Images Magazine Digital Edition May 2018

DRYERS, CALENDARS AND HEAT PRESSES www.images-magazine.com 58 images MAY 2018 Inkthreadable: Chiossi e Cavazzuti Asso 950 and Duo 1200 from Amaya Jodie Aldred, direct-to- garment print manager Tell us a bit about your business We’re the outsourced fulfilment department for thousands of online businesses. We print, pack and ship white label to a merchant’s end customer, all completely on-demand. What dryers did you buy? We use two Chiossi dryers. First is the Chiossi e Cavazzuti Asso 950, which we installed in August 2017. Next is the Chiossi e Cavazzuti Duo 1200, this was installed in March 2018. Both machines were installed alongside our Kornit printers as they are far more effective for the wet-on-wet printing system we now use at Inkthreadable. Why did you choose Chiossi e Cavazzutis? With no gas supply in our facility, our choice of dryer was somewhat limited, but from a choice of electric dryers Chiossi e Cavazzuti came out on top with strong recommendations from industry contacts. Also, they are super easy to maintain and keep clean which is especially useful during our busy periods as our team can focus their time on order fulfilment. Is there anything you’d like to see in an upgrade or don’t particularly like about it? There isn’t anything not to like about these dryers. The only thing I would like to see is the ability to pre-save settings for when swapping between runs of dark and light garments. What are they like to use? They are really easy to use. Once you have found the right setting to cure the garments you are running through the dryers, it’s simple: print the garment, place it onto the dryer and that’s it! You don’t need to come back to it to check the garment and we have no quality issues at the end of the process. The double-belt system also ensures your prints come back to you, making the process more single operator-friendly. What sort of work and size runs is it used for? The Chiossi E Cavazzuti Asso 950 runs production with our Kornit Storm Hexa and handles up to 400 prints per shift. These range from T-shirts, hoodies, vests and other apparel products. The Chiossi E Cavazzuti Duo 1200 runs production with our Kornit Avalanche Hexa HD6 and handles up to 650 prints per shift, which are almost exclusively black and coloured T-shirts. What would be your advice to others thinking of buying a dryer? If you have the quantity to make use of one and the right energy supply, then go ahead! It will save your operators bags of time and make a huge difference to your production system. www.inkthreadable.co.uk Afewhometruths: Insta Model 256P heat press from TheMagicTouch Claire Osborne, managing director Tell us a bit about your business Afewhometruths was founded in 2015 and specialises in creating unusual personalised gifts and artwork which ‘tell the story’ of who you are and where you live. We sell online all across the world on a variety of platforms including our own Shopify store, Not On The High Street and Hard To Find in Australia. What heat press did you buy? We use the Insta Model 256P Heat Press which we bought in early February after visiting the Trophex exhibition at the Birmingham NEC. It cost £1,500. We had been using a PixMax swing press for several years, which was cheap and cheerful and fine for our first efforts. However, we knew we needed a much more reliable machine as we wanted to be able to use TheMagicTouch’s brilliant papers in conjunction with different substrates. Why did you choose your current heat press? What do you think are its main advantages? Reliability is a key factor and the team at TheMagicTouch were able to explain, in clear English, why the Insta was so good. I explained to them what our ambitions were and they quickly and enthusiastically demonstrated how to achieve these. It was really important to have versatility with the heat press to do a variety of jobs. The Insta really fulfils this because of the large plate size and also the clearance it is capable of. Is there anything you’d like to see in an upgrade or don’t particularly like about it? I am starting to sound a little boring as whenever we use the press I rave about the results it achieves each and every time! The only tiny niggle is it takes a good few minutes to heat up but that is easy to live with. It is quite a big swing machine so you do need a largish area in which to operate it easily. What would be your advice to others thinking of buying a heat press? It was invaluable attending a trade show. Not only did it give us the chance to see the equipment in action, but probably just as importantly, we could assess the level of after-sales service we could expect. Needless to say, TheMagicTouch has been first class, especially the on- site installation day where we received full training, advice and tips. www.afewhometruths.co.uk Claire with the Insta Model 256P heat press Jodie with the Chiossi e Cavazzuti dryer at Inkthreadable