Come take this piece of junk

[robr]

Man i love mine guss i got lucky. had 2 hps that where junk lost alot money with them. not one bad day with my gs 6000 it just runs & runs. good luck.

 

[Letterbox Mike]

Update: the Epson engineer just left. Aside from the fact that our printer has had more breakdowns than a typical machine, I'm feeling better about it this morning. He went over the frame with a fine toothed comb and determined the root of all of our media feeding issues is because the frame was so far out of alignment. He worked it back so it's perfectly in alignment with the printer chassis, dialed it in, and we were able to run a full roll of wallpaper material with no problems at all. Before this, we couldn't print 5' without getting significant head strikes, the media would buckle and warp terribly bad, even with the heaters turned completely off. In fact, with this 90' roll of material, we actually cranked the heat all the way up to 50/50/50 and it printed flawlessly, the media stayed perfectly flat across the platen, and it rolled perfectly square on the takeup. In one year we've literally never been able to do this with any media, let alone wallpaper, which is about the most finicky material I've ever seen to print.

He looked over the rest of the printer and said it seems to be in perfect condition. He admitted that some of the breakdowns we've seen were because some of the earlier machines had some sub-par components that Epson has been replacing as they've failed (including a head failure due to poor-quality green ink, carriage motor, carriage pulleys, and a few sensors). He said Epson will continue to replace components for free even outside of warranty if they are parts that shouldn't fail. I'm not sure if that makes me feel warm and fuzzy, I wish they wouldn't have released a machine with issues in the first place, but it is what it is, and I can't say Epson hasn't always been helpful and attentive when we've had problems.

Right now it looks like we need to point the blame for the trouble at our dealer. They assembled the machine. They're also who I've complained to dozens of times over the last year about the problems we've been having, and they've always failed to elevate our concerns to the proper people at Epson until now. It's extremely frustrating that it took a year of complaining to get them to send someone out to correct their sloppy assembly when this is something that should have been fixed a long time ago. So that's a fight I've got to take up now, but I don't expect much outcome from it. I will be switching vendors for much of our ink and media, so they do stand to lose a good chunk of business because of their lack of service.

 

[signage]

Glad to hear it all worked out for you Mike, and hope it stays that way!

 

[rjssigns]

HOORAY!!! Glad to hear it was fixed. Now you just have to find a new vendor.
My wife and I had a talk about your experience and our "little" mess. It came down to my philosophy of: "You get one chance to screw me then we are finished".
Harsh attitude I know, but I have found that there are more people out there willing to work much harder for my money. This holds true for many things we do, but especially on big ticket items with which you make your living.

Sad to say the only thing these people will understand is a hit to their bottom line. When you do not buy anything from them they will be tripping all over themselves to help you. Then you ask yourself where was this level of service for the last year?

Gosh, I better get off the Bitter Express.
Just drags up a lot of bad memories.

 

[parrott]

Update: the Epson engineer just left. Aside from the fact that our printer has had more breakdowns than a typical machine, I'm feeling better about it this morning. He went over the frame with a fine toothed comb and determined the root of all of our media feeding issues is because the frame was so far out of alignment. He worked it back so it's perfectly in alignment with the printer chassis, dialed it in, and we were able to run a full roll of wallpaper material with no problems at all. Before this, we couldn't print 5' without getting significant head strikes, the media would buckle and warp terribly bad, even with the heaters turned completely off. In fact, with this 90' roll of material, we actually cranked the heat all the way up to 50/50/50 and it printed flawlessly, the media stayed perfectly flat across the platen, and it rolled perfectly square on the takeup. In one year we've literally never been able to do this with any media, let alone wallpaper, which is about the most finicky material I've ever seen to print.

He looked over the rest of the printer and said it seems to be in perfect condition. He admitted that some of the breakdowns we've seen were because some of the earlier machines had some sub-par components that Epson has been replacing as they've failed (including a head failure due to poor-quality green ink, carriage motor, carriage pulleys, and a few sensors). He said Epson will continue to replace components for free even outside of warranty if they are parts that shouldn't fail. I'm not sure if that makes me feel warm and fuzzy, I wish they wouldn't have released a machine with issues in the first place, but it is what it is, and I can't say Epson hasn't always been helpful and attentive when we've had problems.

