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Banner Jet Walk-Thru + UV Ink Conversion!

Biker Scout

New Member
OK, guys... here it is, the Banner Jet (T-Jet) install and all the subsequent information associated with it, along with my UV Ink Conversion.

I figured, I'd better start logging this info in now before it becomes too overwhelming and too much information to even bother posting all at once. So, I'll be trickling this info in as I go along. My UV ink is being ordered today, as I write this. So while this is for posterity and kind of a journal of my dealings with a Chinese printer.

First let's start off with where I ordered it from: TEC Industry & Trade. Their website is kinda confusing and too many printer options to make an informed decision just by looking at the printers. You really gotta know exactly what you want when you contact them.

Their website: tecprinter.com.cn or signequ.com
My contact: Yuki (yukixu@tecprinter.com.cn)

What I was looking for: At least a 64" (1.6m) printer for under $5k, with a legit Epson DX7 printhead

My search of course started at Alibaba.com, I found a couple of contenders but I kept coming back to the T-Jet. Mainly because I recall seeing TEC at the sign show. I looked at their credentials, and they've been in business awhile, 2.5 million in revenue per year, their operations have been independently checked and verified that they are in fact the OEM manufacturer and do in fact offer what they are claiming to sell on their website. Plus, if this transaction went well, they do happen to have a UV Flatbed that is really nice, and was mentioned that they are the OEM of that printer for a couple of other larger manufacturers.

Things I liked about TEC: HiWin Linear Guide Rails, Price, DX7 Head, RIP Upgrade, Wave-Form Printing, Media Take-Up, Color (I originally wanted green, but more on that later) 24/7 skype tech support, their house brand ink only $20 per liter (but I didn't use that as a consideration, because of my intent to convert to UV inks anyway) simple machine design (no proprietary components that could fail that are hard to get and replace) all replacement parts are shipped next day via DHL if something should need replacing (then you ship back your part, so minimal downtime)

I saw a lengthly video of a Brazilian guy tour their factory and sign show in China. He was very impressed that he became an importer for South America. Which is why I think they are sometimes called BannerJet (T-Jet is the official designation. Makes sense because the company does start with a "T" | TEC Printer) Banner Jet might have been his branding idea, plus the bright color schemes. It seems that before that guy got involved, they were all gray printers. But that's not really important.

John Thomson on our board, in Scotland has one of these, and he loves it! Aside from his early struggles to obtain a decent color profile. Apparently that's sorted out now. He also has a short YouTube video clip of the thing running and shows some really nice gradients.

Of course I needed to see some print samples first. I gave them my UPS account number and 4 days later I had some small prints in hand.
ChinaPrintSamples.jpg

Looked good enough to me. (Although the red one is from the ink company, but also on a DX7 head. I wanted to check color fidelity and saturation before I decided on an ink manufacturer)

What I ended up getting: T-Jet 1671 (I'm assuming it means 1.6m wide, DX7 head - 1 of them) $3300 FOB
I had them throw in an electric cold mount laminator (basic mounter really) for $500, only added $84 to the freight cost. (I wanted this machine for the 2 rollers... more on that project later)
Some of their confusion on their website leads you to believe that you can pick your color. From Green, Orange or Gray. Well, apparently the Gray is the older model. Some internal improvement have been made since then. And the Green is only available in 1.8m, while the Orange is only a 1.6 model.

I almost went for the 74" model. It was only $400 more. But here's why I didn't... common material availability. There are only a handful of items that even come in 74" wide, and I don't do anything in textiles. And who really orders a 6' wide banner? The only real difference in our industry comes in at 102" and above. Then you can get dirt cheap materials, be able to run an 8' banner short ways. But that's not what this printer experiment is about really. 64" is the widest industry standard of the medium to small wide format printers. This allows for full one piece hood wraps without seams, if that's your market. And 54" is just annoyingly wider than 48" which is the industry standard for a board. So you always end up with waste that you pay for. And the couple of 48" wide printers on the market don't really quite print full bleed. The largest board we can readily buy is 5x10. The 64" (1.6m) covers that product segment.

I considered the dual head option, but that bumped the price considerably to $5200. Was I really gonna need the extra speed a second head provided? Maybe, but if all goes well, I can buy a faster printer down the road with cash. And I didn't want to chance it with my first Chinese printer running 2 heads I was not familiar with. I'm coming from a DX5 head in both my Mutoh and Rolands. So I'm pretty confident in those, and didn't want to have to end up down the hellish road I went down the DX5 when I did have a print head problem. So, let's keep it simple and more affordable. Besides, my slush fund for this printer project was $6000.

