I was able to stick my head inside the M series with white - WOW! We are running a 1640, and the lease is up so the timing is perfect! they've gone to a single print head configuration and done away with the wiper blades. The print head is smaller, with a consumable "cleaning belt" that now cleans the print heads automatically. The cleaning belt has also reduced the excess ink container by half! (i hate changing that!) new optical sensors for reading clear media, and a new and improved winding system. The UV lamp belt that consistantly hits the top of our cover is now smaller and has lots of space - the machine seems quieter. They've improved the double-sided printing ability (my sample was on 24# uncoated bond) However, the white gel is the game changer - hassle free. I'm told that guys with flatbeds always must shake the white bags because of settling - you don't have that problem with Gel! even the single pass white samples I saw were opaquer than most! Coming from a 1640 (and we love the 1640) i thought the 1650 was awesome, well this blows that out of the water! (I really wish Canon would make use of that faux second drawer, and allow this to be a 4 roll machine)
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Canon Colorado M Series.
- Thread starter Pauly
- Start date
FireSprint.com
Trade Only Screen & Digital Sign Printing
Pretty exciting. Do any of you notice grainy prints with light cyans and grays?
Overall the quality is incredible, but without dot gain, some light colors look grainy. Canon told us this was the nature of uvgel and impossible to fix.
The attached photo is magnified a lot. This is only an issue on small stickers. Large prints from a couple feet away are wonderful.
Overall the quality is incredible, but without dot gain, some light colors look grainy. Canon told us this was the nature of uvgel and impossible to fix.
The attached photo is magnified a lot. This is only an issue on small stickers. Large prints from a couple feet away are wonderful.
Attachments
Christian @ 2CT Media
Active Member
Grain is there, but try to change your print strategy, it can really help with grain. Also work on your gcr as removing/adding some black can help.
MarkSnelling
Mark Snelling - Hasco Graphics
The M3 base unit is going to be around $47K all-in....but that is glossy only and slow (no white). The full blown fast machine with white is going to have a street price of $72K all-in (delivered, installed, trained, inked up etc). The promotions are really aggressive right now through the end of June on the 1650 and 1630 units while they last.....especially if you have an old latex. You can now get a 1650 for the mid $50K range if you trade in a latex unit.
I'd be happy to send actual quotes for anyone who wants specific pricing. The units are sold under contracted pricing so it is the same whether you buy it direct or through distributors.
I'd be happy to send actual quotes for anyone who wants specific pricing. The units are sold under contracted pricing so it is the same whether you buy it direct or through distributors.
victor bogdanov
Active Member
That's really impressive that they did not increase the price over what the 1650 used to cost
FrankLacroix
New Member
Does anyone know if we can print on polyester (Lintec) with this printer, like a regular UV printer?
Pauly
Printrade.com.au
I would say so. But if you have stock, go to a rep and ask if you can get samples printed on the stock.
It operates like a regular UV printer in matte mode.
in gloss it gives it 10-20 seconds before curing which achieves the gloss.
principals are the same with a regular UV printer.
Christian @ 2CT Media
Active Member
So After 3ish months, the M5W is impressive but... There are trade-offs. The maximum resolution Is dropped from 600x600 to 450x600 against the 1650. White ink maintenance is minimal and ready to go after a hearty 20-minute warm-up period. White is very yellow compared to our HP 800W and nowhere near as opaque but it works well... the white mixes with K too much in 5-layer printing so you get a lot of bleed-through for dual-view printing if you aren't careful.
Grain is more apparent on the M series over the 1650 due to the single row of heads vs. 2 row interlacing.
The M series feels more refined overall, but there are also major head-scratchers.
Grain is more apparent on the M series over the 1650 due to the single row of heads vs. 2 row interlacing.
The M series feels more refined overall, but there are also major head-scratchers.
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Morten CHristensen
New Member
If sparepart and service pricing is in the same league as the Arizona range of printers, the I would stay clear of the Colorado range of printers.
Run Forrest, run!!
