Any advise on Latex Printers

[signs2trade]

Hello fellow sign professionals. First let me say that we really appreciate your business since the inception of Signs2Trade.com. Signs2Trade is a 100% Vutek UV shop. We have recently added adhesive vinyl, window perf, wall graphics (FatHead type stuff) and other products. At this time, as far as I know there is no way of laminating uv prints other than liquid. We are wanting to provide our wholesale customers with a wider range of products that we cannot provide on the UV printers, ie., wrap prints or other laminated products. Im doing some due diligence on either Latex or Solvent/ecoSolvent printers, must be fast printer......min 500 sq ft hr.....any help is appreciated.
Thank You.
Keith

 

[Solventinkjet]

I would recommend the Mutoh ValueJet 1638X. It has dual heads and is using recent head technology so you don't have to worry about parts going obsolete in the long run. It's fastest speed is 1,012 sqft/hr but obviously that is at really low quality. It can still do quality work around and above 500 sqft/hr. I installed the 100" version of the machine for a customer about 6 months back and they have been running it with no problems at all. As far as I know there is not a latex machine out there that comes close to these speeds yet.

 

[signs2trade]

What's the price point on this piece of gear? What about print and cut?

 

[Solventinkjet]

List price is $27,995 with the regular take up device. Feel free to give me a call and I can get you a street price quote.

This is a print only printer but can be used to cut to any brand cutter. Mutoh had a deal that included a free cutter with a trade-in but I am not sure if that is still going on. We can help on the trade-in as well.

 

[chafro]

Lx850 prints very good around 500 sqft/hr at 6pass. The 850 is a very good printer to do complete rolls, it's not very good to be changing the type of substrate a few times a day. If you want to change materials often two or three HP 360's might be a better solution, that will give you a lot of flexibility and it's cheaper. Also the lx850 is not yet made with the optimizer. Hard to beat latex for wraps.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

Lx850 prints very good around 500 sqft/hr at 6pass. The 850 is a very good printer to do complete rolls, it's not very good to be changing the type of substrate a few times a day. If you want to change materials often two or three HP 360's might be a better solution, that will give you a lot of flexibility and it's cheaper. Also the lx850 is not yet made with the optimizer. Hard to beat latex for wraps.

That's what the Latex 3000 is... The new upgrade lx850 with lower heat, higher speed and scratch resistence, and optimizer ink.

 

[chafro]

Well not exactly,, the 3000 is twice the speed and twice the price! Lx850 it's under 200k. I think HP will have a printer between the 360 and the 3000 with optimizer soon.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

The 3000 seems to be almost 2.5 times the speed for sell-able wrap products at way less heat... but if your a to-the-trade production house the print capacity this gives you drastically reduces ROI time.

 

[chafro]

Yes i agree completely.

we have a lx850 for national campaigns and two L26500 for the day to day work.

the 3000 and the lx850 are useless for small runs, you waste to much material and time changing rolls. This is what HP won't tell you : If you go for the 3000 you are going to need a few 360's to make small runs efficient.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

Yes i agree completely.

we have a lx850 for national campaigns and two L26500 for the day to day work.

the 3000 and the lx850 is useless for small runs, you waste to much material and time changing rolls. This is what HP won't tell you : If you go for the 3000 you are going to need a few 360's to make small runs efficient.

Thats exactly what one of my local suppliers just did... (2) 3000's and (6) 360's, they said its the Best money they ever spent.