I used Western Union, went fine. But was weird having to send to some guy in China instead of their bank or corporate name. (Our bank, Chase, had suspended wire transfers to China at that time. Or at least their bank in particular and was not expected to be back up until April of 2014. We needed to get this order off before Dec 31, to get their promotional pricing, so waiting until April wasn't going to happen)

Our only headache was not having an importer in place right after we sent the money. There was some delay between me and my partner because he had to go back to Ohio to deal with his father's death, and this was also during the blizzard from hell. Anyway, we found this guy who imports stuff all the time for one of my other clients. To simplify the process, he has us fill out a POA for import, and he handled the rest. We paid the local forwarder, which included a bunch of nonsense duties, fees and customs BS. Which added about $800 - $900 to our surprise. Anyway, our importer guy later sent us a bill for only $100. Which we were more than happy to pay considering all he had done for us.

Printer arrived, and it was one heavy mo-fo. Better have a forklift or some other creative/safe way to get it off the truck. We were fortunate that we have a dock, but no forklift. Some freight companies offer lift gate service, but honestly that crate was so long I don't see how they could have gotten it on the lift gate in the first place. Have a forklift, or lots of dudes to lift one end and a couple of dollies. I think the crate was 1500 lbs. Plus our laminator thing was on top of that crate too.

[video=youtube;e_1PsHwMAWs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_1PsHwMAWs&feature=youtu.be[/video]

One interesting thing I found when taking off the panels to inspect for my UV conversion...
LEDs Under The Hood.jpg
They have LED lights under the top panel. That's a nice touch.

As of this post I still need to get a power cord. The one the sent me was like Australian or European. I found a 14 foot 220v NEMA style twist plug on ebay for $29. I just ordered that this evening. This printer will run 110v, if you notice at the end of the video, there are two boxes. One is a standard (easily replaceable) power supply and the other is a transformer that has a little switch on the side to change voltages. I happen to have a 220v outlet where this thing is going to go, and it will run a bit more efficient anyway.

Since I'm waiting to even plug this thing in, and install the print head and ink... I decided to get started on the UV light conversion.

IMAG0232.jpg IMAG0234.jpg

This set-up is going in place of my fan bar, which I won't need. However I may end up using the onboard power for the fan to light this up and steal one of the rocker switches. Now this UV LED is nothing special, it's just an eBay thing, $20 I'm guessing. Came with power supply. I stuck them to an aluminum extrusion I had. (Also acts as heat sink) These are supposedly 635mn wavelength. Which is what my ink cure at. However, only 12 watts. So I don't expect this bar to cure the ink all by itself. This is my secondary cure unit. The first UV light is 100W and mounts right on the print head carriage with it's own heat sink and fan. That will be installed with a magnetic reed switch, so when the head is parked or over the capping station the light turns off.
100W UV LED.jpg
Now this thing is very bright, and gives off an extraordinary amount of heat. Which is why high end LEDs have heat sinks. I picked this up from the actual manufacturer for $157, delivered. I've seen them re-sold for over $800 locally. Same light, same specs. It also came with matched driver. It's range is 395nm to 400nm, which is also the range I need according to the ink manufacturer.

I am in the process of designing a bracket that will hold this next to the print head carriage.

And that is where things stand as of now. I'll keep updating as things progress.
 

artbot

New Member
that is quite a project. curious if not only the wavelength matches but also the joules per inch per dwell time will match as well, without overheating the substrate.
 

Biker Scout

New Member
I thought about the jules thing and the dwell time. But after doing some tests, and talking with the ink manufacturer, ink made specifically for curing with LEDs pretty much cure instantly. Those may be more of a factor in mercury vapor lamps. Plus, you will start to see LED cure UV ink start to hit the market this year as a machine retrofit kit for your existing eco-solvent printers as a coming trend. There may be some trickery needed in resolution, ink saturation and speed. But that's all part of the fun in figuring out. I also may find out that I do in fact need LEDs on both sides of the print head carriage. But I'll find all that out soon enough.

When I took a good look at the latest Roland UV Versa-whatever, and they wanted $70k for a Roll-to-Roll? I don't think so. That's what got this whole idea kicked off. I already do some LED UV curing stuff for some non-related projects, and I just knew that this is the direction the industry is going to take. So far, my UV project will only have accounted for about $500 in materials, and $1050 in starter set of inks and black ink tanks. All in all, I hope to come under my $7500 budget for a complete Roll-to-Roll UV Ink Printer.

I can honestly see importing a bunch of these and retrofitting the printers and re-selling them.
 

John Thomson

New Member
I have had my Tjet 1671 for over a year now and I am very happy with it.

It is 1.6m single DX7 head.

