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Epson S80600 metallic/white quality

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Tatonka

New Member
We are looking to purchase an S80600 shortly, but I'm having a hard time sourcing any samples of white or metallic prints. I know the white won't compare in opacity or brightness to our Roland UV printers, but I'm curious just how well it can do white, as well as metallic colors. Does anyone here do white or metallic on a regular basis and can show a picture of how it turns out?

I'm just getting started in the printing side of our business, and trying to learn as much as I can. My only experience has been running our Roland UV printers, and a little bit of our Roland eco-sol printers, but never really anything other than create a file in illustrator and hit print with the settings that are most commonly used. I need to look into color profiling and who knows what else.
 
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unclebun

Active Member
We were told the S70670 could do colored metallics, and were shown sample prints when we went to the product intro at our supplier. The samples looked very pretty. However, in practice we have not been successful at making pretty metallic colors with it. Metallic silver is also not UV stable, so it's essentially wasted on our printer since it cannot be used for signs left outdoors. It's just an extra $220 we have to throw away every 7-9 months. The other problem with it is that it requires a high pass print setting, and makes printing take forever. In almost 6 years of owning the machine, I've probably printed fewer than 20 jobs that used metallic silver as a color.

White, on the other hand, we do use more regularly. We use it as underlayment when printing clear decals (where it also sometimes is one of the colors in the final design.) It also takes forever to print because of requiring lots of pass printing, and is not totally opaque. So white as a color on a black background, for example, will not be a fully bright white.
 
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Tatonka

New Member
Time is one thing we usually have plenty of when it comes to jobs. The vast majority of things we do are small (under 12x12"), and for us a print can take hours as long as it looks perfect. Most times we'd be printing on white material, but some of our customers don't like seeing a white edge, so a colored or clear material can be necessary for them.

I did see that the S80600 has an option to put a cleaning cartridge in place of the White/Metallic when not printing those colors, so that'd save money and keep the head clear.
 
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unclebun

Active Member
Wish we had the option of putting a cleaning cartridge in when we're not using the special colors.....

As to white edges, though most of our competitors are putting white borders around everything they print/cut, we do not. I guess if they can see the very edge of the vinyl and that bothers them printing on clear would be necessary.
 
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crny1

New Member
Maybe a dumb guestion or I am misunderstanding but why not just put a bleed of the outside color on the decals so there is no white edge showing? I do this if no white edge is desired. Again, Maybe I am misunderstanding.
 
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unclebun

Active Member
crny1 said:
Maybe a dumb guestion or I am misunderstanding but why not just put a bleed of the outside color on the decals so there is no white edge showing? I do this if no white edge is desired. Again, Maybe I am misunderstanding.
Click to expand...

That's how we do it. You have to let the print dry longer when you cut through color. I'm guessing my competitors don't want to wait.
 
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Tatonka

New Member
Ou
crny1 said:
Maybe a dumb guestion or I am misunderstanding but why not just put a bleed of the outside color on the decals so there is no white edge showing? I do this if no white edge is desired. Again, Maybe I am misunderstanding.
Click to expand...

Sometimes our decals have to end in the middle of a product, and the white edge of the sticker can be very noticeable.
 
jfiscus

jfiscus

Rap Master
I really recommend the 60600 over the 80600. The white, metallic, orange and other non-CMYK colors are NOT warranted and DO FADE.
The 60600 is super fast and the prints carry the MCS warranty through 3M if you are in that program.
We also have a 70675 with all the colors (running a non-orange ink profile) and have never had a job where we needed to use the metallic ink and we have only printed a few jobs in the past few years that have required the white ink. I would find a vendor to outsource those few prints to if I was you and get a 60600. Printing the white ink is also super slow if you didn't know.
 
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