ImagesMagUK_October_2020

www.images-magazine.com OCTOBER 2020 images 65 HEAT TRANSFER & VINYL PRINTING My Safety Gear: Roland SP- 300i from TheMagicTouch Hannah Hiseman, key accounts manager Tell us a bit about your business My Safety Gear is a PPE and workwear business that we launched in October 2019 after nearly a year of behind-the- scenes preparations. We supply brands such as Portwest, JSP and Moldex. Our customers are mainly within the construction/trade industry – we supply them with all of their PPE and workwear to make sure they are able to work efficiently and be protected. We are also able to offer a corporate clothing service, so we can embroider and heat transfer their garments with their company logo to make them look the part. What is the latest printer/cutter you’ve bought? In July, we purchased the Roland SP-300i from TheMagicTouch. This is the first machine we have bought of this calibre, so it is all still very new to us but is giving excellent results. We bought this machine to enable us to offer an in-house service of creating the vinyl logos for heat transfers, which are often used on hi-vis clothing. It cost approximately £9,000. What other machines did you look at before buying the SP-300i? We looked at a few other machines before purchasing this one. We started off looking at the Roland GS24 cutter first, which was a much lower cost option, then the Roland BN20 print-and-cut machine, and then ended up purchasing the Roland SP-300i. Why did you choose the SP-300i? What are its main advantages? It gives you the opportunity to do many different things, from creating garment transfers and signs to car wraps and much more. It is an extremely versatile machine. It gives us the ability to create logos as and when we want them at a lower cost overall per logo. Is there anything you’d like to see in an upgrade or don’t particularly like about it? I think this machine is very hard to find fault with at the minute. There is only one [additional] feature I personally would find useful for planning my time, and that would be a time indicator so you roughly know how long that job will take, but that is me being picky. What’s it like to use? I think it’s very simple and straightforward. I do not have very much experience with machines like this, but it definitely did not take long to get the hang of it. This means new members of staff can be trained quickly and efficiently to start using it. What sort of work is it used for? At the moment we mainly use it for garment heat transfers. We may choose to explore its other uses a lot more frequently in the future. What other machines do you have? Does your printer/cutter work in combination with any of them? We also have a Brother PR670E embroidery machine. We think the two go very well together because it enables us to carry out two different types of decoration if companies require that. What is your advice to others thinking of buying a printer/cutter? Carry out your research and make sure you are getting the machine that suits your business and future ambitions best. www.mysafetygear.uk MD Alan Baugh and Hannah Hiseman of My Safety Gear