CET Flatbed Printer Electrical Issues

[aaronmgd]

Hi, we are owners of a CET X-Press 500. I was wondering if anybody else out there using a CET has issues with the machine having major electrical issues or any other major issues? I am asking since I am trying to figure out if the machine we have is just a lemon or its a broader problem with cet builds.
Thanks

 

[HulkSmash]

Hi, we are owners of a CET X-Press 500. I was wondering if anybody else out there using a CET has issues with the machine having major electrical issues or any other major issues? I am asking since I am trying to figure out if the machine we have is just a lemon or its a broader problem with cet builds.
Thanks

Now that CET has been out for a few years... i'm seeing alot of issues people are starting to have.
I know a guy on here has one that is a lemon.. it's been down like 4 months out of a year.. that's a lot..

call CET and tell them figure it out.

 

[Gino]

Make sure your electric is clean and pulling exactly what the machine needs. Ours needs 230 on the nose, so we installed a buck boost to guarantee that.

 

[aaronmgd]

We had an electrician here months ago to test it and it was exactly was cet said was needed. One of cet's tech also tested it and said we are fine on the electric output. I am at loss dealing with cet to try and figure this out. Every other week a new issue arises with the machine to the point were almost 1 week out a month we are not printing.... if not more. Techs are constantly here and thats all good while we are under warranty, my concern is what happens after that period. If my machine is a lemon I will be out $100k after that period. We are losing so much money and time trying to figure out all the issues with the machine and we are getting nowhere. The higher ups at cet dont seem to care to much and are impossible to get a hold of. CET seems uninterested in trying to seriously resolve the ongoing issues with the machine. They had us split the 220 power for the machine and the vacuum pumps telling us that thats whats causing some of the electrical issues. we did that about 3-4 months ago, while one of their techs was onsite but we are still having major electrical issues with it. We have other issues as well but cet is saying that it all boils down to the electrical unit near the blowers that needs to be replaced, they are coming tomorrow (i hope) to do that. My issue is they have been telling me for over 1 year that they found the problem and fixed it and then 2-3 weeks later another problem comes up that kills the printer. If anyone has any ideas on what to do i would really appreciate input.
Thanks

 

[Gino]

Good luck tomorrow.....................

 

[aaronmgd]

Gino, thanks. I need it. If anyone else has any ideas please post. Thanks in advance

 

[supersignmart]

Sue!

Sue them, or at least get on every board and blast them and threaten to sue them. I guarantee they will listen if you
scream loud enough! The last thing any of these big companies want is bad publicity. These big companies rush their products
to production and use us as guinea pigs to work the bugs out of their products. I like new technology but there is a price to be paid for it. CET probably pays millions advertising their products, I promise they would rather pay you a couple hundred thousand to promote their machine than to blast it.

 

[aaronmgd]

supersignmart, you might be right. I probably should sue, however that takes up a lot of time and money that is hard to come by today. I tried very hard to be as civil as possible with them and try to work out a peaceful resolution to a problem i should not be having. It would have been worth it for CET to replace the printer with a new one since it is probably costing them a fortune having techs here all the time. I am not really the fighting type of guy but maybe that is the problem. CET is taking advantage of the fact that I am being civil and always saying "please help".... I really wanted to know from other CET users what their experiences are with their printers and if they are having similar issues that i am having. I know I can blast them on all the forums but I dont think that will really help at the end of the day. Dave Cich you is one of the owners at CET is a real smooth talking guy. He is a member on signs101 and if you read some of his posts (http://www.signs101.com/forums/member.php?24885-davecich) you will see how he downplays issues with the equipment they build. I am at a loss here trying to figure out what to do... Do i really have any legal avenues I can explore? Are there any lemon laws with printers?
Any and all advice/suggestions/ideas will be very helpful.

 

[LowenCertified]

Lowen Corporation is in active litigation with CET regarding a press that did not perform to written contract specifications. They refused our offer to return the defective press and refund our money, thus resulting in a costly on-going legal battle. In our opinion their presses are poorly engineered and should not be considered for industrial print use.

