The M&R Companies are pleased to announce that the M-Link Xperience will be coming to Fespa Digital 2016.
“Fespa Digital attendees are invited to bring a USB flash drive with a personal or public-domain raster-based PNG or PSD image file with transparent background―and let us show what the award-winning M-Link X can do”, said Geoff Baxter, director of M&R’s Digital Products Division. “The M-Link Xperience is a great way to do head-to-head comparisons among direct-to-garment printers. We will print a shirt using the attendee’s image file. Then the attendee can take the flash drive and M-Link-printed shirt to the booths of other digital printers and ask them for a print of the same image file. We are certain the M-Link X print will prove to be superior in every way.”
“When we began work on M-Link, our goal was to design and build a digital printer with the highest print quality and the lowest per-print cost in the industry—all at a cost-effective price point,” said Stephen Chuddy, M&R’s Digital Division product manager, “and the results exceeded all expectations: M-Links clearly have a high print quality and a low per-print cost.”
The image quality results from rugged, high-speed industrial printheads, M&R’s proprietary i-Colour RIP Software and exclusive Absolute Position Technology, DuPont Artistri BRITE inks, and print modes designed to minimize ink usage while producing printed garments that are softer, more breathable, and much closer to water-based screen printing.
Print modes
The four most popular print modes are single-pass modes for printing on white, color, and black, as well as a single-pass highlight mode. White Print Mode prints C-M-Y-K with no underbase for use on white or light-color shirts. Color One-Pass Mode prints a gradated white underbase and C-M-Y-K on color shirts. Black One-Pass Mode prints a gradated white underbase and C-M-Y on black shirts, using the shirt’s color for black areas of the image. On light-color shirts with light pretreatment, Highlight Mode prints C-M-Y-K and a white highlight—but without a white underbase. Since two white printheads are positioned ahead of the color printheads, M-Link and M-Link X are capable of printing the white and color layers in the same pass. On applicable artwork, this results in excellent images at maximum print speed.
“The one-pass modes speed up production, and the optimized RIP helps lower overall ink consumption,” said Chuddy. “In addition, M-Link and M-Link X are designed with integrated bulk ink-feed systems. This allows users to purchase ink in bulk quantities instead of being tied to expensive cartridge-based systems.”
High-speed printing to cost-effective pricing
“Our other goal was to introduce high-speed printing to cost-effective pricing,” said Baxter. “M-Link X prints superb full-size images on white shirts in only 30 to 45 seconds and full-size images on dark shirts in less than a minute. And M&R’s standard M-Link prints white shirts in 45 to 60 seconds and dark shirts in two-and-a-half to three minutes—with the same outstanding image quality.
“The combination of speed, quality, and low ink cost makes M-Link X superior to direct-to-garment digital printers costing more than three times as much,” continued Baxter. “M-Link X isn’t the only printer for high quality prints. And it isn’t the only high-speed printer. However, it is the only affordable high-quality, high-speed printer. M-Link X is an incredible value.”
