Hi all. Lurker and decal printer coming out of the shadows.
Actually, Alps printers are dry transfer printers. some do have dye sub capabilities. The MD1300 is capable right out of the box and the MD 5000 needs a "key" to insert into the back to print Dye sub. This is all useless for decals however as the heat generated by using dyesub mode will destroy decal paper. As a note, there are two types of inks for these printers also. One is for dye sub and the other is for normal dry transfer (not to be confused with dry transfer decals. Two totally different meanings).
The kodak First Check printer is the same printer as the alps. Kodak bought the technology for this type of printer hence the reason alps can not sell any more in the USA. I believe Oki has a liscence to use this technology in the UK (not sure though).
As far as I know here are no other printers available that can print white.
Use caution when buying alps printers on Ebay. When these came off the market there was a rush to snap up all the good ones available. I personally know one decal printer who has a supply of between 20 and 25 of them all in working order. No, he won't sell any of them. Anyway when people saw how much they were selling for up there everybody dug theirs out of the closets and listed them hoping for the big bucks. What a lot of buyers found out was that they were in the closet because they did not work properly. The problems with them vary and some of the minor ones can be fixed. usually a good cleaning of the print head and the rollers is in order. However there are three problems that can't be fixed. The first two are due to poor shipping practices. almost everybody that ships them does not remove the cartridges from them and durring shipment they get knocked out their holders and bounce around possibly destroying the print head or at least knocking it out of allignment. The next problem is that they do not brace the print head from moving durring shipment and this can cause damage to the print head. The big problem, and the one why everybody tries to unload them, is that the print head develops what we call "banding". This is a situation where the elements in the print head stop printing in certain areas thus leaving streaks or bands of no ink in areas in the print. There is no do it yourself repairs for these problems as the print head needs to calibrated via software at the factory. Several people have tried with out any luck to swap the heads out.
Now for the good news. alps does have a replacement program. There is more information on this on their web site. The basics of it though are: you send in a defective printer with a check and they send you a "refurbished" unit. From what I have heard though (unconfirmed) is that the unit you get in return is a new MD5000.
There are two good groups over on Yahoo, Alps and Alpsdecal, that have a large following and a huge database of information regarding these machines.
Dan Pikulski
www.DansResinCasting.com
As a note: the ability to print white is not related in any way to the dye Sub capability. Whire ribbons are available in bot dry and Dye sub cartridges