my experience with a used CET bought by my partnership is: purchased working, shipped ok. then unfortunately sat in a crate for two months in texas heat. booted fine, cleaned the heads to perfect with NMP. but it never worked right. was a major cause of the demise of the partnership. just heard that the new owner of the machine despite tons of maintenance, has never gotten it to work right. and that the suggested next move is to refurb it (with ricoh?). so these are delicate machines. they don't look delicate. but they are. all those little bits and pieces have to work together and if one is out of sorts or two it will print garbage and send you to an early grave.
my prediction is that flatbed printers will become mass produced and the going rate for one will be about $20k (in china they go for about $25k down from $28k) epson based, gravity feed, LED.
the flatbed's expense and complexity is/was caused by the ink. thick uv curable ink, requires secondary tanks to use the ink's weight to force it into the big blaster industrial heads and would require expensive high power lamps to cure this gunk.
not so now. the low viscosity of these new quick and easy curing LED inks allows for cheap epson heads with gravity feed just like your solvent printer using dampers, and cheap lightweight, low power LED curing.
so pay $100k or $200k whatever. but don't be surprised when a sign shop down the road installs a $20k brand new dual dx5 flatbed and is making a $400 a month lease payment.
