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Epson r5070 - anyone got one?

ikarasu

Active Member
Just curious if anyone has one on here?

I've had mine for about 3 weeks now...so far I love it.

The prints come out "Almost" as good as the Epson s80's, better Color gamut than the latex... Way less grain (usually), and so far panel lengths been perfect.... And colors been consistent.

I just did my first 20 ft wall job with it - 5 4 ft x 9 ft panels and everything aligned and matched perfectly. In comparison... Our latex 700 at work couldn't match 3 panels that were 4 ft by 8 ft.... Everything was a quarter of an inch to an eighth of an inch off... It was a huge pain to apply it with 50 pieces to align / stretch media to.


Downsides?

It sounds like a jet engine.

The heater isn't enclosed - it has a heater far away from the media.. .likely to prevent rubs / jams which are common with the latex. But think desktop fan.... That's blowing heat out. We're in a 99 degree heat wave right now, so having it blow air out is brutal.

On-top of that... While I usually don't get graininess, it's been really bad during this heat wave. I'm hoping it's the best wave anyways, the prints look worst than the latex - in fairness, my garage is 105 degrees according to the printer, and the operating range is 86 and lower... It's been complaining it's too hot.... Which is only worsened by the fav there's a jet engine blowing hot air out into it.


Overall... I feel like it's the "best" of both worlds. It has most of the benefits of latex and solvent... With way less of the downfalls of either. In a normal environment it may not be so loud... It's probably 4-5x louder than our 700w though, and the heat dispersement may not be as problematic if it's in a space that's open and fits more than 1 car in it.

For a first gen model, it's great. It was a bit cheaper than the 700 series as well.

Those who have issues with their latex such as panel misalignment, color changes, but like the characteristics of latex may want to look into it. I feel like in a gen or two Epson will easily surpass latex and work out all the kinks...


To be fair - I loved our 560. I know others had issues with it, but we never had color issues or alignment issues in the 4 years we printed on it. The 700 on the other hand has been problematic... It feels like hp may be a bit of a gamble whether you get a good machine or not.
 

ikarasu

Active Member
Just for shits and giggles I grabbed our sound measurer from work to test it.

Getting an average of 81 decibels standing infront of the printer. 5 ft away in getting 78. Again... In my garage so it echoes. May not be as bad in a big shop. Up here in Canada.. if you're exposed to 85 db average in a 4 hour period you need to wear hearing protection. With the garage door closed and me being a good 30 ft away on my couch I can still hear it.

. Obligatory video so you can hear just how loud it is...


And a small update... Doing a manual media adjustment got rid of most of the grain... I guess the humidity / heat affects the way it feeds. Time to buy central air and pipe it into the garage!
 

ikarasu

Active Member
It's nearly equivalent. They don't list the specs anywhere so I had to reach out to a rep before I bought it.

They claim it does 161 sqft/hr in high quality mode where as the latex 700 does 183 - roughly 10% slower.

I've never tested it though, usually I print 30-40 ft at a time. I've got a few rolls of banners coming up end of next month, so I'll see if they're accurate or not!

I will say this though.... The 560/700 does so many cleanings / nozzle recoveries once the heads get old. Our 700 took 10-15 mins before each print while it did maintenance... The Epson is like a 1 minute warm up... And you can hit print without the heater getting to it's desired temp... So you can start printing right away. .. so far when I've done that it's been fine and still dries before it leaves the machine.

I'd say it's close to the 700 8 pass speed just going by feel.
 

Mike Perth

New Member
Yeah we have a 800w which we nurse daily. For wallpapers it’s a total PITA but for glazing films and white it’s perfect. We might look at a Resin for the wallpapers, how’s the smell when it prints?
Also did you ever consider a Colorado?
 

ikarasu

Active Member
No smell, the reasin is pretty much a latex machine. I only ever got smells on certain media on our latex, Im sure when the resin heats that media up it'll smell, but so far nothing.

I bought the resin for my home... I like to play with new technology. I'd love the 1650.... But it wouldn't fit in my garage, and as much as I love new technology, the wife would bite my head off if I bought a 100k machine!

If 1650 is an option and it's in your budget.. so far from what I've heard about then I'd go with one over the resin.
 
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victor bogdanov

Active Member
How is this printer compared to the sharpness and color gamut of an epson S80 or S40?
Print quality is excellent. Best print quality printer I've owned. I don't have a direct comparison to S40 but I would imagine a little better (less grainy) some colors due to LC and LM but not as wide gamut as S80 as it has additional ink colors.

Although after using the printer for 6 months I don't really see much benefit of Resin/latex over solvent. Solvent = way less heat and less settings to mess with (heat/optimizer)
 

CC-CMYK

New Member
Print quality is excellent. Best print quality printer I've owned. I don't have a direct comparison to S40 but I would imagine a little better (less grainy) some colors due to LC and LM but not as wide gamut as S80 as it has additional ink colors.

Although after using the printer for 6 months I don't really see much benefit of Resin/latex over solvent. Solvent = way less heat and less settings to mess with (heat/optimizer)
The benefit is instant lamination. I’ve printed and installed color dense murals the same day. Also, I’ve never had issues with heat and optimizer except for the hot week our hvac went down. I have a feeling that people who have problems with this printer don’t have adequate climate control in their shops, which they should with any printing equipment and materials.
 

ikarasu

Active Member
I have the printer in my 1 car garage. It can get extremely hot in there's especially when printing - it always throws a printer internals too hot warning... But never had an issue with it.

Color is still bang on, panels are all perfect in consistency.

Been using the machine for 2 years now? It's everything I wish the HP latex was.


