Gerber ION Solara owners who retrofitted their lamps and ink or scrapped it?

[TimToad]

Three questions for current or former Gerber ION Solara owners. After a few small ink manufacturers tried and failed to duplicate the ink formula, its obvious its time to put this boat anchor out to sea.

1. Have any of you done the lamp and ink conversion retrofit offered by LavaInk?

2. What have you done to scrap your machine and dispose of its parts?

3. Have you offered it to other industries to try and convert its tables to other uses?

 

[Superior_Adam]

About 8 years ago I scrapped one out. Used it as a trade in on a new machine and they wanted nothing to do with it. I basically took it apart and trashed all but the metal. You wont make much but it was fun tearing into it and seeing how it was built. We kept the extension tables and use them as a table though when we need extra table space.

 

[eahicks]

I'm amazed any of these are still out there running. Used one at the previous company I worked for. Was a terrible machine for what we bought it for.

 

[TimToad]

I'm amazed any of these are still out there running. Used one at the previous company I worked for. Was a terrible machine for what we bought it for.

You don't have to tell me about its lack of good design or reliability. I still can't understand why our predecessors wanted or needed it. Gerber is notorious for rushing products to the market and then not owning their design flaws and lack of good service. The extended service contract alone was ridiculous and necessary to keep it running well all the time.

We knew of its planned obsolescence before we bought the business and it was a throw in that we inherited when we bought the business. While we ran the hell out of it and made tons of money off of it over the last 5.5 years, we're glad to have gradually shifted our business model to less and less flatbed work and more creative, permanent, dimensional type projects.

A glorified work table is what it's turned into and after looking into the UV lamp conversion kit sold by LavaInk, its not worth doing even if we could find other parts for it. While the prints had great adhesion and colorfastness for an early model UV flatbed, it is way too slow, too grainy of print quality and nobody to fix it if something major broke down to keep in service.

I'd love to figure out how to make a DIY Rolls Roller out of it for mounting and short run laminating.