The Central St Martins’ graduate opened the Richard Quinn Print Studio last week in Peckham, London, having installed an Epson SureColor SC-F9200 digital dye-sublimation printer around two months ago, and is now readying himself for a SureColor SC-80600 due in two weeks’ time. List prices for the machines are £17,795 for the 80600 and £16,595 for the F9200.
The studio also has screen printing facilities and rotary presses, along with small-format Epson digital printers.
Quinn said: “During my masters I did lots of dye-sublimation stuff, lots of different fabrics can take the ink quite well and that was mainly the work I was developing.
“I think the reason why Epson is so good for me is that there is a gap in the market because everyone I knew at St Martins printed fashion design stuff with Epsons but they have not really been marketed in that way. They can really be used for direct-to-garment (DTG) stuff at a higher-end level.”
The new “open access” studio is aimed at giving fashion designers and students a facility to source printed textiles and obtain advice. Users of the studio pay a subscription to use the equipment, with two technicians on hand to help. Quinn will also use it to produce his own work, mainly for his womenswear collection.
Launched in early 2016, the 10-colour S80600 can print at up to 95.1sqm/hr in single-pass banner mode and at up to 12.5sqm/hr in eight-pass film mode.
It features dual PrecisionCore TFP printheads and is configured with CMYK, light cyan, light magenta, light black, red, orange and metallic.
Launched at Fespa 2015, the 1.6m-wide SureColor prints at 720x1,440dpi at speeds of up to 97sqm/hr in draft mode, 56sqm/hr in production mode and 27sqm/hr in quality mode. It has two high-capacity ink supply systems.
“The SC-F9200 is really good as you can produce vibrant colours, get deep tones and get ink mass coverage as well, so you can do lots of jobs in one day basically without having to put it in draft mode,” added Quinn.
The designer, who funded the opening of the studio with prize money obtained from winning the 2017 International H&M Design Award, won’t be investing again for a while but will be focusing on making the studio a success.
Epson used Fespa 2017 to showcase its breadth of applications, which included models of both of Quinn's machines plus a showcase of some of his work.