My only complaint about it is I wish I could send jobs / queue them up to an internal HD like the hps allow ... But maybe the next generation will do that.
 

ikarasu

Active Member
Print quality is excellent. Best print quality printer I've owned. I don't have a direct comparison to S40 but I would imagine a little better (less grainy) some colors due to LC and LM but not as wide gamut as S80 as it has additional ink colors.

Although after using the printer for 6 months I don't really see much benefit of Resin/latex over solvent. Solvent = way less heat and less settings to mess with (heat/optimizer)
You mainly print wall murals right?

Have you compared solvents scratchability / cleaning resistance compared to the resin?

Anything that doesn't get laminated goes right to our latex... Even banners now - it's way, way more durable than solvent.

Id say it's more durable than UV too... But the cheap UV flatbed I bought has crazy scratchproof to it, so now I'm wondering if we just have the wrong / older UV flatbeds at work and the newer gens are better. Some people say UV has good resistance, I always though that they were crazy because you could put a sticker on a piece of Coro, or take a coin to acrylic / alupanel and the ink comes right off.... Where as the small Chinese flatbed I just bought you can take a nail to acrylic and it won't come off until it's taking the acrylic with it.
 

victor bogdanov

Active Member
Have you compared solvents scratchability / cleaning resistance compared to the resin?
On vinyl there is no difference in scratch resistance between R5070 and Roland ecosol in my testing after 12 hrs. Banner after 12 hrs also the same, Roland TR2 inks

On wallpaper type material such as phototex, eco sol has better scratch resistance than R5070.

Colorado has by far the best scratch resistance on any material
 

victor bogdanov

Active Member
The benefit is instant lamination. I’ve printed and installed color dense murals the same day.
I used to do with eco solvent without a problem. Set up a good fan on the print while printing and it comes out dry and ready.

I do not see any benefit over eco-solvent and added complexity with the heat and optimizer. if the R5070 inks don't dry/cure right on the printer the prints get waxy and will never dry
 

ikarasu

Active Member
On vinyl there is no difference in scratch resistance between R5070 and Roland ecosol in my testing after 12 hrs. Banner after 12 hrs also the same, Roland TR2 inks

On wallpaper type material such as phototex, eco sol has better scratch resistance than R5070.

Colorado has by far the best scratch resistance on any material
Weird, We dont have a roland... but I tested it compared to our Epson, and from what I remember on our Seiko. With out Flatbed UV printing (Again, an 8 year old model, so not the latest) it's not even comparable.

Sales rep told me we had to laminate a print on clear vinyl because it scratches easy... It was temp vinyl, so we didn't laminate it. He told me "UV prints dont need laminating... but Latex does, and solvent especially does" which I thought was weird since I always heard latex had the best scratchability...so I printed some and sent him a video.


The blade isn't out, but I'm scratching at it with the sharp / pointy edge of the metal...and nothing. I did the same thing with our solvent after a few hours of it sitting, and it came right off.

latex inks have been very durable for us compared to solvent - So much so that I hate using solvent, and only use it when we need higher detail... like tiny text, or photographic images.
 

lora

New Member
Have anyone heard about the mandatory 3 hour maintenance cycle on the R5070? If you run a full 100ft roll of wallpaper panels with 6-8 passes it usually takes 4 hours. So it will cancel the job after 3 hours for this cleaning cycle and just sit idle without restarting the job. Any knowledge about this setting?
Thanks
 

victor bogdanov

Active Member
Have anyone heard about the mandatory 3 hour maintenance cycle on the R5070? If you run a full 100ft roll of wallpaper panels with 6-8 passes it usually takes 4 hours. So it will cancel the job after 3 hours for this cleaning cycle and just sit idle without restarting the job. Any knowledge about this setting?
Thanks
Newest firmware lets you bypass the 3hr cleaning. The printer will give a warning when starting a job over 3hrs.

100ft roll on 9 pass (setting I use most) takes under 3 hrs,

You can get about 130ft printed on 9 pass in 3hrs

9 pass seems to be the sweet spot for this printer.

I have had the printer do a cleaning mid print due to detecting clogged nozzles and it resumed without problem and did not see to affect the color at the cleaning point
 

lora

New Member
Thank you for your reply.

When warning comes up, dismiss or acknowledge it and it will start printing?

If you don’t mind me asking, where do you get the media profiles? It seems there not many for the combination of Caldera and this printer.

Good to know that at least it resumes the printing in case cleaning cycle kicks in in the middle of the job.

Thanks
 

lora

New Member
Newest firmware lets you bypass the 3hr cleaning. The printer will give a warning when starting a job over 3hrs.

100ft roll on 9 pass (setting I use most) takes under 3 hrs,

You can get about 130ft printed on 9 pass in 3hrs

9 pass seems to be the sweet spot for this printer.

I have had the printer do a cleaning mid print due to detecting clogged nozzles and it resumed without problem and did not see to affect the color at the cleaning point
Could you also provide the number for the latest firmware. On Epsons website the firmware TU13N3, is this the latest one?
 

victor bogdanov

Active Member
Could you also provide the number for the latest firmware. On Epsons website the firmware TU13N3, is this the latest one?
Yea that's the firmware.

You have to disable the cleaning 3hr cleaning in the printer settings. When enabled the printer won't start a job over 3hrs. This is using onyx, might be different with other RIPS. I still have the cleaning enabled on mine as it finished my prints under 3hrs anyways.


For profiles you download them using Epson Dashboard, Onyx then gets the profiles from Epson Dashboard. There are lots of profiles on Epson dashboard and they all get automatically loaded into onyx once onyx/dashboard are linked together. I'm sure would work similar with Caldera, Caldera should give you an option to import profiles from Epson Dashboard when you add the printer to Caldera
 
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