Flat Bed Printer oce / Fuji Acuity

[mumpower]

We are thinking to buying a flatbed printer have looked at the oce 460gt and the Fuji acuity are there anyone on here that on either one of these and can give me some advise on which printer would be the best to purchase. Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated. Ike Mumpower

 

[Letterbox Mike]

Aren't those the same machine, just rebranded?

 

[BrofortPrint]

Oce/Acuity

We're looking at the 550/660 series in Oce' and Fuji seems to have slightly better deals for us on the Acuity lines. They are the same machines from all I can tell. Fuji makes the ink for Oce' I think so you'd probably get a better deal on that if you went with Acuity. I run a 250GT from Oce atm and absolutely love it. Don't know if that helps but all the same...

 

[HulkSmash]

We're looking at the 550/660 series in Oce' and Fuji seems to have slightly better deals for us on the Acuity lines. They are the same machines from all I can tell. Fuji makes the ink for Oce' I think so you'd probably get a better deal on that if you went with Acuity. I run a 250GT from Oce atm and absolutely love it. Don't know if that helps but all the same...

Find out which has better service, and base your decision off that. From my experience Oce support is great. Never had the oppertunity to use Fuji

 

[5Star]

We've bought a 460GT recently running CMYK White & Varnish.
Love the machine - it seems to be very well made, and produces very good quality work at a reasonable speed.

We opted for the Roll Media Option as well, as we'd like to phase out our old Mimaki solvent.

Service and back up has been fantastic so far and perhaps the only issue has been the amount of white ink that the machine uses for purges and cleans. Océ (to their credit) has replaced the white free of charge while they investigate this issue.

All up, we really like it.

 

[tollerdad]

We have the Oce 460GT and the rip was the decision maker for me. Oce has ONYX and Fuji was Colorgate. Now we have 4 printers running on ONYX Thrive in 2 buildings. That works nice for us. We have varnish as well but will probably switch to white/white soon.

 

[5Star]

We have the Oce 460GT and the rip was the decision maker for me. Oce has ONYX and Fuji was Colorgate. Now we have 4 printers running on ONYX Thrive in 2 buildings. That works nice for us. We have varnish as well but will probably switch to white/white soon.

Yes, the Onyx Thrive RIP is great - we've hooked our solvent and 3 inkjets into it as well as the Arizona.

As for the varnish - yes, we'll probably go white/white as well. The paper dust from our offset area contaminates the varnish leaving pin holes in the varnish. Until we can 'clean room' the flatbed area it's unfortunately unusable. That said, when it works, it's pretty spectacular.

 

[5Star]

No complaints about the R2R option? Overnight printing full rolls without any issues?

It's an expensive option but we could really use it.

So far, so good. Yep, overnight printing is heaven!
Only two caveats:
1) Take your time lining it up - be really sure you won't get any telescoping as the roll feeds in.
2) Do a thorough clean before setting it loose - contaminants on the underside of the carriage are as bad as blocked jets.
Personally I find the Wash Liquid is very good for cleaning the underside, but it leaves any oily film behind that seems attract particles (maybe it's supposed to?). But I then wipe it down with Isopropyl to get a clean, dry surface.

 

[DIGIXTRA]

I'm glad to hear this (as well as hearing you're happy with your Oce and R2R option) as we're hoping to move on a 318gl with R2R soon, and will be going with ONYX Thrive. I'll also be moving our Roland printer/cutter to onyx and another standalone printer, and cutter in the next year.

I've heard good things about ONYX in general and am really looking forward to trying it out.

No complaints about the R2R option? Overnight printing full rolls without any issues?

It's an expensive option but we could really use it.

I never had any issue with printing overnight. The good thing about OCE R2R printer is that it will automatically stop once encounter problem. For example end of the roll that had been taped onto the core ...etc This is just like having a second shift working for free...
Another great aspect of R2R is time saving (with a little extra cost) you can boost the production 3X faster...
KT

 

[jkline]

Still like the Oce 460GT?

We have the Oce 460GT and the rip was the decision maker for me. Oce has ONYX and Fuji was Colorgate. Now we have 4 printers running on ONYX Thrive in 2 buildings. That works nice for us. We have varnish as well but will probably switch to white/white soon.

Still like the Oce? Were are leaning towards the 460GT. Would love some feedback. This would be our first printer so I am loaded with ?'s
Do you have a support maintenance plan? How often do you replace the heads? I have lots of answers from the rep we have been dealing with, he has been more than helpful documenting all our ?'s and putting them in written format.
Thanks much

 

[DougWestwood]

OCE & FUJI guy here

Hi Mumpower,

I currently run the FUJI Acuity and have run an OCE 250GT in the past.

Both are made by FUJI, so you might get a price break going with them. OCE is good,
but they just closed their parts outlet nearby (dang!), and OCE seems to be much more
sensitive to the material profiles. With the OCE, I had to have a profile specifically for each material.
With the FUJI, I have two profiles. That's it. Never would have believed it, but here we are.

The two FUJI tables we have run OK, but the models we have are now being discontinued,
and parts will no longer be made/service will not be available.

Both machines must be kept clean every day, even if you don't use them. Nozzles get clogged,
and if they crust over waiting for you to use the machine again, it's tough to get them clear.

My experience is that white ink isn't very productive, especially when you use a lot of ink just to clean the heads.
(See comment above.) We do not have any clients which want white or varnish, so we just run CMYK.

For R2R, aligning correctly is good advice. If your overnight job stops 6" from the end of a 300" print,
you waste it all. Make damn sure you have a good tension, too. Headstrikes come up pretty often.
We did not have many problems with our R2R, but we are phasing it out since we bought a
Scitex 16-foot wide roll machine.

We are talking about getting a new flatbed. We will see. As for the RIP software, ONYX rules.
Much better than the Roland VersaWorks. Have not used anything else.
- Doug
Vancouver

 

[AlsEU]

Hi Mumpower,

I currently run the FUJI Acuity and have run an OCE 250GT in the past.

Both are made by FUJI, so you might get a price break going with them. OCE is good,
but they just closed their parts outlet nearby (dang!), and OCE seems to be much more
sensitive to the material profiles. With the OCE, I had to have a profile specifically for each material.
With the FUJI, I have two profiles. That's it. Never would have believed it, but here we are.


We are talking about getting a new flatbed. We will see. As for the RIP software, ONYX rules.
Much better than the Roland VersaWorks. Have not used anything else.
- Doug
Vancouver

Both Fuji Acuity and Oce printers are made by OCE (Canon) in Canada (check the label on your Acuity), inks for all printers (Acuity and Arizona series) are made by Fuji.

If you want to check all good RIP software - try Caldera.

 

[lgroth]

We've had an Acuity X2 in service here for about 5 years and we run the heck out of it. The biggest maintenance headaches for us have been lamp shutters and firewire cables going bad, a few heads have been replaced, one motherboard, one power supply... Some of the issues we have I guess they've revamped on the newer versions according to our area service tech. Definitely get a maintenance plan with it, without attending the expensive classes to get a service key everything has to be done by their service techs, even minor repairs can be very expensive.