Need Help HELP: Roland sold me a defective printer and I lost $750,000

[Gino]

For someone who has been in 2 lawsuits over the something similar would think you would be a little more understanding. I have speeds from the CP rep and this is what I will use for evidence.

If it's a pity party you want, ya came to the wrong place. You don't need pity, you need good hard facts, which is what I.... and a buncha others have given you, but you tend to think, you're gonna win because of a technicality. Again, good luck with that, but your paper trail is very weak for your defense.

Anytime someone writes something about not liking Roland, you cling to that. If that was the case, no companies would be in business. You hafta look real hard at the facts, take the emotions out and decide the best direction for you and your company.

 

[greysquirrel]

Model LEJ-640FT
Printing technology Piezoelectric inkjet
Acceptable media Width and length 64 in x 98 in (1625mm x 2490mm)
Thickness Maximum 6 in (152mm)
Weight Maximum 220 lbs (100 kg)
Printing area Maximum 63 in x 96 in (1600 mm x 2439 mm)
Maximum printing speed 133 sqft/hr in CMYK High Speed mode

THIS IS VERY SLOW FOR A FLATBED PRINTER....HIGH SPEED MODE MEANS CRAPPY QUALITY AND MAY NOT WORK ON MOST MEDIAS. USUALLY MEANT TO BE VIEVED FROM BEYOND 20'.....THIS IS RIGHT OFF OF THEIR WEBSITE. Sorry for caps....I am assuming you needed to run in a quality mode which brings it under 100sq' per hour...and if using white in you cut that speed in half. Sounds like a slow printer to me.

Did you see this spec sheet before your purchased? Did you compare it to other flatbeds? At the price you paid you could have purchased an HP FB500/550 at the time....you cannot Monday morning quarterback this thing...you purchased the right printer to see your account, lick your wounds move on...maybe donate to a vocational tech school for a tax credit(if that helps)

It may not work for whatever your application is but you have to be able to use it for something...I have a treadmill that holds all of work shirts...we've hit 4 pages with tis post. You are not going to get the answer you are looking for...take the blue pill, the story will end and you will wake up from this dream....

 

[MikePatterson]

glad to see you are calling Roland out on this.
They've done it before. Anyone remember the PC-60?

I bought one when they first hit the market. After a year of dealing with them shipping me new and rebuilt units because of printhead failures (I went through 8 units in a year). I finally got a refund with the help of American Express and I let them know I would fly out and camp in their office until matters got solved. AMX stepped up and ended up handling it.

The PC 60 was a turd for sure.
I currently run Roland equipment and have been happy. We are currently looking at new printers and I'm importing a Wit-Color in. Its not a money thing. I just don't think the new models from US distributors are worth it for the quality and speeds. Depending on the quality of the printer, I'll be taking a trip to China to evaluate some larger units.

 

[greysquirrel]

good luck with service and support on your China import...I feel a groundhog day post coming for Wit-Color

 

[Brian ONeil]

Im all for constructive posts or problem solving or learning from others experiences but to be fair ... what kind of widgets were you trying to print, How many did you need to make in a day / an hour - single layer ? what kind of material double sided ? Did you have to cut & sew or was it a wrap . Did you have a backup printer in case the main went down. Was your production done previously on a different machine set or was this a first time set up that was not dialed in . What machine did you go to after the Roland - When did you actually install the Roland ? Did the Reps and Techs actually set up your production run and do a time study on the product s you wanted to make ? Can you post some pics of the finished product from the roland and from the new printer . It may be that folks here have encountered the issues and know how to get good output . It would be a good thing if you were able to use the Roland and the newer machine.

To be clear the printer is a large flat bed printer, not a roll to roll but the printer was made from the roll to roll printer therefore it has pinch roller error messages all the time. We were using to print essentially wooden coasters one side. I will not name the printer I ended up with s people will accuse me of using the post to bash Roland and try to sell another brand. All I will say is the other printer blows this out of the water and has had no issues in over a year and it was not much more than $89K.

The video of this online is impressive and another reason why I bought it but it is impossible to get the same results in person and I had many people look at it.

 

[Brian ONeil]

https://signs101.com/threads/lej-640-ft-uv-flatbed-problems-ending-my-silence.129430/
Same model printer?

Yes this is the same printer I have. Unfortunately in all my research I never cam across this post. I have reached out to this person directly as well as other people in this thread who say they had the same problem. Many were able to get replacements through their local dealer and move to a non Roland unit or as I mentioned before some worked out a deal with Roland and are contractually not obligated to post how it was resolved.

At least maybe the haters will see this is not just my own issue.

 

[MikePatterson]

Not trying to Hijack this thread.

good luck with service and support on your China import...I feel a groundhog day post coming for Wit-Color

I already service everything we own. You don't know me or my skill / knowledge in the industry. If its a lemon you would never see a "will someone help me post" from me. I'll figure it out or shitcan the printer. I'm just not impressed by whats available from the big guys in the US right now. I bet you haven't researched much on how big Wit-Color is around the globe.
I have been on my own with my equipment for many years. I'll be fine. I'm not getting into a Ford Chevy debate over printers either.
You do yours, I'll do mine.

