dx5 flatbeds (solvent and uv)

[artbot]

i wanted to share this with you guys. i've been researching chinese dedicated solvent flatbeds for the weekend. i had a great opportunity to get an expensive machine but the pitch was shot down because the partner's consultant said they were planning on selling the business in three years and i figured it would take three years clear over million a year. so.

my buyer offered to buy me $30k in upgrades for a square footage discount. that will not go far, except for in china.

attached are some interesting prospects. tables with jv33 knock offs, real jv33, dual staggered head dx5 printers, 1304's, 1604's, 9880's, 740's,

even a uv flatbed with two staggered dx5s. and i even have a movie of that one loudly cranking away.

i am so impressed (even though much of the tech is stolen), by the tenacity of these engineers. they are humble hard working printer engineers many times working in 2nd world conditions to get their "chinese dream" to come true. why didn't anyone in all of this entire country for the last 20 years strap even an fj50 to a table? it was there all along? who knows.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsG8cX5hZ8s&feature=related

i myself am looking at the yinghe 5x8 single dx5 for $13,000. insanely low. maybe terrible. but at least it can be worked on for cheap. the high end jv33 flatbed goes for $40k at the lowest quoted. and the factories are honest with you. they will tell you "this one has very expensive drive system" "this one has crappy belt drive". if you don't want to pay the company $25,000 for expensive parts, then don't expect them.

here's the dual uv dx5

http://youtu.be/Ker8j7J-kek

here's a 44" with a brand new gutted 9880 mounted

http://youtu.be/KBGEtQuaf1c

just like the cheap vinyl cutter ended up in every garage. i believe soon the cheap flatbed will end up in every mid level sign shop. at these prices, it's a screaming buy.

 

[rjssigns]

Too cool artbot! Keep up the posts. You would think pricing would have come down on the brand name stuff as the technology is pervasive, but it hasn't. The Chinese are masters at reverse engineering and without legacy costs to deal with (see GM's near bankruptcy) I think they have a shot at market penetration and making a good piece too.
The FJ500 idea is bangin'! I often though about something similar. The only hitch would be the feed IMO. But I think that could be overcome with linear bearings on rails with a belt drive. (gantry system)

"Those who say it can't be done get run over by those willing to try"

 

[johnnysigns]

The learning curve to fix 90% of your problems with one of these presses and the knowledgebase available would be what I'd be concerned most with investing in something like this.

 

[artbot]

thing is the firmware must be terribly simple. most of it is japanese. for instance a mutoh conversion. the step signal for the grit roller is just sent to a stepper motor that has a drive belt. if gear track is put on straight (which i could fine tune if it isn't), then it's just a matter of setting a step ratio on a simple control board. just like on a cnc... you tell the motor what an "inch" or .0001 of an inch is. that is just what a printer is doing with you do a media compensation calibration. no different. so possibly even the media compensation portion of the japanese firmware has been given the task of talking to the gear track steppers.

so, available cheap parts (i've seen drive motors for a vutek priced at $3500!). solid firmware, drive motors for the table can be replaced by just matching the specs and recalibrating. the truth is, if you can keep a mutoh running. you can keep this running. as for the knowledge base, any half witted cnc tech could come by and decipher a repair. compared to a cnc machine, this is a toy.

and for the rip. again, a painfully simple solution. they are printing directly from corel. when i do my tool paths for my crappy shopbot (it's one of those 20 year old wooden ones and i will be using it all day today) i just plop it down on a 52x98 paper size for setting the basic location. then i convert. they are dragging an image onto the "bed"/paper and hitting print just like this massive flatbed was a desktop printer.

i have a lot of products that would go so incredibly fast. as for eco solvent on things like acrylic. spray some freaking CAB on it and print. most customers for commercial mixed media do not scrutinize print quality. they want color, and wow factor. they pretty much accept anything as long as your fit and finish is good. trust me i do $40,000 projects all the time and they could care less.

as i further discuss shipping, escrow, tech, get pics, etc. i'll update this thread. i am in pull the trigger mode. after looking at so many "real" flatbeds with $20,000-$48,000 worth of heads installed, i just figured that just way overkill for a small shop. i want to plug this thing in to a 110v, plug in my crappy dell and start making some money with it.

 

[artbot]

okay. this is awesome. remember how the encad 880 was a total flop because the feed just wouldn't work? well, i even that i did some pricing out of used 880's a month ago because they would be so easy to "table" being that they already had the worm screw head height adjustment (just add longer worm screw and the gantry could go a foot. anyway. check this out a flatbed 880!

http://photojetchina.en.alibaba.com/product/428776665-212281291/Flat_Panel_Universal_Printer.html

i'm getting pricing on this next week. but if it is practically free, i just may get one and slap my mimaki on top of it later on. all the hard work is there just make an adjustment plate for the attachment and start hacking at the media comp'. i could just set it at 1" and shim the table with three or four separate phenolic boards for different heights. i would probably run 1/4" almost 90% of the time.

 

[Rooster]

Have you checked the ink adhesion from the DX5 based flatbeds?

Nobody else is using the DX5 heads with UV inks, so I have to assume it's some kind of new ink that can work in those heads. With how important adhesion is with the UV printers, buying a printer you can work on would be futile if the only inks you can run through the head either don't work or cause clogs too often.

 

[artbot]

i don't plan on using uv ink or even solvent ink in any of them. i will be using my own mild solvent acid resist ink. so adhesion is just based on it sticking to the aluminum during etching, then that gets stripped off with jasco.