Canon Colorado

[Joseph44708]

Have a meeting with the rep from Canon at the end of this month to see if the Colorado will be a good addition for our operation.
We currently run two Roland XR-640 and a Roland VG3, this past year we printed 485 rolls of vinyl.
Anyone using a Colorado have any pros or cons with this printer?
Does it perform well with Flexi?

 

[Pauly]

That's a good amount of volume to justify the Colorado.

It's the best wide format on the market. As long as you know the limitations of UV inks. Although the uvgel is a lot more stretch vs normal UV.

You'll be using it on Onyx or caldera.
I wouldn't be using it on Flexi.
All canon techs are trained on Onyx, all canon profiles are Onyx and caldera.

 

[victor bogdanov]

Be sure to take a close look at the numbers, it is an expensive machine with an expensive service contract and expensive printheads, also Canon USA can be hard to deal with.

The low ink cost is not as great of a deal as it once was as other manufacturers have introduced bulk ink systems that match the ink cost of the Colorado.

Not considering price it is a great printer, fast, good quality etc

But close looks at the numbers and two epsons 60600L will be faster and significantly cheaper plus will offer redundancy in case the Colorado goes down.

 

[Joseph44708]

That's a good amount of volume to justify the Colorado.

It's the best wide format on the market. As long as you know the limitations of UV inks. Although the uvgel is a lot more stretch vs normal UV.

You'll be using it on Onyx or caldera.
I wouldn't be using it on Flexi.
All canon techs are trained on Onyx, all canon profiles are Onyx and caldera.

Thank You

 

[Joseph44708]

Be sure to take a close look at the numbers, it is an expensive machine with an expensive service contract and expensive printheads, also Canon USA can be hard to deal with.

The low ink cost is not as great of a deal as it once was as other manufacturers have introduced bulk ink systems that match the ink cost of the Colorado.

Not considering price it is a great printer, fast, good quality etc

But close looks at the numbers and two epsons 60600L will be faster and significantly cheaper plus will offer redundancy in case the Colorado goes down.

Thank You

 

[victor bogdanov]

Also as your printheads get older/lose nozzles you speed will go down.

My Colorado is 2.5 years old, couple of nozzles missing per printhead and I'm only able to print in Matte high quality/ matte specialty mode and gloss specialty on most stuff so that it can compensate for the missing nozzles.

So that's a max of 290 sq/ft per hour in matte and 290 sq/ft per hour.

2 new heads already and replacing the other 6 at $3500 each is not realistic, cheaper to buy a new printer

The M series has less printheads, not sure on the cost of those

 

[Mike Perth]

We’ve had a 1650 for just over a year and can’t fault it. We run all our jobs at matt quality and it’s still plenty quick enough. They’re expensive but after upgrading from Hp Latex we’re saving so much time and wasted media as we no longer have colour and reliability issues. We only print wallpaper and no wraps or signage.

 

[victor bogdanov]

We’ve had a 1650 for just over a year and can’t fault it. We run all our jobs at matt quality and it’s still plenty quick enough. They’re expensive but after upgrading from Hp Latex we’re saving so much time and wasted media as we no longer have colour and reliability issues. We only print wallpaper and no wraps or signage.

For the last 3 months I've been printing 20% of my wallpaper on Epson R5070L and the other 80% on the Colorado.

The more I run the two printers side by side the more it pains me knowing one costs $19k, prints at 190sq ft/hr and the other costs 75k and prints at 290sqft/hr, and then there is the service contract price....

 

[10sacer]

Have a meeting with the rep from Canon at the end of this month to see if the Colorado will be a good addition for our operation.
We currently run two Roland XR-640 and a Roland VG3, this past year we printed 485 rolls of vinyl.
Anyone using a Colorado have any pros or cons with this printer?
Does it perform well with Flexi?

We have two M5's and are only able to run each at High Quality or Premium to get acceptable prints with no banding which makes the expected output speeds grind to a halt. We could have gotten four Epson

Have a meeting with the rep from Canon at the end of this month to see if the Colorado will be a good addition for our operation.
We currently run two Roland XR-640 and a Roland VG3, this past year we printed 485 rolls of vinyl.
Anyone using a Colorado have any pros or cons with this printer?
Does it perform well with Flexi?