Right now it looks like we need to point the blame for the trouble at our dealer. They assembled the machine. They're also who I've complained to dozens of times over the last year about the problems we've been having, and they've always failed to elevate our concerns to the proper people at Epson until now. It's extremely frustrating that it took a year of complaining to get them to send someone out to correct their sloppy assembly when this is something that should have been fixed a long time ago. So that's a fight I've got to take up now, but I don't expect much outcome from it. I will be switching vendors for much of our ink and media, so they do stand to lose a good chunk of business because of their lack of service.

That is great news. Our machine went down the first couple months we owned it (faulty head fried the motherboard twice) and know how frustrating it can be. No where near the issues you have mentioned, but it always seems to happen at the worst time. Thankfully Epson has always been very responsive to any issues we have had.

What are your thoughts on the new feed system added on to the back of the machine. We have not requested that one be added to our printer since we have had little issues, but I would like to have it installed if it helps. Do you find that you can add more heat with the new feed?

 

[Dice]

We have 2 GS6000's and 2 jv33's. Both are awesome printers. JV33 is more of a Man's machine, like a tank. Messy, works, gets the job done.

GS6000's are more like women. Look Beautiful, print beautiful but are slightly more cranky.

If you don't need the beautiful 8 color work, go with the JV33. If you need superior color, gs6000 is really the only printer on the market that can do it.

Specialized Materials I would not try on the GS.

All of mine are 1+ years old, so could be something up with the newer machines.

 

[Letterbox Mike]

What are your thoughts on the new feed system added on to the back of the machine. We have not requested that one be added to our printer since we have had little issues, but I would like to have it installed if it helps. Do you find that you can add more heat with the new feed?

Honestly it's hard to say. They installed it on ours about 2 months into ownership but it made no noticeable improvement in media handling. We're now learning though that that is probably because the takeup was so skewed that it was being forced to feed crooked as it printed. So I have nothing to compare it to before it was installed since other factors were overriding it's effectiveness.

Like I said above, we were able to run wallpaper material at 50/50/50 which is unbelievable to me, we most heat we can get out of our JV33 on the same media is about 40/38/50, and we got head strikes on the Epson with no heat at all prior to fixing the frame/takeup reel. So I have to believe that the new media feeder must have something to do with being able to crank the heat. The way it works is it basically rolls the media flat as it travels across the pre-heater, preventing any buckling from forming there and transferring up through the pinch rollers and onto the print platen.

I'd say if you're having trouble with heavy media to have them install it to see, it definitely can't hurt. I would also advise you to have your technician check to make sure the frame is absolutely square, the way Epson engineered it it allows for some slop when assembling it and you won't know it's out of alignment unless you start measuring it to see if the feet are parallel.

 

[Letterbox Mike]

We have 2 GS6000's and 2 jv33's. Both are awesome printers. JV33 is more of a Man's machine, like a tank. Messy, works, gets the job done.

GS6000's are more like women. Look Beautiful, print beautiful but are slightly more cranky.

I think that pretty much sums it up exactly.

 

[Jack Knight1979]

Great News Insignia!

I've been following your progress with this machine since day one. I'm happy that your problems are resolved. I'm not happy it took this long to fix it.

I've had my fair share of bad dealer experiences too. Most of the dealers just don't know jack about these machines.

Congrats.

 

[boxerbay]

You got a banged up unit from your vendor. It's not that EPSON's are bad. We run 13oz banner 164' rolls end to end with no problem. I set them up to run at 4pm and leave the building. Next morning a solid super straight roll ready to trim and hem.

This happened to us with our Graphtec plotter. The first one arrived and we had problems with it. We started checking it carefully and noticed some hair line cracks on the outer plastic covers. we then checked the box it came in and found some odd heavy pressure points on the corner as if they placed another heavy skid on top of it. We called our vendor and they switched it out. They later found out that there was a crack in the mother board also. So we can't outright say all Graphtec or Epson suck we can say vendors that mishandle equipment suck.

 

[FatCat]

Mike, sorry to hear that a guy like you has had to deal with this situation for so long.
(Happy to hear it seems to be resolved though.)
Hope it's smooth sailing from here on out.

*BTW - I would NOT share those pickles with your vendor!

 

[DRamm76]

They are cheap. So they get bought. It's only after the fact that the people realize it's too late. I know a friend of mine who wanted a Roland but his boss was too cheap and bought the Epson on price..They swapped the machine out 3 times in 1 year because of problems.

And with the HP, if a red flag doesnt go up that you can get a $26,000 printer for $14,000 then you'll learn the hard way..

