Hump Day Hardware: Brother GT-782

This is definitely the biggest piece of hardware I've ever covered in my weekly Hump Day Hardware. Not only is it big in size, it is a big development in the world of garment printing.

The headline of the press release reads "Brother International Corporation Unveils New High-End Dual Platen Inkjet Garment Printer with Independently Operated Platens Capable of Producing High Volume Production Including Dark Garments."

For those who want to see the new machine, you'll have to attend the SGIA starting today in Atlanta where it will be publicly unveiled. I was lucky enough to get this picture off of one of the flyers courtest of Direct2Shirt.

• Independently controlled dual platen and dual print-head modules – two garments can be printed virtually simultaneously and independently – for maximum productivity and the potential for greater profitability for high volume decorators


• Brother's genuine white ink and ink cartridge system provides superb output quality, and easy maintenance.


• Additional four Brother genuine industrial-grade print-heads provide industry top class printing speed for white ink applications


• Newly developed large sized ink cartridges enable to make more economical operations


• Succeeded current popular GT-541 print driver interface concept to maintain easy and extremely powerful user interface and output quality control


• With newly developed print driver software, no separate and costly RIP (raster image processor) is required. Extremely capable and flexible for operators to customize white ink print specific features


• Print driver software can directly interface most of the popular graphic application, such as Adobe Photoshop and CorelDraw for seamless white ink prints


• Succeeded the consistent and reliable GT-541 platform and additional white ink capabilities without sacrificing machine reliability and durability in an industrial environment


• Extra-large print area of 16" x 18"

Got that? Two platens so it prints faster. White ink so you can print on dark shirts. Bigger platen area. Large ink tanks. This thing is geared towards a production environment and will be priced well below other machines targeted towards that segment of the market.

As this news is really fresh, I just don't have any more details right now. But if you are in the garment printing industry, you might want to get in touch with your local dealer. If you don't know where to find a dealer, drop me a private e-mail and I'll see if I can direct you to the right person.

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Sunday Stock: Digital Graphics Collection

I spent a lot of time a week ago with a group of CorelDRAW users in the business of garment printing. Many of the users were fairly new to CorelDRAW and they didn't have an artistic background. An art collection that appeals to them is the Digital Graphics Collection. Below are a few examples of the included artwork.



The collection is a collaboration between an artist, Dane Clement, and Digital Art Solutions, a company specializing in production ready art. This results in some amazing art packaged into easily customizable templates. It is very easy for CorelDRAW users to modify the artwork to meet the needs of their clients with some amazing designs.

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Corel Takes New Direction for Embroidery

Corel has been marketing the DRAWings package for a few years now. It combined CorelDRAW with embroidery software from Wings Systems. That era has ended and a new one has begun.

Today Corel announced DecoStudio, a blending of CorelDRAW and embroidery technology from Wilcom. Not only does DecoStudio handle embroidery, it also helps with garment printing, applique, screen printing, vinyl signage and more.

At the heart of the system is CorelDRAW X3 for creation of graphics. Wilcom DecoStudio is then included and I would guess that it does all the work of prepping the graphic for output in each of the mediums. I've yet to get a look at the software, so I can't be much more descriptive at this point.

The price is $1999 and that might seem steep to many users of CorelDRAW. But for those working in the industries targeted, it is a bargain price. If you already own Corel DRAWings, you can upgrade for $999. The software is targeted to ship in March.

I hope to have more information on this important announcement soon and will post more about DecoStudio as I learn more.

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