I have imported a laser, sublimation kit etc from China before so knew there would be setup and teething issues mainly because I am not a printer engineer.

Yuki at Tec Industry handled the purchase and shipping, Jimmy helped with the setup via email land also Teamviewer..

I know have a great set of profiles for Flexisign and it prints extremely well.

There is no "sleep clean" function which worried me but this has not caused any issues at all.

Here is mine printing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWyXKMmP2PA

Interesting that now they have led lighting in them as after reading a thread on here I did the same to mine.

The UV conversion you are starting will be worth watching.......in the UK there is a company doing this for solvent printers ( including retrofits)
http://www.colorificink.com/home-news/lightbar-uv-solution-excels-for-graphics-specialists/

John
 

Biker Scout

New Member
Here's my secondary UV light bar installed. I routed some curved brackets out of 3/16" aluminum. It's a good knuckles distance off the bed of the printer. Plenty of clearance for roll materials, and I made just high enough that I can still pass aluminum sheets under it, when I decide to use it as a quasi-hybrid-flatbed for thin stock.

Secondary UV Light Bar.jpg

And the black ink tanks arrived today. Those are needed because UV light, even from your fluorescent bulbs, or outside window light can cure your ink in the semi-translucent tanks.

Black UV Ink Tanks.jpg

Thanks for the link John. I told you guys, that's now the second company I've seen offering UV light bar retrofits. Go Media just announced theirs in mid January. And they've since updated their design and added more info about the unit as well as some additional marketing information about the perks of UV retrofit. So far I'm the only one using true LED tech. Those others are just mercury vapor tubes in a box spraying all kinds of UV wavelengths. Including UV-A and B
 

player

New Member
Here's my secondary UV light bar installed. I routed some curved brackets out of 3/16" aluminum. It's a good knuckles distance off the bed of the printer. Plenty of clearance for roll materials, and I made just high enough that I can still pass aluminum sheets under it, when I decide to use it as a quasi-hybrid-flatbed for thin stock.

View attachment 98026

And the black ink tanks arrived today. Those are needed because UV light, even from your fluorescent bulbs, or outside window light can cure your ink in the semi-translucent tanks.

View attachment 98027

Thanks for the link John. I told you guys, that's now the second company I've seen offering UV light bar retrofits. Go Media just announced theirs in mid January. And they've since updated their design and added more info about the unit as well as some additional marketing information about the perks of UV retrofit. So far I'm the only one using true LED tech. Those others are just mercury vapor tubes in a box spraying all kinds of UV wavelengths. Including UV-A and B

What is the band of your lights? I use a narrow band uvb bulbs for a skin problem. (psoriasis)
I think they are at 211 on the spectrum.

Are you worried about your eyes getting exposed to the uvb light?
 

Biker Scout

New Member
These are all the way up in the 395mn range. Not really even good enough for virus killing. Which needs to be in the UVA range of about 235nm. I'm not going to be staring at it all the time. And this is the UV length that if you wore glasses or contacts you'd be ok from. However, that being said, there is a little groove in my extrusion bar, that I had planned on using to fasten a short little strip of acrylic to act as sort of a shield. This wavelength has very low energy and doesn't travel far after scattering. And doesn't give off ozone like mercury vapor tubes do either. It's basically suckier than a blacklight. Those are around 350nm to 305nm. You will never even get a tan from these.
 
Wow great article, I am same as you, I bought my printer at TEC sign to get their promo price have pay by december 31 last year. The printer is TJ1626 they call it but it is 1.8M CMYKLcLm only setback is I took Maintop and as new in this industry not knowing that ICC cannot be loaded to that and Flexi is better software. Anyways, my sales rep is Serena at first I was worried as I have read horrible stories about china printers but she made the trasaction very smooth.

Well we are starting to recover our investment and hopefully have a very busy summer!
 

luehrslogistics

New Member
Appreciate the details on your project Biker. Any idea if the included RIP would allow for white and clear on the 2 head version? Also, whats the maximum thickness you can run through the T-Jet? With heat a non-factor there's a lot more you can throw in there as long as you're not stressing the media handling components.
 

Biker Scout

New Member
I don't know specifically if this particular RIP has allowances for white ink. However, I do know that TEC and a few other companies that offer white ink, are using the same or similar RIP. (I'll be loading the RIP this weekend if I get the ink in the mail today) But I don't think I'll be messing with a white channel until I can at least find a decent separate ink agitator tank.

As far as thickness goes, I can just barely get .0747" (14GA or 1.9mm) material under the rollers and looks like there won't be any head strikes. I gotta say, I was really hoping for more... like at least a 4mm clearance. I know that was expecting a lot, given it's price, and the fact that it is a Roll-to-Roll printer. I'm just trying to do too much with it.
 

