Flatbed questions

[FishnSigns]

Well... finally back in the office from visiting Oce and HP.

Oce has a nice demo facility as well but it doesn't hold a candle to HP. HP really went way above and beyond with their new showroom/demo facility. Oce still put on an impressive demo and has a nice place, just not as nice.

The Arizona 360GT vs the HP FB700 is really an apples and oranges scenario. They are both great printers but they do have their specialties. The Oce has a leg up when it comes to quality but the speed suffers. The HP can crank out some production at 800+sqft/hr and it's still usable for short term coro signs.

Neil was right on with his assessment above. The consumables are more with the Oce and the overall cost of operation is less with the HP.

It boils down to what you are producing. If you need really high end backlit prints on acrylic, awesome registration and the ability to print on a number of small items over a true flatbed - the Oce is for you.

If you are looking for a good all-around printer capable of doing a "good" job on 98% of applications, the HP is a good fit.

I will personally be looking back at rigid projects over the past year and seeing which machine would have been a better fit for the project(s). A little whiskey might help the with the decision process.

Any way you slice it - it's a big investment. I think either machine will be reliable and produce good signs. Best of luck if you are going through this process.

 

[Letterbox Mike]

If you're still considering the CET you are more than welcome to make a trip to Ohio and I'll let you play around with our 500H all you want. We looks hard at the HP FB500/700 and the Oce 350 and went with CET because we were impressed with the company's philosophy. They're not in business to service printers, they're in business to sell them, and they're very up front about that. Parts are easy to replace and not overly expensive. It's easy to work on (I had to tear into ours last weekend to replace some parts because I goofed up) and their support is excellent. Having had hands on experience with it for about 6 weeks now I would feel completely comfortable tackling any service or repair job on it with a little phone support from the company.

And, it's about as easy to maintain and run on a daily basis as it gets. I've seriously had $150 desktop inkjets that are harder to operate. With about 10 minutes of training under our belts we were running jobs on it by ourselves.

The funny thing about the CET is it doesn't look like a good machine. The Oce and HP are fairly polished looking units, the CET is the ugly duckling of the bunch for sure. But so far it's proven to be a tank to say the least. There is NO plastic on it anywhere. It's stripped down and basic and not fancy but it's fast enough and prints very well. It's a whole lot of machine for the money.

 

[10sacer]

I wouldn't let the quality and polish of a demo center influence my decision one iota when making a purchase like this. You will likely never visit there again.

CET's "demo center" is an actual working wide format company - which no other manufacturer can match.

If you are enamored with what you heard and saw at a demo center - then they all did their job of diverting you away from real, hard-nosed questions and dazzled you with BS. HP doesn't have a good answer for why their machines break so often for weird-a$$ reasons. Just call Mike at Merritt or read his posts about his experience with his HPs this year. They can buy anything they want and he will flat out tell you he will never buy another HP unless a customer demands they do so. I am surrounded by guys who drank the Kool-Aid and bought a variety of HP hardware from TurboJets to LX800's to FB's - and to a man they all state they will never buy another wide format product from HP for a variety of reasons from reliability to service issues to parts availability.

Look at it like this - when your choice comes down to 2 manufacturers - choose the one that is going to cause you the least pain in the rear over the long haul.

 

[artbot]

have you ever asked yourself why military equipment is so un-attractive?

if i went to a demo and the machine was in a spot lit stage with some hot receptionist and new age music in the background i'd be very suspicious. not about the machine in particular but the ethic behind the people that built the machine. does that company respect my ability to "not" be lured.

a flatbed printer is a cnc machine. since when do cnc machines need to give us a techno-boner?

 

[jhanson]

My general feeling about HP, which I have had for quite a few years (and note that I work on a LX850 at my shop) is that they feel all end users (and techs, for that matter) are idiots.

That's why their machines have such a high degree of automation. Automatic cleaning, a$$^H^H^H head wiping, various diagnostics and obscenely obscure and cryptic error messages.

All that extra complexity comes at the cost of failure rates. It'll catch the common failures, but what happens when the failsafe circuitry fails? I've already seen a number of bizarre shutdowns for no real clear reason on our LX850. You restart the printer and all seems to be well, but the error it reported is listed in the service manual as being an "electronic failure". (Basically, the software bluescreened.) We also had a brand new head fail (cross-contamination between colors?!) which was fortunately replaced under warranty, but not after ruining a few prints. And of course that new head was used to replace one that had a chunk taken out of it by a head strike. Literally.

Then there are things like the automatic heating system failing miserably when presented with open mesh materials (though that's an LX series specific quirk, not related to the flatbeds). Anyway...

I heard one of the other guys refer to HP as standing for "heavy plastic." I can't really disagree.

