Dealer and Manufacturer Support for Sublimation

Many dealers  lose a lot of sales and lots of money from improper machine configurations........ Maybe we need to back up a little.  We'll start with the manufacturers....... The holy grail in digital printing is through put (meters per hour).  So when you go to a trade show you see machines printing at pretty much max output printing busy (forgiving) images.  When customers buy the digital printers they can't usually get the max throughput promised so they have to dial it back a little.   Sometimes they are unhappy but most who have bought printers in the past understand the game.  They just want machines which print consistently with good color at a fast speed. The manufacturers for the most part do their best to provide as many options and configurations as possible to give the dealers and users the best chance in meeting customer expectations.   The dealers configure the machines and the rips for what they think will be the best for the customers. Problem is......digital printers, rips, print heads,  dampers, ink lines, bulk ink system,  inks and papers have limitations.   No one rip/printer configuration will work for most customers. Different customers have different needs: 1.  Some customers want to print all day with no jet clogs or dropouts. 2.  Some customers mainly print paint jobs which have very heavy ink coverage. 3.  Some want the fastest output possible. 4.  Others are concerned with maintaining fine detail 5.  Some want absolutely no banding. 6.  Some want the color to be absolutely perfect. 7.  Some want to hit spot colors (corporate colors, PMS colors) right on. 8.  Some want to print the max color gamut possible. Dealers are many times caught in the middle when things start going wrong at the customers plants.   Most customers don't have much patience and want to start pointing fingers at the machines, inks, paper etc.  So the dealers many times end up with a no win situation.  The manufacturers do their best to stand behind the dealers but many times it's too little to late.  As sublimation issues can be complex a total process approach must be used and issues identified and resolved quickly. We at SCM help dealers setup rip/printer configurations for new customers with strict requirements based on their needs as well as instruct new customers with proper sublimation practices, color workflows, rip settings and profile configurations.  We also help with tech support for when troubles do come up.  Sublimation is complex and the issues can be tricky to figure out.  We've dealt with so many issues over the years with both litho sublimation and digital sublimation that we've developed a system for quickly identifying the issues and bringing resolution for customers. We also support 3rd party sublimation ink and paper manufacturers by being their tech support for their US operations.  This gives them a local tech support team to handle customer technical issues thus keeping their customers satisfied. And lastly we are working with two sublimation paper manufacturers for R&D.  We know what it takes to be successful in the US market place and we give vital feedback when we test new papers on our machines.  We not only know what works for our printers but we are familiar enough with other printers to extrapolate the probable success for those printers as well.  Not every customer will like or be successful with every paper but we test enough parameters to know if a paper will generally be successful in the marketplace.  If you are interested send us an email and we will discuss setting up a testing program for you.