 

[aaronmgd]

Lowenceritfied, wow.... what issues specifically did you guys encounter with the printers? I share your opinion about the poor engineering. We are currently taking a beating with this machine. When it was delivered it arrived sopping wet and obviously did not function well. CET at the time opted not to send us a new machine and convinced us that they will bring it up to factory specs. I have documented emails from Dave Cich who is part owner of CET assuring us the printer will be problem free. That never happened!! They fixed one issue after the next and it seems that there are never ending problems with the printer. Are you guys in court with them? What are they telling you? Do you think suing is the route to go? Thank you for your response.

Again, any and all advice/ideas will be very appreciated.

 

[parrott]

This was a major concern of mine when looking at CET. When one of their selling points is that many of their parts come straight from Grainger, that puts lots of doubt in my mind. When I am paying $100k+ for a printer, I would hope that the parts are of better quality than Grainger. I know all printers have cheap chinese parts, but this left a bad taste in my mouth. The other concern was CET being able to back their machines. They are a newer small company that is growing very fast. I foresaw issues with them keeping up with demand and maintaining quality control. I want to think that when something happens with my printer, the manufacturer has a very large team assisting its customers. When I visited CETs manufacturing facility their tech support consisted of ONE guy in a 10'x10' office talking customers through issues. I know they have more techs out in the field, but they only had one guy in the office for phone support.

All this being said, I was very impressed with the speed of these printers. The quality and color gamut on the Xpress series (?) left a lot to be desired. They seem to be great machines and know several happy customers, we just weren't willing to take a chance with such a small/new company. I am not any way or form trying to discourage any potential customers, this is merely my opinion after thoroughly researching the flatbed market.

Happy printing.

 

[aaronmgd]

parrot, i wish i read a post like yours before we spent the 100k. What printer did you end up going with? I also flew to Atlanta to see the printer running and dave cich (the owner of the company) was the one that gave me the demo. I should have thought of it back then that if the owner is the one giving a demo that something might be wrong.... I learned the hard way unfortunately but be glad you used your brain and stayed away from it. My question really is what do I do now?

 

[parrott]

We ended up going with an HP. There definitely is no perfect machine as we had some major issues right out the gate, but thankfully they moved quickly to resolve them. I am still very cautious to say too much about HP as I have heard horror stories about them as well, but we have been very happy/fortunate. My main concerns when buying the machine was the reliability and that they had the resources to fix any issue we may have. Our symptoms sound very similar to yours as we just kept getting errors for no apparent reason at all. We could print for 6 hours or so then start getting repeated errors that would prevent us from printing. Print for a couple days and then all of a sudden the errors would start to occur again. It was very tough to diagnose the problem because it was so intermittent. The tech ended up staying with us for 3 days waiting for the errors to occur and when they did, they diagnosed it as a faulty static ionizer (i think is the name). He swapped it out and we have been smooth sailing for several months. :::crosses fingers:::

I feel confident that CET will work to resolve your issues, but make it known up front what you expect out of them. What you are describing is completely unacceptable. Contact your rep that you bought the printer through and make them take control of the situation. Its very frustrating, but the last thing CET wants is bad publicity and I am sure they will make it right.

Best of luck.

 

[Letterbox Mike]

Aaron, call me tomorrow, or PM me your phone number, I'd like to talk to you. And Lowen, if anybody there can speak about your current situation, I'd like to talk to you too. I'm in the exact same boat. We're in month 16 of ownership and week 18 of downtime with no end in sight. One thing after the other, techs are constantly here, we've had a tech at our shop almost three weeks out of the last month and it's still not printing. Our losses are well over the six figure mark at this point. We've literally not marketed the machine at all, meaning we have taken on a huge amount of overhead and have hardly sold anything off of it (let alone turn a profit) because it's broken down so much. We have no faith in it, and thus cannot make promises based on it's ability to deliver anything beyond a basic yard sign job (and that's a stretch a lot of the time). We're a small company, tiny by most standards, to say this is killing our company is an understatement, the financial burden it has caused is close to unbearable. And that's sad, because this was supposed to "revolutionize" our business.