We have two M5's and can only get non-banded prints at High Quality and Premium modes which severely impacts speed. Only after purchasing were we told it isn't really meant to run calendared material. For the price we could have gotten four Epson S60's and been cranking output speed. If others out there have M5 model and are getting great prints out of Production or even Quality mode, we would love to know how you are doing it. And yes, we know what we are doing in production.

 

[MelloImagingTechnologies]

Can anyone tell me the ink cost as well as extended warranty costs?

 

[Pauly]

Can anyone tell me the ink cost as well as extended warranty costs?

you mean service contact?

 

[victor bogdanov]

Can anyone tell me the ink cost as well as extended warranty costs?

Service contract is close to $700 per month if purchased on day one with 5 year contract. If you don't do a full 5 year or start the contract after warranty is up you will pay more

 

[ikarasu]

For the last 3 months I've been printing 20% of my wallpaper on Epson R5070L and the other 80% on the Colorado.

The more I run the two printers side by side the more it pains me knowing one costs $19k, prints at 190sq ft/hr and the other costs 75k and prints at 290sqft/hr, and then there is the service contract price....

Haha... How are you liking the Epson?

I've always heard it's better to buy 3 19k printers than 1 60k printer if they're the same machine.... Faster print time, less cost, if one goes down you have 2 others and your production isn't halted.... Easy to color correct so they're all 3 the same, etc.


The 1650 looks awesome.and I've always wanted one, but when ) if I get to the output needs of one... I'm hoping to have enough space to have 3 normal printers. And hoping the next gen of Epson resin has white!

 

[parrott]

We run everything on quality (gloss and matte) except for 3mij180cv3 which we run on specialty. It’s slow but it looks really good.

We only get banding from time to time in cyan. Everything else looks great in quality modes.

We bought it primarily for signage, banner and decals. We do not do wraps or wallpaper but heard it’s great for wallpaper.

I understand having multiple machines but then you have multiple service contracts, multiple parts to keep on hand, keeping the printers calibrated to each other and much more likely the headache of keeping 3 of them up and running at consistent quality. We use to run 2 FB flatbeds and it was a disaster keeping them both running, consistent and dealing with HP for two machines. Something was always going wrong with one of them. Upgraded to a high production flatbed (Trufire LTX2) and it is 2-3x the speed of both of them combined and now only have one machine to worry about. Life is soooooo much better.

When you buy quality, you only pay once. When you buy on a budget, you pay every month.

 

[victor bogdanov]

When you buy quality, you only pay once. When you buy on a budget, you pay every month.

That's what I thought until my Colorado went down for 2 weeks, was forced to buy another printer and take a closer look at the numbers. Definitely have a back up in case a machine goes down.

 

[victor bogdanov]

Haha... How are you liking the Epson?

I've always heard it's better to buy 3 19k printers than 1 60k printer if they're the same machine.... Faster print time, less cost, if one goes down you have 2 others and your production isn't halted.... Easy to color correct so they're all 3 the same, etc.


The 1650 looks awesome.and I've always wanted one, but when ) if I get to the output needs of one... I'm hoping to have enough space to have 3 normal printers. And hoping the next gen of Epson resin has white!

The Epson has slightly better quality/less grainy prints because of the LC, LM. I have received rare complaints for small stickers printed on the Colorado for graininess from customers that have previously purchased from companies running epson/roland solvents.

Other than that the prints looks the same from both from 2 ft away.

I'll have to see how the Epson ages but with $700 printhead cost I could replace the head once per month and it would be less than the monthly colorado service contract

 

[ikarasu]

The Epson has slightly better quality/less grainy prints because of the LC, LM. I have received rare complaints for small stickers printed on the Colorado for graininess from customers that have previously purchased from companies running epson/roland solvents.

Other than that the prints looks the same from both from 2 ft away.

