Considering Vanguard VR6 or Canon Arizona 1360

[Jolly Otter]

We have been doing offset and digital printing for 25+ years and are looking to expand into a flatbed printer. We have several customers who we are printing their paper jobs that have expressed a desire for us take the sign work that they are sending elsewhere. Primarily clorpast signs and foamcore prints to start for these customers but once we have the capability we can sell to our other customers.

This will be out first flatbed. We have looked at several and have narrowed it down to the Vanguard VR6 and the Canon Arizona 1360. Both seem similar and have some future upgradability, which sounds nice if we need it down the road.

Does anyone have one of these machines or looked at them and choose something different? I would love to hear good and bad you have experienced with either one. How is reliability of the machine and how is service when you need it. Your thoughts on why you chose one over the competition or the competition over one of these.

Thanks for your time and input.
Derek

 

[Bxtr]

Hello Derek,

We have a Vanguard VK300D 6Head w/2 Channels of White Ink. We're coming on three years and are still pleased with the purchase. What sold us on it was the speed, being able to print ADA signage, upgradable to 10 heads if/when we need more speed. We needed a 5x10 bed so we never looked at the VR6. The white ink is finicky but it was on our previous printer as well.

I can't speak much to the Arizona, we didn't look to hard at that when we were looking.

 

[tollerdad]

If you are still shopping I would try to get a digital cutter as well. In fact I would say unless you are selling only full sheets you will need digital cutter. This may affect your budget a bit so you can afford both. We also do sheetfed digital print on an Indigo and have a Arizona that is 11 years old and still running and a 5 year old HP R1000. The Vanguard is a fine machine as well. After doing this wide format biz for 21 years if you want to be competitive get a cutter.