Wideformat printing supplies

[Fruitini]

Hi

We run recently added an Epson 7900 wideformat printer to our framing business and find canvas printing a worthwhile addition to our offerings. I've been advised to stick with expensive genuine cartridges when replacing ink so looking at ways of saving costs elsewhere. I am looking to source rolls of satin canvas 610mm wide. The branded Canon/Epson/Fuji rolls retail £100+ for 12m. I have found an affordable alternative to the matte canvas with the Tavira range from wideformatsolution.co.uk which performs exceptionally, but am struggling to find an alternative to the pricey satin canvases. Can anyone suggest a supplier of such?

[stcstc]

have a look at the breathing colour stuff

its not the cheapest but is very very good

as for inks

if you look at the cost of ink used per canvas compared to what you retail the finished item for the ink cost is insignificant

for example an A4 page your talking about costing 60-80 euro cent to print, even if you buy 3rd party inks you might save 50%, so on what you sell that piece for saving 40 cent is neither here or there

and having seen issues with 3rd party inks it aint worth it

[Kwik Picture Framing]

Try these people very cheap and good

http://www.advancedinkjetsystems.com/index.php

also

http://www.plot-it.co.uk/

[misterdiy]

Plot-it are very good and in fact we purchased our printer from them. They do some good offers on canvas, although I never used them for canvases. We buy our inks from them and they do a 24 hour delivery service with their own vans which is good. Oh, and I agree with Steve. It's not worth the hassle if anything goes wrong with third party inks. Your warranty is void, service will probably be non existent and ink heads (or Canon anyway) are around £500 each and there are two of them

[DCS]

We also have the Epson 7900, it's in use every day of the week printing canvas as well as traditional prints.
On a lot of canvas jobs we print on Economy mode and I'll bet 99.9% of people will not notice any difference in the finished product.

We get some of our paper from Plot it plus colourbyte who also have a decent canvas range, Colourbyte will also supply colour profiles for their paper.
For quick prints we use Ilford Galerie Prestige which is fantastic even though it's a bit on the expensive side.
Picturemaster in Birmingham also supply paper, canvas, stretcher bars and ink for Epson printers.

[Kwik Picture Framing]

Another company we use for canvas rolls is http://getcanvasplus.co.uk

[kev@frames]

trade prices and suppliers on the public part of the forum? members only section is more appropriate.

[stcstc]

lot of the suppliers above are not strictly trade suppliers at all

in fact at least one is really a retail supplier

[benjiman grapes]

To get the best results with printing make sure you use proper colour profiles that you can get from the paper/canvas suppliers.
It really does make the difference.

[stcstc]

actually to get the best result you need to carefully make your own custom profiles

[benjiman grapes]

actually to get the best result you need to carefully make your own custom profiles

Agreed. But if you're only just starting up your own printing ... getting the supplied profiles is a start!