Their machines work great, when they work, and they can produce some outstanding print quality. I'm just not sure about the longevity.

 

[FishnSigns]

Agreed. The bright lights and polished floors don't make for good printers. It boils down to good hardware. I could care less what color the printer is or how it looks as long as it produces first class images. My clients could also care less what the printer looks like as long as their projects come back top notch and on time (which could be an issue with a troubled printer).

I heard a lot of comments about the HP (and can't say that I disagree) but I didn't hear any strong feelings about the Oce.

The 360GT seems to be very well built and the quality is amazing. It's a little slower but I would rather trade speed for quality/longevity/up time.

Canon now owns Oce so it will be interesting to see how their ink manufacturing capabilities impact the Oce line. Maybe Oce can finally break away from Sericol and develop a good all-around ink that sticks to coro??

 

[FishnSigns]

If you're still considering the CET you are more than welcome to make a trip to Ohio and I'll let you play around with our 500H all you want. We looks hard at the HP FB500/700 and the Oce 350 and went with CET because we were impressed with the company's philosophy. They're not in business to service printers, they're in business to sell them, and they're very up front about that. Parts are easy to replace and not overly expensive. It's easy to work on (I had to tear into ours last weekend to replace some parts because I goofed up) and their support is excellent. Having had hands on experience with it for about 6 weeks now I would feel completely comfortable tackling any service or repair job on it with a little phone support from the company.

And, it's about as easy to maintain and run on a daily basis as it gets. I've seriously had $150 desktop inkjets that are harder to operate. With about 10 minutes of training under our belts we were running jobs on it by ourselves.

The funny thing about the CET is it doesn't look like a good machine. The Oce and HP are fairly polished looking units, the CET is the ugly duckling of the bunch for sure. But so far it's proven to be a tank to say the least. There is NO plastic on it anywhere. It's stripped down and basic and not fancy but it's fast enough and prints very well. It's a whole lot of machine for the money.

Insignia - Thank you for the offer, I may just take you up on it. Let me sort out the HP vs Oce situation first. I may take a second look at CET after all.

 

[10sacer]

It's a little slower but I would rather trade speed for quality/longevity/up time.

Seems like you just talked yourself into a first look at a CET.
I can guarantee you that no one around here is printing better quality than my CET because I have seen prints or visited almost every shop around here that has a UV-curable device. There are a few AGFA Anapurnas that print really nice with the Ricoh heads - but they are slower than any of the 3 you mentioned and the new CEt uses the exact same heads now.

 

[FishnSigns]

I have a message into the guys at CET. I know they were in the process of moving into a new facility so things might be moving a little slow over there. I requested a few sample files including one day/night reverse print on clear acrylic with white ink. This is one area where the Oce really excelled so it will be interesting to compare the CET print to the Oce.

 

[HulkSmash]

I have a message into the guys at CET. I know they were in the process of moving into a new facility so things might be moving a little slow over there. I requested a few sample files including one day/night reverse print on clear acrylic with white ink. This is one area where the Oce really excelled so it will be interesting to compare the CET print to the Oce.

Talk to Jack Skidmore at CET. He'll get you the hook up.
I know advantage sign supply is one of their resellers.

 

[10sacer]

I have a message into the guys at CET. I know they were in the process of moving into a new facility so things might be moving a little slow over there. I requested a few sample files including one day/night reverse print on clear acrylic with white ink. This is one area where the Oce really excelled so it will be interesting to compare the CET print to the Oce.

Yep, its impressive. So how many day/night backlits do you think you would sell in a year? Your post #9 said you would skip the white for now and upgrade later.

What is 90% of you day to day work going to be? Meaning - what materials and what quality level.

 

[FishnSigns]

90% will probably be common substrates/cmyk projects (coro, foamcore, gator, acrylic, etc..). Now that I've seen the white ink in action, I think I can sell it to some of my higher end clients. We work with a lot of design firms and they tend to run with "new and cool" ideas.

Do you print a lot of white ink? I had to turn a white ink job away today. Not a big job but I hate saying no to my clients.

Just surfing global garage and found a 2011 Vutek QS2000 for $95K. Must be something wrong with it...

 

[10sacer]

I print alot of white for design firms and architectural projects. One of my clients does those huge pop out semi-trailers you see at races and special events and they put a ton of second surface acrylic with flood white in those things.

If you don't have a large current demand for it - I would skip it for now. There are other ways to put flood white onto prints that costs less. Remember, too, that all the HP's that you looked at require a sacrifice of LC and LM to turn the white on and it wastes a good amount of ink and about an hour and a half of time each time you do it.

Do a poll of your existing good clients and ask them if having the ability to print white is something that interests them and if they would pay a premium for it. I do a good amount of packaging prototypes on kraft corrugated that we use white on, as well.

