Chinese uv printer "Experience"

[ikarasu]

ikarasu I'm currently looking at sinocolor brand for a mini flatbed printer. Especially to make braille and tactile products. I want something cheap to get my feet wet before going with a big brand. It's pretty hard to compared one brand to another mainly to see their after sales service. But I like they can provide flexisign as the software for extra bucks but was concern it could be a cracked version. I'm looking at their A2 version with the roll&laminate kit and the price is around 7k$usd before any shipping. I've estimate around 12k$cnd after all expenses to be here in Canada.

What make you buy your particular brand, what was the cost of the machine and the final price at your door?

I was considering the sinocolor. Ask them if it's a legit copy or cracked... My bet is it's cracked, but you can buy an official Flexi and it'd still work. Or "rent" it... I believe it's $100 a month.

I researched a few companies - it wasn't the best looking printer out there, but they printed and recorded some samples for me, and the colors were accurate as well as they looked nice.. I sent a design with a dark grey, light grey, and white image on it... Most suppliers sent me photos of a light blue because it didn't print grey good ... I knew color profiling a Chinese printer would be a pain so I went for the one that was closest.


Make sure you buy from Alibaba and not direct.... Alibaba has very strict protections, and they always side with the buyer.

Just checking out my bill... I got a 33x60... Slightly bigger than most of the desktop flatbeds... And I paid $3420 usd shipped, and with 2 liters of each color of ink.

Only downfall of mine is the software, yours may be more due to Flexi - is it an xp600 head? I also went with the budget / slower heads thinking I'd be going through them like crazy... But haven't killed one yet. would I pay 3-4k more to have Flexi? Not while I'm still getting my toes wet.... This printer works, very good for braille and tactile, I only hate the software because of white ink.

Send them / their support questions during your business hours, see how long they take to respond.

Ask them for real time videos of a sample file with braille and tactile printing... I can print braille in 30 seconds, an 8" x 8" stair tactile sign takes about 15 mins each...

Ask about ink and shipping as well. I pay $30usd per liter for ink, but shipping is expensive, it has to go by air so it generally takes a week only, I get 3 liters of each at a time and shippings $1-150.

And I know I've said it, but I can't stress it enough... Buy it through Alibaba. If it gets damaged during shipping, or they send you cracked software while saying it's not.... Or you have an issue after a week of it working, Alibaba has your back... Your cc company will not.


And get familiar with WeChat if you're not. All support goes through WeChat... It's like their version of WhatsApp!

 

[ikarasu]

ikarasu I'm currently looking at sinocolor brand for a mini flatbed printer. Especially to make braille and tactile products. I want something cheap to get my feet wet before going with a big brand. It's pretty hard to compared one brand to another mainly to see their after sales service. But I like they can provide flexisign as the software for extra bucks but was concern it could be a cracked version. I'm looking at their A2 version with the roll&laminate kit and the price is around 7k$usd before any shipping. I've estimate around 12k$cnd after all expenses to be here in Canada.

What make you buy your particular brand, what was the cost of the machine and the final price at your door?

Have you checked locally?

Just saw a 1 year old sinocolor for sale in my city for "7k obo" comes with a comp and everything... No idea if it has the roll option or not. https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/3968233090080384/?ref=search

 

[JBurton]

I can print braille in 30 seconds, an 8" x 8" stair tactile sign takes about 15 mins each...

I'm curious, since another user of a totally different machine was having fits about it 'printing' the entire white space between actual inked areas. Are you able to only run the machine over the printed region, or are you setting home right where the braille needs to land and only printing the braille?

 

[ikarasu]

It'll skip the blank space. So I have a pdf where it's just braille, I load it and hit print, and it'll move to the correct spot and only print the brwile and ignore the rest

 

[JBurton]

It'll skip the blank space. So I have a pdf where it's just braille, I load it and hit print, and it'll move to the correct spot and only print the brwile and ignore the rest

That's kinda comical, considering how mad that fellow seemed to be about his issue, and your janky pirated software can zero in on one line of braille.

 

[ikarasu]

That's kinda comical, considering how mad that fellow seemed to be about his issue, and your janky pirated software can zero in on one line of braille.

Do you know what printer he was using? I know older printers didn't do that.... Even my epson S40 will pause and skip blank space and only move the carriage when theres something to print, as will our 10 year old flatbed. I think it's more hardware / firmware related than software related.

I'll see if I can grab a braille video later in realtime... Pretty sure it's roughly 30 seconds. Tactile is slow... Maybe I can grab a realtime partial tactile too... At least some letters. Mine uses XP600 heads, which I hear are slower than the I3200(?") Heads.. but still fast enough and good enough for me, but might give anyone looking into chinese UV printers a more realistic expectation of the speed.... all the chinese sites show you it doing 1-2 mm of printing, then they jump to the finished product... sketchy marketing.

 

[ikarasu]

video of tactile in real time. The bottom text isnt tactile - I ran those all through earlier, 2 up took about 1 min to print each. Now I load to do tactile and it'll skip past everything .. print the tactile, skip past everything on the second sign and print the tactile there too.... ignores all white space! I Started mid way because the head wasnt moving enough to see anything printing until it got to the larger section. Now that the bottom designations are done I'm loading them all and printing the floor numbers in tactile, since it's much thicker.... Takes about 13 mins to print the letter "4" in 2 goes to be tactile depth.


A bit slow for production IMO, braille is much much quicker though.

 

[bigben]

Have you checked locally?

Just saw a 1 year old sinocolor for sale in my city for "7k obo" comes with a comp and everything... No idea if it has the roll option or not. https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/3968233090080384/?ref=search

This is their smaller bed. I'm looking for their bigger one with all the options. Plus they made an update recently.

I was considering the sinocolor. Ask them if it's a legit copy or cracked... My bet is it's cracked, but you can buy an official Flexi and it'd still work. Or "rent" it... I believe it's $100 a month.

I researched a few companies - it wasn't the best looking printer out there, but they printed and recorded some samples for me, and the colors were accurate as well as they looked nice.. I sent a design with a dark grey, light grey, and white image on it... Most suppliers sent me photos of a light blue because it didn't print grey good ... I knew color profiling a Chinese printer would be a pain so I went for the one that was closest.


Make sure you buy from Alibaba and not direct.... Alibaba has very strict protections, and they always side with the buyer.

Just checking out my bill... I got a 33x60... Slightly bigger than most of the desktop flatbeds... And I paid $3420 usd shipped, and with 2 liters of each color of ink.

Only downfall of mine is the software, yours may be more due to Flexi - is it an xp600 head? I also went with the budget / slower heads thinking I'd be going through them like crazy... But haven't killed one yet. would I pay 3-4k more to have Flexi? Not while I'm still getting my toes wet.... This printer works, very good for braille and tactile, I only hate the software because of white ink.

Send them / their support questions during your business hours, see how long they take to respond.

Ask them for real time videos of a sample file with braille and tactile printing... I can print braille in 30 seconds, an 8" x 8" stair tactile sign takes about 15 mins each...

Ask about ink and shipping as well. I pay $30usd per liter for ink, but shipping is expensive, it has to go by air so it generally takes a week only, I get 3 liters of each at a time and shippings $1-150.

And I know I've said it, but I can't stress it enough... Buy it through Alibaba. If it gets damaged during shipping, or they send you cracked software while saying it's not.... Or you have an issue after a week of it working, Alibaba has your back... Your cc company will not.


And get familiar with WeChat if you're not. All support goes through WeChat... It's like their version of WhatsApp!

I've been in communication with them since december and made them print a couples of examples. So far it's interesting. Good to know about alibaba. I will make sure to order through them.