Question Best printer for moto,snowmobile,car wrap

[Dex Savage]

Hi ! Looking to buy a new printer , mainly doing snowmobile , motocross , boat, car ... Graphic and wonder wich printer and cutter ( seperate ) will be a good choice , also wonder if there is some modele that are better or worst to stay stand by for couples days straight .
Interested about the
rf640 with gr 640
Or
Jv150 with mimaki cutter

It is important to me to get spot on color to match the oem plastic or paint

- french canadian trying to speak english

Thanks

 

[ChicagoGraphics]

well to get great colors your going to have to invest in color management software along with a good rip with whatever printer you choose.

 

[P Wagner]

Hi ! Looking to buy a new printer , mainly doing snowmobile , motocross , boat, car ... Graphic and wonder wich printer and cutter ( seperate ) will be a good choice , also wonder if there is some modele that are better or worst to stay stand by for couples days straight .
Interested about the
rf640 with gr 640
Or
Jv150 with mimaki cutter

It is important to me to get spot on color to match the oem plastic or paint

Thanks

To address the concerns in the original post: HP Latex 365 (or higher) would be my recommendation. These printers contain an on-board color measurement instrument (i1 Pro), plus the software to create custom media presets, including the custom ICC Profile, completely on-board the printer. This mitigates the need for a separate spectro to dial in colors on cast wrap medias (among others).

HP Latex printers also have the lowest maintenance footprint of any outdoor-durable printer in the industry. They are able to sit for many weeks weeks without printing (even powered off), and produce a quality print without any user activity or intervention.

 

[ewded]

I just bought my first large format machine cjv150 with 8 colors and i'm very happy with it, it produces almost photo quality prints. I bought a truevis previously and it came with multiple problems.

 

[Mainframe]

I just bought a Roland Truevis, I love it! It prints and cuts perfectly! I am impressed with the quality and ease of operation, the roland software is really dependable. Roland machines have a great reputation. They have a huge sale going on now.

 

[ewded]

Mimaki has all the features versacamm has, truevis is just a basic machine with low resolution (900 dpi vs 1440), no nozzle recovery (mimaki can replace bad nozzles in software, truevis cannot, if one nozzle gets faulty you're stick with a visible line on that particular color until you buy a new head). Mimaki is at least 4 times faster. Truevis ink is thicker thus uses less ink to print but flushes away a ton of it to clean the head, and it cleans itself like a crazy cat day and night. As for the RF640 - that seams a very nice machine but having one machine to print and cut it's priceless. Unless you need to make a ton of prints then it makes sense to have separate machine so you can print while you cut on the other one. RF is a banner printer, it's very fast but i think you have only double CMYK configuration. For stickers I would want a CMYK+Lc+Lm+Lk. If I were you I'd consider mimaki cjv150 and roland versacamm

 

[Mainframe]

Yeah, I read the lower res posts about the truevis, mine prints sharper in medium setting than my vp 540 did in high res, and it prints it super quick, dual cmyk is great for the average sign shop, decals look awesome, eveything that comes out of the machine looks like shiny paint or better yet, cast vinyl! And it dries really quick, most of the time it is dry when it hits the table.

I don't know anything about the machine cleaning all the time, I don't see much difference in the cleaning cycles my old vp did, seems the same to me. I have been printing like crazy and my ink levels have barely moved, as far as I am concerned the truevis just sips ink and it is cheaper than the old eco sol ink.

Oh and one more note, the ink is really tough! You can print on 6 mill like general formulations product and not bother to lam. The ink is 10 times more durable than the eco sol I used.

Lastly, I had a bad head on my vp540 once and was able to compensate with profile choice and heat settings, many nozzles were missing and there was no big line in the print, not sure what that us about.

 

[CL Visual]

Let me start by saying I own the RF640. This machine will not hit the colors you are trying to hit. It's a great machine and prints well but matching colors is not its strong point.

I've never been a fan of any mimaki but I just looked it up and on paper would be an excellent machine choice for you with the 8 color setup. It should be able to print pretty much and color you try to get.

Don't buy a machine with a built in cutter unless all you prints are unlaminated. They slow down workflow and putting a lot of unneeded workload on carriages and belts. I had a versacamm with cutter and I regretted the purchase almost immediately.

Latex seems like it may be a good choice for you but keep in mind the heat it produces as well as the energy it consumes. I do not like latex for long run stuff like box trucks or wall wraps but I would assume it may be great for what you're doing.

My recommendation would be to go for the epson s80. This is a true photo quality and fine art printer that has the capability to hit any color you need. They also claim you can laminate with as little as 6 hours of outgas time. Finally, go for a graphtec or summa cutter. I had gone with a roland cutter when I started up and it died on me within 2 years.

