Anyone use a Mutoh 1638X printer?

[Archerace7]

After a horrible experience purchasing a used refurbished Mutoh 1604 printer, we have decided to purchase a new Mutoh wide format printer, and have decided tentatively on a Mutoh 1638X, since we need high speed fair quality for the mass production we are doing.

Has anyone had any experience with this printer, and if so, would you recommend it?

Thanks!

On a side note, anyone looking to buy a Refurbished printer, I can tell you who NOT to buy it from.

 

[FatCat]

Sorry to hear about your bad experience. Feel free (without bashing) to post your experience and the problems you had, please PM me the dealer you purchased it from if you don't want to announce it here. Purchasing used equipment is always a crap shoot unless you're 100% certain and familiar enough with the equipment to do so.

Anyway, we just bought a new 1624 last November and have been very happy with it. Prior to that I've had a 1204, a 1304 and still have a 1604 and the 1624 just feels more refined and everything just seems a little better overall. I feel Mutoh printers are very good and priced well for what they do. I briefly looked at the 1638 as it is way faster, but I was kind of put off by the dual heads. The blessing of having 1 head is that you only have to maintain and align 1 head instead of 2. I am sure Mutoh has built a solid dual head machine, after all dual and quad head technology isn't necessarily new. Hopefully someone will chime in with their direct experience.

However, if it were me and the costs weren't too far off, I would opt for two 1624 printers instead of throwing all my eggs in 1 basket with the 1638. Dual printers are the way to go if you're doing production work. If 1 goes down, you still have 1 printing and you're not completely dead in the water.

Just my .02¢...

 

[heyskull]

I agree with Fatcat on all his reply.

We have had a 1604 from new (2007) and I cannot fault it (mind you it is is kept spotless).
It has had one print head and has run on bulk inks for the last 2 years.
I actually have looked at buying a second 1604 but have been put of purchasing someone elses problem.
I reckon you probably could score a better deal on buying two 1624s and still be a lot more productive than one 1638.

I find that the key to these machines longevity is maintenance and rectifying blocked nozzles straight away.

SC

 

[Archerace7]

Thank you for the replies

We currently have a 1324 we are using and a Oce 9065 that we purchased used, and I am having some work done on it before it goes back into production. We are running all of these printers 8 to 10 ours per day, I am hoping the faster printer will take the work load off of them, and allow me to deliver product faster. Our busy season is just around the corner, and we are having a difficult time keeping up now, since the 1604 crapped out on us.

I was concerned about the dual heads, especially when I read there is no protection around the heads to protect them in case the crash into the media. However the speed at which it prints would really alleviate our production deadline problems.

The place I purchased the 1604 advertises on Ebay, I would just say beware. We ran a small print at his place, it seemed to work fine, when we put it into production, in the first hour the colors washed out, after changing dampers, trying different profiles, taking the heads off and cleaning them, doing ink charges, finally discovered there was a pin hole in the yellow ink line...but did learn alot about how to work on printers, a week later, the carriage the head is on almost fell off, seems the little wheels that it runs on, one was missing, and the other one broke, so we replaced them, a week later the Mylar strip that the carriage is attached to had to be replaced, after all of this, the thing stops working, with an error we had not seen before, called Mutoh, the motherboard went out.

All I can say, is it was far from refurbished, and like new as he had claimed. I am waiting on some ink he owes me.

Called the guy we bought it from, and he simply said, we were on our own I am done buying used printers...lol. This is really our first year of vinyl printing, so I learned the hard way I suppose. I am hoping it is going to grow into a substantial part of our existing business.

Thank you all again for your replies and suggestions.

 

[chrisphilipps]

The 1638X is a solid machine. We have sold several units to customers that run it all day long. In fact one of them was a first and second generation HP latex user. He now has a 1638X and a 2638 and is looking to purchase another 1638X. In his own words the 2638 (104" version of the 1638X) finishes the banner job before the HP has even warmed up and starred to print.

When installed properly you shouldn't have any issues with them. Make sure whoever installs it calibrates it. These things come on a slow boat from Japan and then bounce around on trucks so calibration is a must. Once the technician does the calibration in service mode you just tell the printer the media thickness and it auto adjusts the calibration and stores it in the User Types. (Mutoh's Drop Master Technology) The biggest thing with them is make sure you do the PF adjust on each media to get the best image quality.

Not that any of my customers have ever had to do this but you can also disable a print head and keep printing should something happen to the other one. It would cut the speed in half but you are at least still printing. The unit will print about 160 sfph in 720x1440 DPI so you can even get great quality prints at a quick speed. In 360x720 you get a little over 600 sfph with good enough quality for most banner work. If the print is going to be looked at from a distance you can run it at full speed of 1,012 sfph.

If you have any questions let me know and I will be happy to answer them.

 

[MagnetStew]

I second the 1624. It is a very versatile printer. We have two 1604s, a 1618 and two 1624s. The 1604s are workhorses but are getting old and worn down.....parts are getting expensive too.

When we have to replace one of the 1604s we'll probably get another 1624. Very pleased with them.

 

[chrisphilipps]

It all depends on what you are printing on and how many square feet you print. The 1638X is a great printer for high volume shops. if you don't need the speed then the 1624 is a great unit as well.

 

[Archerace7]

You guys are invaluable!

Thanks for all of the tips. We build archery targets, we introduced a target face made from scrim vinyl, and bought a VJ1324 printer, thinking it would do all we needed to do, we are not a print shop at all, and are really ignorant when it comes to these printers. The year before we bought a RJ900 printer along with a heat press, making sublimation target faces, on mouse pad material, which did fairly well even though they are expensive, we are still selling a fair amount of them.

It looks like we will probably print about 25,000 parts this year, with the faces we are making along with other parts we are using to dress up our current foam products. With both printers I think we should be able to do this fairly easily. It could be more, depending up on the success that our larger Distributor customers have with it.

Right now we are using a profile that says 720x540 and it looks fine, so I am planning on trying different profiles to get the DPI as low as possible, of course to save ink. We are currently using a bulk ink system on the 1324 and the RJ900. I intend to put the same system on the 1638x after the warranty expires on it. Maybe before, if the ink savings justify it.

Thank you all again for all of your help.