Best Flatbed?

[miker]

that's also a good point about width and maximum size. i could imagine a project in which several panels (like 10 vertical 60" x 80"s) all seam up and they could be basically butted together in the machine. would the printer just keep printing across the butted edges? that would eliminate the time consuming trimming seam up the images.

Not so much. Basically, because you are curing the ink as it is printing it will "seal" the boards together. if you were able to keep them perfectly flat and trim as they come out of the machine it might work, but i would be worried that if you lifted a panel it would tear the ink, which would obviously be failure.

My flatbed history is as follows.

Vutek PV200
Gerber CAT
Nur Tempo
Gandi 3150 (x2)
Vutek GS2000
Vutek GS3200

The advantage of a true flatbed w/ pin registration is just that, perfect registration. Or, close enough to perfect based on the squareness of your substrate. The disadvantage is that you have to unload and reload a board before printing can begin.

The speed advantage of a belt style is a quite large gain, especially on the newer Vuteks. The other major advantage is that you can run roll goods fairly easily. Would I try and run a 100' banner on the Vutek flatbeds....not so much. But once you learn a few tricks they can perform quite well on both rigid substrates and roll stock.

 

[petepaz]

coming in kind of late but....
we are in the process of purchasing the new roland hybrid uv printer- LEJ640
and i know there are better machines out there but based on our budget and what we want to print with it seems to fit our needs very well. we will be using it more for printing on polycarbonate/lexan and pressure sensetive polyester/mylar, being able to print large rigid material is just an added bonus. we make a lot of short run multi color overlays and labels that really slows up our screen dept and our solvent machines don't print so well on these materials. i will post some more info when we get the machine and start using it

 

[artbot]

i can't believe that i am slowly starting to want a belt driven machine instead. what gets me the most is picturing an employee standing around... i'm wanting to tell him to go find something to do, but i know that within eight minutes he'll have something to do. then he won't...for a few minutes again. and i'll see this stack of acrylic, or aluminum that just isn't going down fast enough because we are waiting on the flat bed to finish each each sheet.

which brings up a question (sorry if i am high jacking this thread, i'm learning a lot).

can a flat bed (4x8 bed) be given two 4x4 "zones" with two different x/zero positions? so if the operator is careful, he can be printing on one end and setting up on the other end. of course this would only work with a flatbed that works across the short side of the bed, which is less common lately. (i think for the next few years, i'll be developing a product that consists of lots of 3x3 and 4x4 panels.)

 

[SignManiac]

I have the FB950 but don't know jack about running it. I leave that up to my one employee who has done a great job of running and taking care of it. It's been one very reliable machine for the past 2-1/2 years. The one thing I have learned is, I don't want to learn anything about running printers anymore. I find it odd that there are people out there who really enjoy using them and keeping them running. I guess we all have our different talents

 

[10sacer]

Yes... well, at least mine can with 6 different zones.


can a flat bed (4x8 bed) be given two 4x4 "zones" with two different x/zero positions? so if the operator is careful, he can be printing on one end and setting up on the other end. of course this would only work with a flatbed that works across the short side of the bed, which is less common lately. (i think for the next few years, i'll be developing a product that consists of lots of 3x3 and 4x4 panels.)[/QUOTE]

 

[cdiesel]

Keep in mind Art.. the vacuum beds on most of the printers now are big. Ours is 4' deep, so it's holding onto a ton of the board at a time. We can run up to separate pieces at a time across the platen, either using the registration pins or reading each piece.

 

[cwb143]

No problem @Artbot Hijack away. Im learning to. by the way can you give a short list of good belt driven flatbed printers?

 

[artbot]

can i. hell no. i've never seen one in person. i do sense a trend though that the hp's post 4500's and pressvue's have very little negative ever said about them. there's a zund 215+ about 90 minutes away that is available (that's a belt drive). but i'm wary of any printer that doesn't have a large user base around to share experiences. a used machine will get weird every once in a while and being able to ask around about the symptoms many times can be the difference between a free repair or a $3000 tech visit.

 

[cwb143]

i understand completely. I'd never jump on a printer I didnt know anything about they are expensive enough by themselves.

 

[MikePro]

thanks a TON for this thread, i'm loving the info.
looking into a new printer come this spring and despite loving the waterfall-style i have now, i'm definately liking the idea of being able to print on boards AND roll2roll.

+1 to most likely leaning towards a printer that has a large community of users. lord knows how much I've learned about my jv3 thanks to sharing info with other users (and saved$$$ servicing simple things myself!)

 

[animenick65]

i can't believe that i am slowly starting to want a belt driven machine instead. what gets me the most is picturing an employee standing around... i'm wanting to tell him to go find something to do, but i know that within eight minutes he'll have something to do. then he won't...for a few minutes again. and i'll see this stack of acrylic, or aluminum that just isn't going down fast enough because we are waiting on the flat bed to finish each each sheet.

Take it from someone who manages a printing department that uses hybrid flatbeds only, task your operators with printing and printing only. If you want to handle the successful volume to keep a business running with the quality you need, an operator needs to concentrate on printing. The more you task them with in between prints, the more quality and speed will suffer. I know it seems counter intuitive, but trust me.

 

[National Sign Co. - Print]

Take it from someone who manages a printing department that uses hybrid flatbeds only, task your operators with printing and printing only. If you want to handle the successful volume to keep a business running with the quality you need, an operator needs to concentrate on printing. The more you task them with in between prints, the more quality and speed will suffer. I know it seems counter intuitive, but trust me.

Agree 110%!!!!

 

[artbot]

@animenick65 that is great management advice. they guy best suited for huffing sheets all over the floor is a much different creed than the guy that is best at tracking the rip and print quality.

 

[SBTJC]

We have been using our FB700 for close to six months now, and all I gotta say is its GREAT! We run an all Mac setup with Caldera as our RIP software. Very happy with it, about the only thing I can say is, I wish either the printer or the RIP could batch jobs. Like If I am N-UP on the printer, I would like to run different jobs on each of the positions. Alignment for Doublse Side Banner printing is a bit difficult, but using the alignment bar it isn't that difficult. I wouldn't want to run more then 5 or 10 Double sides like that however. Takes a while. But speed, and productivity of being able to switch from Roll to Flat is AWESOME!

 

[Daniella]

Im looking at the CET xpress 500 flatbed uv printer..an

Im looking at the CEt xpress 500 flatbed uv printer... any comments?

 

[benjakes]

Cet color

I have older model with Konica Printheads. Machine has been great, and aid for itself many times over, but I spent the money .

I saw new unit in Atlanta. 960/480/320 sq feet an hour in production/quality/ high quality. They are launching it at SGIA.

I want it!

Send me PM if you want to buy my 1.5 year old unit. I have 1.5 years to pay on it.

 

[johnnysigns]

Any of you belt driven flatbed guys doing a lot of Bflute Corr through your machines? How does the belt/vac system do on Bflute / Eflute?

 

[SignManiac]

Does fine. We run a lot of b-flute and coro. Belt and vac work well.

 

[johnnysigns]

Good results running multiple boards through all warped?

 

[miker]

Good results running multiple boards through all warped?

E-Flute and Coro experience

You need to stay on top of your vendor and not accept garbage, but as long as you are no printing full bleed and the boards aren't TOTAL garbage you will be fine.