Well..... back home and tired. Marathon few days. Flew in Monday evening and got to hotel at 8pm. Spend Tuesday from 9:15am to almost 6pm at the show and left this morning (wed) at 9am and flew back and finally got back home around 5pm local time.
For us, the show proved beneficial. Made some good contacts and working on a deal for a new machine. Got to very closely look at the few I was considering except one, I'll elaborate on that in a bit. So anyways ultimate have not nailed anything 100% down but surprisingly I'm now heavily leaning toward the one brand I was considering the least, Mutoh. Giving some very strong consideration to the 1638X. Solid machine with awesome print quality. They are open about support, you can even download and update the firmware yourself. No need to pay or wait for some tech (in my case likely no more qualified to do engineering level troubleshooting or tech work than myself) to deal with something, etc. Ran into quite a number of people I’ve met before as well as putting same faces to names as well like BigFishDM (Josh from Gans ink), Jason Meisner from STS Inks, and a good number of others. Overall it was a good show but not as big as I was expecting. Only a couple of 5 meter class machines from brands I’ve never heard of, no bucket trucks, etc but I do realize this is SGIA which encompasses more than say ISA with is much more sign industry specific. A few I was surprised did not show as well like Fellers for one… 3M had a tiny tiny little booth that appeared unmanned and was just there to pitch some program of theirs (not a single thing about materials, tools, etc), Red Roof Inn had a more impressive showing than 3M and they are not related to the industry at all other than travelling installers might stay there sometimes.
The Mutoh machine impressed me as well. Not as flashy or “cool” looking in its somewhat generic vanilla colors but looks are not everything. Very solid machine, very fast, excellent quality. Other than the rather pedestrian looks the only thing that’s just looks odd and out of place to me is inks at both ends vertically positioned like they are. When you did in some though it is a more logical way of setting things up. Just so unlike “everyone else” that it does at first appear a bit odd.
I gave the Seiko a good close look as well and yes, it is one darn solid machine and has industrial printheads (big plus but as ikarasu mentioned above, EXTREMELY expensive if one needs replaced) and while I'm standing there watching it run the media is buckling and the wet ink is rubbing on the top lid because the takeup is completely jacked up and winding the material up in a very sloppy manner. To their credit, when I pointed this out and that it is not making a very impressive performance someone did find a guy who knows how to use the machine and he stopped it immediately and blamed the issue on whoever started the material onto the takeup. With my time short I could not hang around to see if that performance would repeat..
Spent a good 30 minutes or more looking very close at the Epson. Amazing machine and appears to be as solid as they come and stunning print quality. Just as I expected. Having never really looked at an Epson before I dug some. Just as I did every machine I looked close at I'm opening covers, literally grabbing the machine and shaking it and whatnot (I want to know how solid it is and not going to flop about like some plastic junk). Asked the guy there how do I change one of those capping top rubbers. You don’t, you change the entire capping station itself. Not a $15 rubber cap, a several hundred dollar bit. I said what I'f we are out of warranty and the gasp, unfortunate head strike happens and some bit causes a small nick in one of the cap top rubbers? I'm told it is not possible. LOL Ok so after a bit an Epson tech is there (not just a sales mouth) and at least he admits it is highly unlikely but not impossible. My final determination on the Epson though, if you only ever will run OEM inks and never plan on doing much service yourself, it really is an awesome machine. I DO like it, a lot. Epson has gone ultra tech on their new ink chip encryption though. There are no third party ink options for the newer Epson’s (I say newer but the GS3 inks and these models have been out for quite a while now). Epson has just really locked them down. They have spent a lot of engineering effort on making them killer machines and also spent a good bit of effort making sure no one else copies them or even tries making a third party ink for them. That is a bit heavy handed for me personally - I mean what if Toyota owned a fuel company also and then did something to their new cars so that you could only ever run their own Toyota brand fuel?? Sorry but no, that does not fly with me.
Very much a disappointment to me was Mimaki who was one of the top Platinum sponsors of the show with one of the largest displays. They did not bother to bring one single JV or CJV machine to display. No JV150, no JV300, no CJV150, no CJV300..... WTF? That boggles my mind and does not even make any sense to me at all. These are fairly new and current machines and arguably the successors to some of the most sold workhorse machines over many years in the US in the size class (under 64” solvent). I walked around the Mimaki area for a good 10 minutes and finally asked one Mimaki staffer where is the solvent machines. He seemed pretty disinterested in my query and vaguely indicated over on some other side. So after wandering a bit more and getting quite irritated and annoyed that no one was even trying to speak to me (HELLO, I'm here to maybe spend tens of thousands of dollars on one of your machines and have owned 2 JV33, 2 JV3, and one CJV cutter over the years...). Oh wait, I wore shorts and sneakers.... Maybe it was my relaxed??? Um, I'm here as the customer, I'm not here to impress you. However, if you want my hard earned money (and I was prepared to write a check on the spot for the right deal), you damn sure better be trying to impress me. Not to mention that its 80+ degrees with stifling humidity in New Orleans right now. So anyways – I finally started really asking someone a bit more firmly, where the heck is the main machine I just spent a couple of grand travelling to come and evaluate at??? After some time, two Mimaki staffers, both very helpful, and thank you so much Ryosuke Nakayama (who is in the textile end of Mimaki but still helped me out) and the other gentleman who I failed to get a card from – you two guys were outstanding and very helpful much unlike your employer and most others at your booth. Anyways these two quickly realized that I’d like to see the current Mimaki machines so they escorted me across the show floor to the N Glantz booth (a supplier of ours) who did have a single CJV150-130. Not exactly the machine I wanted to see but apparently only one of about three current Mimaki eco-solvent machines at the entire show. I’ll lastly add because I feel its also important to note, I spoke to several Mimaki dealers at the show and every one I mentioned it to seemed genuinely shocked and dismayed that Mimaki themselves did not bother to bring one single eco-solvent machine. Mimaki really only seemed interested in pitching their new roll to roll UV machine (which by the way is very impressive and I was also VERY impressed by how much stretch that UV ink was capable of on a demo of it on a car hood!). They also has on display their flatbeds, dye sub only machines, and oddly a new Mimaki laminator (ideal for eco-solvent prints???).
So that’s my review of the show. I’ve been to quite a number of shows ISA, SGIA, NBM, etc. over the years and this was a good one but at the same time a bit odd in some ways. Maybe the manufacturers are starting to divide out some between graphics and general printing with some dye sub, sign industry specific, and decorated apparel. I personally do think there are too many overlapping different “brand” shows so maybe some consolidation is in order. Or maybe further separation into more specific industries with less overlap?
