Ricoh unveils new direct to garment printers

12 May '17

3 min read

Courtesy: Ricoh

Ricoh has unveiled RICOH Ri 3000/Ri 6000 direct to garment printers, designed to make professional, high-quality apparel printing easier, faster and more flexible. The printers take garment printing to the next level by enabling direct printing on shirts, socks, and canvas grocery bags, and producing metallic foil applications to create eye-catching output.

The printers boast an incredibly short route from design to print, thanks to intuitive software and print speeds as fast as 27 seconds a shirt. These devices print at 600 dpi quality even on traditionally difficult media, such as dark poly 50/50 blend.

Meanwhile, Ricoh's own industrial-grade printheads empower businesses to reliably produce high-volume orders as well as a custom one-off prints. These features combine to provide an excellent springboard for those looking to launch garment printing as a standalone business or who want to expand their print portfolio.

The RICOH Ri 3000/Ri 6000 printers build upon AnaJet's (a Ricoh company) history of fast, high-quality garment printing. These efficient, flexible and highly productive printers open new worlds to print shops and their customers.

Media options can include high-quality, durable prints on natural fibres, light poly and dark garments with up to 50/50 blends. Water-based inks deliver soft, long-lasting and eye-catching vibrant designs. Built-in white ink circulation dramatically improves ink flow and minimises waste while making high-quality prints viable on even the darkest of garments. The 2.3 inches of laser-assisted table height automatic adjustment eases printing on thick materials, such as hoodies with zippers. Granular drop-size controls help create even sharper applications.

For those looking to bring the printing of branded apparel in-house, the printers’ low turn times and high quality can help reduce outsourcing costs for gift shops, universities and promotional products printers alike. These devices are designed specifically to make DTG printing fast and easy. A new, easy-to-use colour touch screen control panel further streamlines the print process. The included AnaRIP software enables users to print files directly from a USB flash drive or any networked PC without manual colour separation, a time-consuming process traditionally required for screen printing.

Designs can be easily previewed and modified based on the colour of fabric they are being printed to, so designs look the same on the screen as they will on the garment. This minimises the need for costly test prints and in-depth technical tinkering. A print can be finished in as little as 27 seconds on the RICOH Ri 6000 or 51 seconds for RICOH Ri 3000 and then the ink is cured via heat press or tunnel dryer.

"Branded garments are one of the most popular graphic arts applications in the world. Offering them can encourage customers to turn to your business for more work. But for many businesses, it's difficult to find a powerful, capable, flexible device they can use comfortably and efficiently," said John Fulena, vice president, commercial and industrial printing group, Ricoh USA.

"So we wanted to make DTG printing both as flexible and as streamlined as possible. With the RICOH Ri 3000 and Ri 6000, our customers can start bringing lucrative, high-quality garment-printing in-house easily. A job can now be finished in under 30 seconds with just a few simple clicks. That's an amazing profit-per-second ratio," Fulena said. (SV)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk – India

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