New HP Sublimation Printers

[Alistair]

https://www8.hp.com/us/en/printers/stitch-textile-printers/overview.html

HP has entered the sublimation market for real with some very nice colour management tech and ink technology. They come in 1600mm (64 inch) and 3200mm versions. I saw the 3200mm version demoed the other day. Considering it is only CMYK, the colour gamut is excellent. The same printer can print direct to textiles as well as to transfer media. All models have in-built spectros that can read off the transfer media as well as off the uncured textile. Replaceable thermal print heads. Ink is less than $50 on the 3 litre cartridges and only a bit more expensive in the 775ml cartridges (300 model). They look to have raised the bar on efficient, cost-effective sublimation printing for small to medium sized commercial printers. Please note that I have absolutely no connection to HP or its dealers but thought this may be of interest to any textile or chromaluxe printers on the board.

[Lessbones]

Extremely large droplet size (25pl)--  i've heard great things for textiles, but the test prints I've done on chromaluxe were atrocious... unless you would like all your photos looking like a Lichtenstein painting.

[dgberg]

I did not look to closely but are they all CMYK? All over shirt/textile production probably a good buy. For Chromaluxe production no need to spend that kind of money. looks like the CMYK 64" 300 model is around $6500.
My Epson P8000 44" dye sub conversion was $3195, plus carts and ink. 10 color too. If you only need 24" than the new Epson F570 would be perfect, $2495 includes 2 sets of ink and 300' of paper.

[Alistair]

Yes, CMYK only Dan. Very nice prints on textiles and soft signage. Probably an overkill for Chromaluxe only as the largest sheet size available is only 2400mm x 1200mm AFAIK. Lessbones, have you seen a Chromaluxe print from one of these printers? Was it properly set up for that substrate? In some ways it makes sense it would not be very good as these printers are capable of printing direct to textile as well as to transer media. The ink load spread is very different between the two.

[dgberg]

My new F570 is CMYK and I am over all pleasantly surprised until you look closely at the grays. On the 570 the gray has a bluish cast where as on my 10 color P8000 the grays look like grays.