 

[SlikGRFX]

I'd go with an Epson SureColor S80600 and a Summa S160T (or F Series if you have the budget).

For motocross you need a printer with orange, red and green ink to match the plastics of 3 main bike manufacturers. You just can't hit these colours with basic CMYK.

A gerber Edge FX is a nice add on to this setup for real opaque prints on transparent material, for things like upper fork decals and chrome/special colours.

 

[AKwrapguy]

While the printer is important, the equally important question is material and what rip will you be using What types of material would you be printing on and whats the best printer for that. We just picked up a could of HP570's latex and it can print on almost anything and the new gen 3 inks are awesome. Probably one of the best things about it is that you can print, laminate, plot, weed and ship it out the door all in the same day. I used to do a lot of snow machine wraps up here and if I had a latex at that time, I could have made an extra 20% cause I could have produced them faster. If you put a little time and material into setting up the colors right you can get some vibrant consistent colors that will match OEM plastics.

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

I'd go with an Epson SureColor S80600 and a Summa S160T (or F Series if you have the budget).

For motocross you need a printer with orange, red and green ink to match the plastics of 3 main bike manufacturers. You just can't hit these colours with basic CMYK.

A gerber Edge FX is a nice add on to this setup for real opaque prints on transparent material, for things like upper fork decals and chrome/special colours.

Agreed... we just did 20 motox bikes last week. Had to hit all 3 major brand colours. S80600 did it without any issue whatsoever.

 

[dmin3212]

I agree with the s80600 recommendation. It has an interesting ink set and that Red channel really pushes out some crazy bright colors in a way that I've never seen before. Some reds/oranges etc look super bright and solid like colored vinyl.

 

[Dex Savage]

To address the concerns in the original post: HP Latex 365 (or higher) would be my recommendation. These printers contain an on-board color measurement instrument (i1 Pro), plus the software to create custom media presets, including the custom ICC Profile, completely on-board the printer. This mitigates the need for a separate spectro to dial in colors on cast wrap medias (among others).

HP Latex printers also have the lowest maintenance footprint of any outdoor-durable printer in the industry. They are able to sit for many weeks weeks without printing (even powered off), and produce a quality print without any user activity or intervention.

Can i ask you why 365 or more .... is a 330 or 335 ... or even 1 25500 or 26500 will be fine ?

Thanks !!

 

[P Wagner]

The Latex 365 (and up) has an i1 spectrophotometer on-board. This supports the ability to build entire custom media presets (profiles) directly on the printer. The Latex 335 and down have a densitometer on-board, but not a spectro. Previous generations of Latex were halftone printers, and an offline color measurement device was the preferred manner to build presets.

All current HP Latex printers are contone devices, use the same ink-set, and have the same maintenance footprint (or lack of same).

 

[DanMarco77]

I just bought a Roland Truevis, I love it! It prints and cuts perfectly! I am impressed with the quality and ease of operation, the roland software is really dependable. Roland machines have a great reputation. They have a huge sale going on now.

Is it true about how much ink it consumes to clean itself?

 

[Mainframe]

No, it rarely cleans itself and I don't see it using a lot of ink to clean or print!

 

[kanini]

Make sure you test the cutting part for the motocross decals so it works with the media you're planning to use. We use Substance (don't do a lot but occasionally for one client) and it is a excellent material but thick and heavy to cut, as all the motocross decal materials. Before we got the Summa F flatbed cutter we struggled a lot with both Summa S and Roland cutters but none seemed to work very well. With the F class flatbed cutter though it's a breeze but if you're starting out it is an expensive machine. Good luck!

 

[SlikGRFX]

Make sure you test the cutting part for the motocross decals so it works with the media you're planning to use. We use Substance (don't do a lot but occasionally for one client) and it is a excellent material but thick and heavy to cut, as all the motocross decal materials. Before we got the Summa F flatbed cutter we struggled a lot with both Summa S and Roland cutters but none seemed to work very well. With the F class flatbed cutter though it's a breeze but if you're starting out it is an expensive machine. Good luck!

An S class with tangential blade cuts Substance no problems although have to set up an out-feed table to solve various issues.

On a different note...
In my experience print and cut machines can work really well for cutting thick MX materials. Even with their relatively low cutting pressure, it's possible to cut the thickest of vinyl because of the heaters combined with a correct blade choice and setup. If you are just starting out, you can get away with an all in one machine, you don't need a flatbed cutter, but I agree a flatbed is the ideal setup.