As the title says we just got a Mimaki flatbed. I am new to the flatbed printing world so I am problably going to have a lot of questions. I have read some of your post and I know that I do not have the greatest flatbed in the world, but it's the one we have. The Tech came in and set it up spent a day and a half training and left me to my own device's. We are a Sign Company and we are still leaning what we can do with this machine. I understand the basics of of using a flatbed but I want to learn as much as I can and make my company as profitable as possible. I have about 13 years experince in digital printing. I started out on the electrostatic Xerox 8954 Series 1 Cactus machine and have ran just about everything in between up to the Roland SC-540. If you also have the JF-1631 please chime in.
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Hello All! 1st Week w/Mimaki JF1631
- Thread starter akalvarez
- Start date
SignManiac
New Member
Good luck with your new flatbed. I looked at the same machine you have. The print samples were excellent even if it's not the fastest. Be sure and do your routine maintenance. Flatbeds can be quite temperamental. I hope it meets your expectations.
Craig Sjoquist
New Member
welcome to a outstanding forum and people
So I am the only one on here that has one of these machines? Well after you get over the intimidation factor and talk to the tech's (not the sales people, ha,) this thing is not to bad. I admit I have already witnessed the limitations of the cartridges but I am confident I can make this puppy sing. Next goal I am setting is to get a spectrometer and start making my own profiles.
MachServTech
New Member
Very Very good idea! (I recommend the IO table and i1 from x-rite...it will allow you to profile rigid substrates) What RIP are you using?
Replicator
New Member
Welcome !
..
We put a deposit down on our JF. We are just waiting until we move our old flatbed. Hopefully, we will have it by the end of the month. My friend has two JF's in his shop. Both are running on 4 colors to get the most speed, which is about 135 sq ft an hour @ 600x 600 4 pass. Quality of prints are great. He will be building new profiles and dialing it in better this month. Are you running 4 color or 6 color, white & Clear?
We put a deposit down on our JF. We are just waiting until we move our old flatbed. Hopefully, we will have it by the end of the month. My friend has two JF's in his shop. Both are running on 4 colors to get the most speed, which is about 135 sq ft an hour @ 600x 600 4 pass. Quality of prints are great. He will be building new profiles and dialing it in better this month. Are you running 4 color or 6 color, white & Clear?
We are using Rasterlinkpro4IP mimaki's latest rip. It is basic but enough to do the job. We are running six colors and one white and one clear. We started out running two sets of white ink. We kept having problems with the white nozzles dropping out and were using a ton of ink to clean both heads so we switched to one white and one clear. The clear ink gets clogged but not as frequently/sever as the white the white seems to be an issue everyday. Every day before I leave I do a manual cleaning and auto cleaning. I alos do a pump up and the hard cleaning on the white head every morning now. Does anyone else use white inks, and do you have to battle it each morning? The tech also told us not to swap out white and clear in the print heads because you can never get all of the white ink out of the lines.
BlueRidgeFabrication
New Member
Welcome from GA!
Jessica
Jessica
Hello from Orlando!
We've had our JF-1631 for about 2-3 months now. We have replaced all but one ink cartridge since the initial set up which left us a little less than half of each cartridge. We are running 2 whites and have problems with the white staying at 100% firing. Even during printing. It is frustrating as hell!! We do a cleaning and wiping cleaning daily at start up after a manual clean and usually have to do a normal and sometimes a wipe clean 1 or 2 times more each day. We do not do a hard cleaning as that seems to cause more problems. The normal cleaning and sometimes wiping seems to do fine for us and we are almost always at 100% nozzles.
We have problems with cure banding even at 16 pass. The training was in my opinion worse than a kindergarden class day! They didn't tell us anything.. just what he uses as a profile and one lamp on low and figure it out from there.. completely disappointed with the training! When I called tech support there is a guy there, I think named Evan, who says he knows it all.. Well it got to the point to prevent me jumping through the phone and strangling this idiot I had to say well obviously you don't know it all because you're telling me you can't solve my problem with adhesion and de-lamination I'm having.. he actually shut up which I didn't think was possible!!
We've been continuously experimenting with how to defeat all the problems we have with this touchy beotch of a printer! We have to tape down a lot of things to prevent media jams. Raise up the media thickness to over what was told to us was the ideal heights above the media of 1.5 to 1.7mm.
The other thing we have to figure out is how come when we print on lexan it is not opaque. You can see right through the ink!
It is definitely a learning experience. It is our first UV flatbed also so that may have something to do with our learning curve.
We've had our JF-1631 for about 2-3 months now. We have replaced all but one ink cartridge since the initial set up which left us a little less than half of each cartridge. We are running 2 whites and have problems with the white staying at 100% firing. Even during printing. It is frustrating as hell!! We do a cleaning and wiping cleaning daily at start up after a manual clean and usually have to do a normal and sometimes a wipe clean 1 or 2 times more each day. We do not do a hard cleaning as that seems to cause more problems. The normal cleaning and sometimes wiping seems to do fine for us and we are almost always at 100% nozzles.
We have problems with cure banding even at 16 pass. The training was in my opinion worse than a kindergarden class day! They didn't tell us anything.. just what he uses as a profile and one lamp on low and figure it out from there.. completely disappointed with the training! When I called tech support there is a guy there, I think named Evan, who says he knows it all.. Well it got to the point to prevent me jumping through the phone and strangling this idiot I had to say well obviously you don't know it all because you're telling me you can't solve my problem with adhesion and de-lamination I'm having.. he actually shut up which I didn't think was possible!!
We've been continuously experimenting with how to defeat all the problems we have with this touchy beotch of a printer! We have to tape down a lot of things to prevent media jams. Raise up the media thickness to over what was told to us was the ideal heights above the media of 1.5 to 1.7mm.
The other thing we have to figure out is how come when we print on lexan it is not opaque. You can see right through the ink!
It is definitely a learning experience. It is our first UV flatbed also so that may have something to do with our learning curve.
The Big Squeegee
Long Time Member
Welcome from OK.
Welcome!
I too have a JF-1631. I've had it for about 18 months now. It prints well when the machine is at 100%, keeping it at 100% is the challenge. It would take me weeks to tell you how many issues we've had with this machine. Our biggest issue is the print heads failing, which is too often. We are running 2 whites. Whites are a pain to work with. Customer service hasn't been good lately.
Don't give up and make certain you report ANY issues with Mimaki in Atlanta.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Maybe we can team up and force Mimaki to listen to their customers.
I too have a JF-1631. I've had it for about 18 months now. It prints well when the machine is at 100%, keeping it at 100% is the challenge. It would take me weeks to tell you how many issues we've had with this machine. Our biggest issue is the print heads failing, which is too often. We are running 2 whites. Whites are a pain to work with. Customer service hasn't been good lately.
Don't give up and make certain you report ANY issues with Mimaki in Atlanta.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Maybe we can team up and force Mimaki to listen to their customers.
benjercorp
New Member
Welcome to the Signhood.... one advise for tj duvall you better start using that machine more often since all the machine with white ink has a lot of issue concerning ink drying on the lines..
Team One Displays
New Member
What purpose does the washing liquid serve in the eighth head? We've had ours since September and have not had the best experience so far.