The M&R Companies are pleased to announce that the M-Link Xperience will be coming to FESPA Digital 2016, 8-11 March 2016, Amsterdam RAI, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. “FESPA Digital attendees are invited to bring a USB flash drive with a personal or public-domain raster-based PNG or PSD image file with transparent background¯and let us show what the incomparable, award-winning M-Link X can do”, said Geoff Baxter, director of M&R’s Digital Products Division.

“The M-Link Xperience is a great way to do head-to-head comparisons among direct-to-garment printers. We’ll print a shirt using the attendee’s image file. Then the attendee can take the flash drive and M-Link-printed shirt to the booths of other digital printers and ask them for a print of the same image file. We’re certain the M-Link X print will prove to be superior in every way.”

“When we began work on M-Link, our goal was to design and build a digital printer with the highest print quality and the lowest per-print cost in the industry—all at a cost-effective price point,” said Stephen Chuddy, M&R’s Digital Division product manager, “and the results exceeded all expectations: M-Links clearly have the highest print quality and the lowest per-print cost.”

The phenomenal image quality results from rugged, high-speed industrial printheads, M&R's proprietary i-Colour™ RIP Software and exclusive Absolute Position Technology™, DuPont™ Artistri® BRITE inks, and print modes designed to minimize ink usage while producing printed garments that are softer, more breathable, and much closer to water-based screen printing.

The four most popular print modes are single-pass modes for printing on white, color, and black, as well as a single-pass highlight mode. White Print Mode prints C-M-Y-K with no underbase for use on white or light-color shirts. Color One-Pass Mode prints a gradated white underbase and C-M-Y-K on color shirts. Black One-Pass Mode prints a gradated white underbase and C-M-Y on black shirts, using the shirt’s color for black areas of the image. On light-color shirts with light pretreatment, Highlight Mode prints C-M-Y-K and a white highlight—but without a white underbase. Since two white printheads are positioned ahead of the color printheads, M-Link and M-Link X are capable of printing the white and color layers in the same pass. On applicable artwork, this results in excellent images at maximum print speed.

“The one-pass modes speed up production, and the optimized RIP helps lower overall ink consumption,” said Chuddy. “In addition, M-Link and M-Link X are designed with integrated bulk ink-feed systems. This allows users to purchase ink in bulk quantities instead of being tied to expensive cartridge-based systems.”

“Our other goal was to introduce high-speed printing to cost-effective pricing,” said Baxter. “M-Link X prints superb full-size images on white shirts in an amazing 30 to 45 seconds and full-size images on dark shirts in less than a minute. And M&R’s standard M-Link prints white shirts in 45 to 60 seconds and dark shirts in two-and-a-half to three minutes—with the same outstanding image quality.

“The combination of speed, quality, and low ink cost makes M-Link X superior to direct-to-garment digital printers costing more than three times as much,” continued Baxter. “M-Link X isn’t the only printer for high quality prints. And it isn’t the only high-speed printer. However, it is the only affordable high-quality, high-speed printer. M-Link X is an incredible value.”