Biker Scout

New Member
Annnndddd.... We're back!

UV Ink Came today... damaged. My hands are stained beyond recognition.

Ink Mess.jpg

Anyway, a non-issue really. I had ordered extras of each color, and they will replace that one. And possibly revise their packing methods. Messing around with the bulk ink tanks, of course I don't get any instructions and ended up with way more stuff than I need. Apparently they only cost $5! They sent me two at $10. Seriously... the metal brackets that hold the tanks, two spools of ink lines, brass fittings, Y connectors, and 8 sub ink tanks. (which I've realized I don't need at all) All for $5!
Bulk Ink Tank Lines.jpg Black UV Ink Tanks.jpg $5 for the whole kit!

OK, since I had a leaky bottle, I decided I couldn't wait to see if the ink was going to cure with my 100W UV LED.
First Cure.jpg
Is that not awesome or what?! I mean, it's on there thick in spots, and I'll never have to worry about ink that heavy on real prints. Cured fast and hard, and shiny! But, as you can see... in my haste I burned my LED :banghead:
I never flipped it over and pulled off the blue protective film, until I saw it smoking. Darn it... that totally sucks! The LED still works, even though it's a bit singed on clear coating over the actual chips.

I guess this was a good lesson, and just reminded me that I need to go a bit slower and stick to the program. So I'm going to order a second light to just have on hand. No reason why I shouldn't have a couple of back ups anyway. No light, no cure, no prints. I have no idea as to how long these lights should last anyway.

So, on to the bracket fab portion of the show.
[video=youtube_share;EewbHiQ15_I]http://youtu.be/EewbHiQ15_I[/video]

I drew this little thing up in Illustrator and cut it on the router, and pocketed the back side so the LED could nest in the bracket. As of this writing, I've trimmed down the bracket, and went and got some mounting hardware. So, I'll be in the shop late tonight getting things wired up, and seeing if I can get the magnetic reed switch working with the LED. (When the print head parks, the light goes off)

Stay Tuned...
 

GAC05

Quit buggin' me
Looks pretty neat.
Do you think you will have issues with the added weight on the leading edge of the carriage?

wayne k
guam usa
 

Biker Scout

New Member
No, the HiWin rails are dead on accurate. No runout or play in the carriage whatsoever. It's really all not that heavy anyway. One of the reasons I trimmed down the bracket was for a "just in case" it's too heavy.

You should see some of the huge fan/light contraptions some of the other UV printers have on both sides of the printhead. Mine is decidedly spartan in comparison. Which has me concerned that maybe mine wasn't over-engineered enough?
 

GAC05

Quit buggin' me
No, the HiWin rails are dead on accurate. No runout or play in the carriage whatsoever. It's really all not that heavy anyway. One of the reasons I trimmed down the bracket was for a "just in case" it's too heavy.

You should see some of the huge fan/light contraptions some of the other UV printers have on both sides of the printhead. Mine is decidedly spartan in comparison. Which has me concerned that maybe mine wasn't over-engineered enough?
You are likely right, I was thinking it would be a matter of the added weight causing issues with the head changing direction at speed. Inertia trying to keep the head moving in the same direction.
Does a UV printer run the carriage at high speed?

wayne k
guam usa
 

Biker Scout

New Member
They seem to move at an adequate speed. Nothing too blazing. My Banner Jet seems fairly slow tracking back and forth at a decent resolution, plus I only have the one printhead. Which is fine. Since I don't know the specifics on dwell time and all that with my light. I'd rather the head move too slow for a full cure, than trying to rush the prints out the door. I never got into this project thinking I was going to set any speed records. I was just trying to save $140k (Mimaki UJV-160) although it does print white, I don't think that option is worth the $135k upgrade.

Here's a promo video showing the tracking back and forth of the UV LED models
[video=youtube;XlBXiL0SO_w]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlBXiL0SO_w[/video]
[video=youtube;rNq_e3SxYyk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNq_e3SxYyk[/video]
 

phototec

New Member
Very cool project, thanks for posting your progress info.

It's exciting, can't wait for the next installment.

Couldn't you just purchase a replacement LED lamp assembly from Roland and mount it to your unit?
 

Biker Scout

New Member
I haven't looked, but somehow I'm guessing that the replacement LED lamp is far more than $114 :ROFLMAO:

Actually sourcing those all in one units was on my first choice list. But they were really high (stateside) and I found a couple that looked real promising, but they never got back to me for a quote. Plus, I couldn't navigate my way to finding the overseas source that actually makes them for Roland. Most likely a Japanese company, but it would take having one in hand to find the manufacturer.
 
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