Unlike some digital print technologies which start life as high-end, expensive offerings that eventually work their way down into the mainstream, directto-film (DTF) transfer printing for garment decoration grew from the bottom up, via a multitude of cheap and cheerful, and often home-brewed systems that offered a very appealing route into a growing market where decent margins could be made, supplementing more conventional print offerings. This all came with a bit of a Wild West atmosphere, however, with variable quality and poor reliability being the consequence of low cost and jury-rigged equipment. But the explosive growth in uptake attracted the attention of the bigger brands in wide-format printing who had to decide whether this was just a passing fad or whether they should invest in their own product development to address it. The announcements during 2023 of dedicated DTF machines from vendors such as Mimaki, Ricoh, Brother, InkTec, and Roland DG showed that the market was indeed being taken seriously. But the missing name was Epson, which was ironic as their print heads are favoured by many DTF printer builders, with stories circulating of far-eastern suppliers buying Epson’s other printers simply in order to extract the printheads to build into their own systems. Epson was certainly more than aware of the gap in its textile-focused offering by the time of international textile show ITMA in mid-2023, and was working on its offering, but the official announcement of the SureColor G6000 didn’t come until the beginning of 2025, with commercial availability following a few months later. According to Epson UK’s head of sales for Commercial & Industrial, Phil McMullin, there was a substantial pent-up demand for the Epson offering. “Forward orders have been huge,” he commented in a preview video for The Print Show, where the SureColor G6000 made its UK debut. Subsequent to the show, he commented: “We had a very busy show and around 40% of the leads we took were for the G6000.” So, what is it that the punters are so keen to get their hands on? The SureColor G6000 is a 900mm width roll-fed DTF printer which uses a single By its own admission, Epson was late to the DTF game, but now its first dedicated printer for transfer-based garment decoration is here and is aiming to provide the quality and reliability that users expect from Epson. Michael Walker unwraps the latest package Delving Into Epson’s DTF Development Michael Walker is a trade journalist, technical writer, and editor with over 37 years’ experience in the print, prepress, photography, and digital imaging sectors, with a particular interest in the digital transformation of processes. In addition to editing Desktop Publishing Today and Digital Printer magazines, he is co-author with Neil Barstow of Getting Colour Right (Ilex Press, 2004) and Practical Colour Management for Photographers and Digital Image Makers (2009, self-published e-book) and winner of a Communicators in Business Gold Award. Whatever the numbers, raw print speed is only part of the DTF productivity equation, given the number of (usually) manual production stages that have to follow UNDER THE HOOD | EPSON SURECOLOR G6000 19 www.printmonthly.co.uk Issue 357 - November | December 2025
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