By my estimates, CET has put somewhere between $30 and $50k in parts back into ours. A lot of the initial problems we had were (I believe) entirely related to the printer/heads not being installed properly and us not being trained properly (by Advantage), we were re-trained by CET and what we were told was more or less entirely different than what Advantage told us. From there we've just had one gremlin problem after another pop up. Ink leaks, failed pumps, failed head height sensors, circuit boards, you name it.

Right now we're dealing with the same problem you are. The main breaker trips randomly. CET originally thought it was the vacuum pumps, so they were split off onto their own circuit. No fix. Now they're thinking it has to do with the lamps drawing too much. They've been troubleshooting this non stop for 2 weeks with zero progress.

We just got our attorneys involved, ideally we would like the machine taken back and we would like to be awarded some monetary compensation for our extreme losses. Realistically, CET has deeper pockets than us so it could be drug out longer than we can sustain.

Dave Cich emailed me tonight that he's coming to visit us next week. Not sure what for exactly, but I do hope he's bringing his checkbook...

 

[KevSign]

Bottom line Chinese printer is still Suck! No matter stills a lot problem. Our experience with SID printer and returned it.
We bought used HP FB500 being print no problem at all. Almost buy the Flora but lucky did not. Consider upgrade to HP FB700.

Sorry for all problems.

 

[aaronmgd]

Mike Riley, Its seems you and i have identical machines. Currently our printer is not curing the prints even with brand new bulbs (we replaced it twice in one week since cet felt they possibly sent us bad new bulbs). This has been going on for about 1.5 weeks which means we can maybe get 4-5 sheets out per day and we have jobs lined up needing to be printed. We lost probably in the range of 40-50k in profits over the past year due to downtime. Today Friday, 8-2-13 a tech is supposed to arrive to swap out the power block since cet finally determined that the lamps are ok but they "THINK" the power block is bad. Again they "THINK".... I would not get my hopes up with Dave bringing his checkbook.... He probably wont even show up to your location. From my experience with him is that he is a chronic liar. I will definitely call you. I think this thread on signs101 should be the central board for anybody that has problems with their CET. This can of worms will start overflowing and people out there considering CET can see what they will be getting themselves into. If there is anyone else out there please post!! The brakes need to be put on the "CET JUNK WAGON". What gets me most is now I am finding out that a large percentage of all cet build are problematic but cet keeps telling me that my machine is unique and they are not experiencing this kind of issue with anyone else.... Surprise, surprise... I guess there are alot of you out there with the same issue.
PLEASE POST YOUR ISSUES / ADVICE / IDEAS. Thank you

 

[LowenCertified]

We are willing to share details of our experience with CET and have lots of written documentation and video of the printer failing to perform. We have over 50 large format industrial presses including 9 HP Turbojets so have some experience with quality printers, which the CET is not. They continue to blame Lowen for the problems, including a 3rd party ink vendor that they previously approved. Even their own techs couldn't make it work using OEM inks.

Mr. Cich personally refused to take the printer back and refund our money, forcing us into litigation.

PM your info to us and we will get back to you.

 

[FatCat]

Wow, I remember only a short time ago how many (Mike included) were very excited by what they saw in CET flatbeds and were eager to give this company a chance. Very disappointing to read about all these troubles and to hear CET isn't willing to back up what they sold everyone.

Really hope everyone gets this sorted out and that CET steps up to the plate to make things right.

 

[aaronmgd]

Guys, the CET tech just showed up. Lets see what happens...

 

[aaronmgd]

Lowencertified, I sent you a PM with my info. Mike Riley from insignia will be reaching out to you as well. Thanks for your help.
AGAIN, IF THERE IS ANYONE ELSE OUT THERE WITH ISSUES PLEASE POST!!
Thanks in advance