretch.
I thought being able to do 24"x36", 20"x40" and 30"x40" would be it. Now I have some clients looking for 40"x60" and 20"x60" panos.
You just have to stop somewhere and that press is all of 20k. Too expensive to get ROI especially at my age.