Run Forrest, run!!
victor bogdanov
Active Member
1 roll printed per month pays for the service contract
balstestrat
Problem Solver
Canon accepts printed rolls as payment? Pretty good deal
10sacer
New Member
Anyone having any issues running various self-adhesive vinyls on their M5 yet? We have two of them in two locations. Just curious as to what others are seeing?
Any other issues you have with the machine? We are not thrilled about the voodoo technique they want you to believe as far as machine maintenance. We are supposed to trust it is doing the maintenance automatically. Calibrations take 20+minutes and use quite a bit of material and it seems to forget that it calibrated a media along the way. No way to do a simple nozzle check so you can see if anything is firing wrong or not at all.
Does random maintenance, but doesn't show you exactly what it is doing. Have had the one in my location for about a month and it came in with nozzle deflections and nozzles not firing or clogged. (Showed up when technician was able to run nozzle checks with the super secret access code to the maintenance menu). I guess this industry has just programmed us for a certain degree of basic user capabilities in terms of maintenance and the M series seems to want to take that away.
Any other issues you have with the machine? We are not thrilled about the voodoo technique they want you to believe as far as machine maintenance. We are supposed to trust it is doing the maintenance automatically. Calibrations take 20+minutes and use quite a bit of material and it seems to forget that it calibrated a media along the way. No way to do a simple nozzle check so you can see if anything is firing wrong or not at all.
Does random maintenance, but doesn't show you exactly what it is doing. Have had the one in my location for about a month and it came in with nozzle deflections and nozzles not firing or clogged. (Showed up when technician was able to run nozzle checks with the super secret access code to the maintenance menu). I guess this industry has just programmed us for a certain degree of basic user capabilities in terms of maintenance and the M series seems to want to take that away.
Christian @ 2CT Media
Active Member
Have you ran the automatic nozzle optimization? That is essentially the nozzle chart.
We have no issues with SAV, we profile each one and typically run Production Quality (aka Advance Correction turned on).
Which calibrations are you talking about... The media calibrations? If so, are you doing the vacuum tests when you are building your media profile?
Pauly
Printrade.com.au
This is interesting,
When i saw the Demos, the white looked pretty white to me. Do you have a spectro? i1 or something? Measure the white point. I'd like to see how "white" it is.
I wouldn't have thought the resolution would have dropped, not that often you're printing in 600x600 though. But the single print heads have built in 2 rows of nozzles. insteady of 2 heads, it's 1 head with 2 rows. i was under the impression it should have had the same print quality.
As i always say. If you have to complain about the maintenance contracts, you can't afford the printer, or dont have enough work to buy one.
We paid our 5 year maintenance up front.
Christian @ 2CT Media
Active Member
I will measure the white point with our i1 and Nix but it is visibly yellow. If you print white on a white material the material (even 3m) looks bluish in comparison.
I know if we print only 1 layer of white our i1 treats it as almost transparent white.
Yes the head have a simulated 2 rows vs the 2 head rows, but even in Canons drivers the maximum resolution was reduced to 450x600. It even shows in Onyx, PrintFactory, and Caldera. We did a test of printing Gloss High Quality on both our 1650 (600x600) and M (450x600) and there is a visible quality difference if you look for it.
tudouqiezi
New Member
Thank you for your reply, this is bad news for me, my business is wrapping vehicles and stickers There is now an urgent need for opaque white ink to print stickers, I need to reconsider whether to buy Colorado m5w
Christian @ 2CT Media
Active Member
So is ours and we use it all the time, it comes down to how you print. We use the Colorados exclusively for wraps including white bases on clear
Select Bulgaria Service
New Member
The White is really good. There is no problems with clogged nozzles like in hp.
However, Canon has a lot of experience with white ink. The only similarity with hp is that these are printers in general.
Morten CHristensen
New Member
It has nothing to do with, what we can afford or not! It has more to do with Canons pricing on both spareparts and servicecontracts and their unfriendliness when you are out of contract.!
victor bogdanov
Active Member
The printer can be printing 24hrs per day, at that volume the cost of service contract is negligible. If your running the printer an hour per day then yes the service contract price can seem high