 

[ProColorGraphics]

They are cheap. So they get bought. It's only after the fact that the people realize it's too late. I know a friend of mine who wanted a Roland but his boss was too cheap and bought the Epson on price..They swapped the machine out 3 times in 1 year because of problems.

And with the HP, if a red flag doesnt go up that you can get a $26,000 printer for $14,000 then you'll learn the hard way..

Well my HP runs circles around the Roland I had. The quality of the prints don't even come close. The HP blows the Roland away. It should have been pretty obvious that a new model was coming out, which is why they dropped to price to move out the older model. I was just at a show looking at Roland's printing, and the prints were terrible. That was off of a new VS with the dual CMYK setup. I didn't think it was that fast either. Either way, there will always be someone out there that loves or hates whatever brand you get and are more than willing to give you their 2 cents. Just saying that I have more than happy with my HP L25500.

 

[gabagoo]

I have no intentions of upgrading my jv3 anytime soon. Still runs good enough for me

 

[artbot]

large format printers are going the way of the cnc router. with all the vast firmware code and mass producing of linear motion parts, they are going to get cheaper and cheaper. today's japanese $25,000 printer will be coming out of china for about $7000 as quality improves. they are incredibly simple machines that have been selling for triple what they are actually worth for decades. that is coming to an end. ultimately the true complexity is in the ink chemistry. also, right now a brazilian company is developing and selling latex for encad, epson heads. so the whole industry is about to be turned on it's head.

epson has had this market cornered for years. but with the canon ipf series, hp latex, now mimaki going ricoh, they are acting just like the behemoth that they are. too spoiled, too large, and too old school to be nimble and get ahead of the market.

 

[phototec]

Love when a real life story has a good ending, glad to hear it's working now.

Epson makes good printers, and now you found out what the true problem was, NOT the actual printer, but the sloppy install of the frame which was done by the dealer, not Epson.

So, this brings up the question, who is liable for all the lost time, lost production, & lost profit potential you have incurred over the last year?

In my book, it's the DEALER, and they should be sued for the lost revenue in small claims court.

And if you don't want to take legal action against them because their negligence caused the problems, at least I would NEVER EVER use them again for anything again.

I remember going to a company quality seminar years ago, and the keynote speaker said the lack of Quality in America is largely based on the fact that we except the crap that we our sold. And the main message, is that you get what you accept, so STOP accepting low quality and demand that vendors and dealers provide high quality.

One way to do that is NOT to support those companies and dealers that don't maintain high quality standards.

I'm just appalled that your dealer made his commission and profit on the sale and install of the GS6000, however for the last year you have LOST money with this printer because they did NOT set it up correctly to factory specifications.

Don't reward this dealer any longer...

 

[boxerbay]

Love when a real life story has a good ending, glad to hear it's working now.

Epson makes good printers, and now you found out what the true problem was, NOT the actual printer, but the sloppy install of the frame which was done by the dealer, not Epson.

So, this brings up the question, who is liable for all the lost time, lost production, & lost profit potential you have incurred over the last year?

In my book, it's the DEALER, and they should be sued for the lost revenue in small claims court.

And if you don't want to take legal action against them because their negligence caused the problems, at least I would NEVER EVER use them again for anything again.

I remember going to a company quality seminar years ago, and the keynote speaker said the lack of Quality in America is largely based on the fact that we except the crap that we our sold. And the main message, is that you get what you accept, so STOP accepting low quality and demand that vendors and dealers provide high quality.

One way to do that is NOT to support those companies and dealers that don't maintain high quality standards.

I'm just appalled that your dealer made his commission and profit on the sale and install of the GS6000, however for the last year you have LOST money with this printer because they did NOT set it up correctly to factory specifications.

Don't reward this dealer any longer...

OR maybe it was set up correctly but then someone in the shop bumped it with a pallet jack while moving a large skid around. stuff happens and proving it one way or the other will be difficult. I was nervous about this when we first set up our GS6000 so we moved our printer into the "dead" corner where regular traffic does not go by it. only the operator goes in that area. glad epson figured it out for you.

 

[binki]

Lawyer Up. That will get their attention.

 

[Atomic DNA]

Glad everything worked out. I have a few Epson printers and have really not any issues with any of the large format ones, just the smaller ones. I love the print quality.

I was going to recommend you filming a video of the crap you are going through, showing the head strikes, etc and posting it up on all video websites. You could then send them a link to said websites.