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buying a new flatbed

ForgeInc

ForgeInc

New Member
We're close to deciding on a new flatbed and am wondering if any others might offer some advice or feedback. We are narrowing it down to either the Oce Arizona 550xt or Agfa Jeti 3020 titan.

Our current FB700 just can't handle the demands we put on it and we need something faster. Anyone own either or able to offer feedback?

i love the print quality of the oce but am concerned about cure banding. This is something we get on our FB and it drives me nuts. The agfa is higher price point but it can print uni-directional and is really fast, so that option is growing on me....thoughts?
 
M

MatthewTimothy

New Member
I use to work with one of Gandi's machines and loved it. Agfa bought out gandi and I hear they even made them better. We really never had any problems the machine.
 
petepaz

petepaz

New Member
do some searches there are a lot of posts about flatbeds on here. from what i have read and talking to sales people the agfa's are good machines, alittle higher price supposed to be worth the money. we recently got the roland lej640 great for the price but definately won't meet your needs
 
Gino

Gino

Premium Subscriber
We have a Dilli 1606. Absolutely love it.

Dilli is the original Agfa, just painted differently.
 
HulkSmash

HulkSmash

New Member
The Oce 550 is a pretty slick machine. I've never used an Agfa, so i can't comment on them.. but I have to say you will not find better support then OCE. Their support is just top notch. I rate a machine by how good it is, and how good their service is equally. I think for the the money, the 550 is the best machine on the market at its price point. It gives you good speed, and excellent quality. I've operated an oce, and it's extremely easy. Love the machine. Good luck on your decision. I know a company who has the 1st generation oce flatbed, the arizona 350, i think he was the 3rd one in the world to get one.. and he still runs that thing 24/7 and has never been down more then 2 days.
 
National Sign Co. - Print

National Sign Co. - Print

Merchant Member
Just buy a Vutek and do not look back. Every other machine is inferior Dollar for Dollar and pound for pound...

You will be happy you did.....

Agfa sucks to deal with and they rape you.. Way better when it was Gandi.
 
cdiesel

cdiesel

New Member
I have to agree with Mike.. The Oce isn't a production machine. Period.

I looked at the Agfa at SGIA last year. Nice machine. Only problem is that it costs as much if not more than a Vutek, so why not just get a Vutek?
 
HulkSmash

HulkSmash

New Member
cdiesel said:
I have to agree with Mike.. The Oce isn't a production machine. Period.

I looked at the Agfa at SGIA last year. Nice machine. Only problem is that it costs as much if not more than a Vutek, so why not just get a Vutek?
Click to expand...

I dunno mike, the 350 is what you are describing. The 550 is like triple the speed, and can handle its load no problem. I agree, the vutek is one of the best production machines, but in my observation... it seems that the 550 has better quality prints.
 
ForgeInc

ForgeInc

New Member
Vutek is pretty much out for us. Nearly every one of our competitors in town have one (I think there are like 10+ in our market) and we wanna differentiate ourselves from that.

I too, have been impressed with what I've read and seen sample wise from OCE. My only concern is cure banding. I did see some on the samples we were provided by them. Agfa I really know nothing about, and I think the model I mentioned is fairly new so hard to get feedback on it...the specs and print samples we saw were quite imprtessive.
 
National Sign Co. - Print

National Sign Co. - Print

Merchant Member
I don't think a client cares how many of a brand machine are in your market? Do they even have a clue how things get produced.

The reason there are so many Vuteks placed is the fact they print high quality fast and built to run non stop. Your competitors know whats up...

Only other thing to consider is a Durst but you gotta come up with $650K just to get the Basic box.

Oce' and the likes are in the same genre as your current FB 700. No better No worse. Just mere stepping stones to flat out real production machines...

This machine here is kind of interesting. The engineers and owners of the company have been in the game for a long time and I am sure have a great product.

http://novusimaging.com/page5/index.html
 
E

ellsmako

New Member
Make sure that whatever printer you choose does what you want. Adheasion, color gammet , what is a consuamable, Of note is that even if you have a service contract heads are consumable on the OCe/fuji. There is even the type of curing to worry able, future looks like LED but I do not think its really ready for prime time.

Run everything you can on them with your files and compare all together. True flatbed work well for but you need to calculate load and unload time. Belt drive have their own issues.

I think everyone has their own favourite. Hybrid is my choice but thats me.
 
Gino

Gino

Premium Subscriber
What thickness is the majority of what you're printing ??

Also, are you planning on printing to MDO, aluminum and composite aluminum, PVC's poly-carbs, styrene, Cor-X.... and so on ??

Some machines work well on some substrates while not as well on others.

As Mike said... it's not the brand equipment the customers think you have, but how you handle whatever you get.
 
ForgeInc

ForgeInc

New Member
Good points. But, our customers are pretty savvy and I think our model is to be as different as we can from our competitors. There are a slew of businesses in town that do similar output to what we do, that said we are differentiating ourselves by our design services and methodology not necessarily the commodity of our printing, so maybe we are overthinking this idea of being different.

Have to say my partner worked in a vutek shop for years, and I don't think their high quality prints came close to our high quality on the FB (as far as detail was concerned) but of course they are workhorses and waaay faster.

We print mostly cardstocks, styrene, gator boards, sintra, and acrylics but want to venture more into experimentation with woods, metals etc. We also do lots of print to cut on acrylic and cardstock POP that needs to be folded, scored and cut so the inks need to be flexible and adhere well. We rarely print to coro or banners on our flatbed.

All good points guys, thanks for the advice!
 
rjssigns

rjssigns

Active Member
Umm...buy another FB700? You double your output, are super familiar with its operation and have no interruptions in output with two online.
You can also schedule rotating PM's and don't have to retrain your employees.
Lots of benefits: Same quality, same inks, same profiles(huge right there) same RIP, same vendor(s)/service and no steep learning curve.

I'll go lay by my dish now.
 
ForgeInc

ForgeInc

New Member
Actually buying another FB was our initial plan when we bought the first one. Our reseller has offered us a great deal on another one too. But, we have slowly grown unhappy with the FB. It prints beautifully with no cure banding on about any substrate...at about 50 sf/hr! Anything with deep blacks or flat color and it shows cure banding at higher speeds. We have also had major technical problems with it, causing us downtime and money! We'll most likely keep it for a while...but may eventually sell it.
 
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