I'll have to see how the Epson ages but with $700 printhead cost I could replace the head once per month and it would be less than the monthly colorado service contract

For what its worth, my printhead is in perfect condition - I dont print 8 hours a day on it, but I've done probably 200+ rolls. Where as on my Latex machine I was swapping out every 1-2 months with my usage, my Epson is still going strong without 1 missed nozzle - saying that... I dont know if itll slowly degrade, or if tomorrow the whole thing will just break. I'm expecting to get another few years out of it - They say its as durable as solvent heads almost... So it should last a long time. It's not like the latex heads either... Or maybe its just cause mine hasnt degraded. but I printed the same file I printed when I got my printer, and the colors are still a perfect match.... so they dont slowly drift as nozzles die like on the HP.

 

[victor bogdanov]

For what its worth, my printhead is in perfect condition - I dont print 8 hours a day on it, but I've done probably 200+ rolls. Where as on my Latex machine I was swapping out every 1-2 months with my usage, my Epson is still going strong without 1 missed nozzle - saying that... I dont know if itll slowly degrade, or if tomorrow the whole thing will just break. I'm expecting to get another few years out of it - They say its as durable as solvent heads almost... So it should last a long time. It's not like the latex heads either... Or maybe its just cause mine hasnt degraded. but I printed the same file I printed when I got my printer, and the colors are still a perfect match.... so they dont slowly drift as nozzles die like on the HP.

Yes I expect it to last a year or two at least, unless printing Alumigraphics and similar materials goes wrong. Another advantage of the cheap printhead is I'm not scared to print on these types of materials, would never run that in the Colorado as a head strike would be very expensive

 

[MarkSnelling]

Also as your printheads get older/lose nozzles you speed will go down.

My Colorado is 2.5 years old, couple of nozzles missing per printhead and I'm only able to print in Matte high quality/ matte specialty mode and gloss specialty on most stuff so that it can compensate for the missing nozzles.

So that's a max of 290 sq/ft per hour in matte and 290 sq/ft per hour.

2 new heads already and replacing the other 6 at $3500 each is not realistic, cheaper to buy a new printer

The M series has less printheads, not sure on the cost of those

The M series only has four heads and they, for some reason, don't really cost any more than the 1650 heads. With less heads to replace and the "dabbing" station, the new heads on the M series are expected to last a lot longer.

 

[MarkSnelling]

Thank You

You are the textbook target for a Colorado. The easy math...assuming you are running Roland brand inks, and being very conservative....you'll save at least $.10/ft2 in ink alone and likely more than double your production speed (if not triple) even when printing in High Quality mode around 400/ft2/hr. If you printed 485 rolls last year then that is a total of 327,375 square feet....now figure you actually printed on 75% of those rolls then you printed 245,531/sf and at only $.10/ft2 in ink savings that puts $24,553 in ink savings back in your pocket a year. If you are printing wall graphics, then you'll be able to sell those unlaminated as the Colorado inks are extremely durable...saving you around $250/roll each (figuring a good polymeric 5 year calendared lam). Lastly - you'll be printing way faster getting your work done in a fraction of the time.

Flexi is just rolling out a Colorado solution, but I'd encourage you to go to Onyx Thrive. Canon very quietly owns Onyx and they have a ton of profiles available for you to use and the list grows weekly. You'll also gain by being able to profile media on your own and as many people on this thread will attest, they can get their ink costs down to nearly $.05/ft2.

I'm a distributor for Canon Colorado - you should absolutely consider talking to a distributor as well as the direct guy. The advantage to buying a Colorado through a distributor is you'll have a HUGE extra layer of support to turn to if things are not working well. Ask any of the guys above about dealing with Canon directly and they'll likely tell you some horror stories. The real problem, as I see it, is their direct guys are not compensated on ink or any consumables, so it is not their fault but they simply move on to the next printer sale...you likely won't hear from them for a few years when they'll be hitting you up to trade your unit in. A distributor will sell you the machine for the same dollars and will be there to help you with your issues...and if they can't fix it, then they can turn to Canon for additional support. Most of the Canon techs don't really know how to address issues with the machine...they just follow instructions given to them by a phone support team. Most of the distributors I know have technicians who can address problems and fix them. I'll guarantee you the other Colorado users here can agree with the fact that some Canon techs just sit there on the phone waiting to be told what to do next for $350/hour.

I'd gladly sell you a machine in Florida, but I'd have no reliable way of supporting you. I know of a very good distributor with offices and techs in Orlando. let me know if you want an introduction. They are also Roland distributors.