Remember that there was a wave of printers that offered a varnish capability and they all went away because no one used it or their clients wouldn't pay for it. Most manufacturers have gotten away from that and are concentrating on speed, quality and droplet sizes.

The other thing to take into consideration is what RIP you will be using. I am about to put a .40 through my Onyx RIP because it won't process a fairly simple PDF right now.

 

[FishnSigns]

We are currently running Wasatch and it's worked great for years on our R2R gear. One great thing that came out of the HP demo was the ability to see the two brand new versions of Onyx Thrive and Caldera side by side. They have both supposedly mastered ripping pdf files. They can handle transparencies created in InDesign and Illustrator where we had to rastorize files before. Caldera was pricey but very slick and quick. It runs on Mac or a Unix (maybe Linex) machine. Onyx Thrive is a little faster than Production House 10 and handled my pdf files very well. I will need to purchase one of the above no matter what flatbed I go with. Oce owns Onyx so it will come with Thrive. The HP can be driven from either. I can't remember what is required by the CET but I think Dave said we needed Onyx. I hope Thrive is better because I'm sick of bringing pdf's into photoshop to print...

Back to printers... We can add white down the road so maybe that is still the best decision. Also, why finance a white ink upgrade over 5 years when it's better to pay cash. I really think we can sell the heck out of white ink. It's just up to me and my sales guys to get out there and sell our a$$'s off. Just say no to varnish and metallic options. Gimmicks as far as I'm concerned. Leave it to offset printing. Let us stick to CMYK and maybe white.

 

[HulkSmash]

We are currently running Wasatch and it's worked great for years on our R2R gear. One great thing that came out of the HP demo was the ability to see the two brand new versions of Onyx Thrive and Caldera side by side. They have both supposedly mastered ripping pdf files. They can handle transparencies created in InDesign and Illustrator where we had to rastorize files before. Caldera was pricey but very slick and quick. It runs on Mac or a Unix (maybe Linex) machine. Onyx Thrive is a little faster than Production House 10 and handled my pdf files very well. I will need to purchase one of the above no matter what flatbed I go with. Oce owns Onyx so it will come with Thrive. The HP can be driven from either. I can't remember what is required by the CET but I think Dave said we needed Onyx. I hope Thrive is better because I'm sick of bringing pdf's into photoshop to print...

Back to printers... We can add white down the road so maybe that is still the best decision. Also, why finance a white ink upgrade over 5 years when it's better to pay cash. I really think we can sell the heck out of white ink. It's just up to me and my sales guys to get out there and sell our a$$'s off. Just say no to varnish and metallic options. Gimmicks as far as I'm concerned. Leave it to offset printing. Let us stick to CMYK and maybe white.

I paid 900 for Caldera Grand RIP
Had to turn in 1 flexi key. About 1/4th the price of onyx...

 

[10sacer]

Did Jeff Brito do your Oce demo?

Even though Oce owns Onyx - you can still choose which RIP to purcahse with it.

When I migrate to the CET - I am moving to Caldera.

 

[HulkSmash]

Did Jeff Brito do your Oce demo?

Even though Oce owns Onyx - you can still choose which RIP to purcahse with it.

When I migrate to the CET - I am moving to Caldera.

Good Choice, It's much faster, and more versatile then onyx.
Also the support is stellar. Only thing I dislike is that if you're doing any print to cut on roll to roll, it cuts off about 6 inches of substrate. For example on a 54 inch roll i can only print ~48" if it has to be cut on the plotter.

 

[FishnSigns]

Hey Sean,

Yes, Jeff and Matt did the demo. Couple of smart dudes! Wish I had them in my facility to run my gear. I'd venture to guess Oce is paying them a little more than I can afford.

Given the choice, Caldera looks like the way to go but it appears as though Thrive has made some great strides.

 

[Letterbox Mike]

We haven't tried and backlit prints on our CET yet so I can't speak to running them, but I have seen samples off of it from CET and they are very very nice. We ended up going with white because they were doing an ISA show special with free white ink so we figured why not... We've used it here and there and it's very nice and opaque. Even if it's not a big seller, it's nice to have, just saying you have the capability is nice and opens some doors even if you don't use it often. I think we will use it more than we expected though as we get into it more, We've been experimenting with some artsy stuff on various substrates and it'll be helpful there. Our artist customers are stoked about it.

 

[FishnSigns]

Hey Insignia -

You have a great website! It looks like we have almost an identical line up when it comes to equipment, the only difference is the CET. Maybe it's a sign!

So it sounds like you have been happy with your CET. Has the service and support been all that you hoped it would be? How's the interaction with Advatage Sign Supply since they would be selling the unit? I know I can call CET direct for support, I just wasn't sure how the additional layer was working for them?

Thanks.