 

[Brian ONeil]

If it's a pity party you want, ya came to the wrong place. You don't need pity, you need good hard facts, which is what I.... and a buncha others have given you, but you tend to think, you're gonna win because of a technicality. Again, good luck with that, but your paper trail is very weak for your defense.

Anytime someone writes something about not liking Roland, you cling to that. If that was the case, no companies would be in business. You hafta look real hard at the facts, take the emotions out and decide the best direction for you and your company.

Gino I don't want a pity party. I just want every one to know about the problems with this specific Roland printer. I am sure they make some great products and that is why they are a leader in the business but on this UV printer LEJ 640-FT they missed the mark.

I have plenty of emails from all parties involved about what we were doing and the expected results before and after we purchased this unit. If this moves to a lawsuit I am prepared. I am not trying to win on a technicality but rather prove that Roland sold me and everyone else substandard UV printer that they knew had issues but has swept them under the rug.

If this was a $20K piece of equipment, I would say we tried it but it was not right and move on but it is more than 4 x that price and at $89K and by all accounts from everyone that seems to own one it does not work as sold?

 

[Gino]

Brian..... I'm on your side, but when you see posts like squirrel posted and as you said yourself, the Roland people were most helpful and nice..... how do you expect to go up against hard cold facts vs.a salesperson e-mail ?? They might get reprimanded, but it's not gonna help your case, if you ignored the company's written facts and specs ??

So, you get an order for 15,000 double sided signs. Your estimator did the math on it and figure your time, ink, consumables and overhead and quotes the guy. You put it in writing. You get a deposit and signed confirmation sheet. The job is finished and when you put your numbers together with time sheets and whatnot, things don't add up. What're ya gonna do ?? Tell the customer he needs to come up with an extra $90k to pick up his project ?? Your guy missed a whole setup and the whole thing takes you a lot longer than expected and more everything. You had it in writing. Are you gonna let the guy who gave wrong numbers out make up the difference or are you gonna eat it ??

Well, perhaps, this one time you'd eat it. However, it happens again, but with another estimator. Are you gonna let people who don't know what they're doing represent your company...... or put the things in writing yourself and be sure it's all correct ??

According to your theory, the company should be eating anything that comes down the pike, because some nitwit said something wrong.

You had ample time to see it work, but not at what you really wanted to see it do. Did you take your files and use some samples for this specific job ?? You had people calculate who evidently didn't know how to add & subtract correctly and you didn't check their math. This is all I'm saying...... you have a lotta undotted 'I's and non-crossed 'T's. So again..... good luck.

 

[iPrintStuff]

Took me approx 1 minute to find this online;

“In high-speed mode a full bed takes about 20 minutes. In production mode it’s 40 minutes and in high-quality it’s just under an hour. That’s approximately 12m2, 6m2 or 4m2 per hour, which is significantly less than the alternatives.”

I’m going to assume that coasters need production or high quality. One bed in 40-60 mins is horribly slow. Surely even looking at the spec and doing a quick calculation you’d know this thing works at a snails pace. Even going high speed I’d assume you’d only get maybe 2.5 full beds an hour after setup.

How did you not notice that right away when you got the test one? Fair enough the setup time they’re right about making jobs to increase productivity but didn’t you notice something was up right away the minute you done your first sheet?

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

Took me approx 1 minute to find this online;

“In high-speed mode a full bed takes about 20 minutes. In production mode it’s 40 minutes and in high-quality it’s just under an hour. That’s approximately 12m2, 6m2 or 4m2 per hour, which is significantly less than the alternatives.”

I’m going to assume that coasters need production or high quality. One bed in 40-60 mins is horribly slow. Surely even looking at the spec and doing a quick calculation you’d know this thing works at a snails pace. Even going high speed I’d assume you’d only get maybe 2.5 full beds an hour after setup.

How did you not notice that right away when you got the test one? Fair enough the setup time they’re right about making jobs to increase productivity but didn’t you notice something was up right away the minute you done your first sheet?

I was watching you tube videos on that printer and I couldnt even tell it was advancing at all

 

[Pat Whatley]

Yes, the boat anchor the Roland tech support and Roland sales reps spent YEARS denying that anyone was having problems with the machines...meanwhile every sign website was full of complaints, there were individual websites people created to show off the problems and when Roland did finally come up with a better printer (the Sol-Jet?) they offered to let people trade in their Gerber Edge for a discount on a new Sol-Jet but wouldn't let you trade in a Roland. EVEN ROLAND DIDN'T WANT THEIR PIECES OF SHIT.

You have to remember that SALES REPS are salesmen first. Most of them will tell you whatever they have to so you'll sign the paperwork. You should have lawyered up a year ago. At this point you're as much to blame as they are.

 

[greysquirrel]

all good...I'll be the bad guy...am I the bad guy here? I'm so confused...I feel like we just went through two days of therapy and then to see that posting from 2015...argh...I cannot fault Brian fo not knowing about it or Signs 101 at that point...and maybe search engines back in 15 would not have pulled up that post to save him the aggravation.

And yes, if channeling my inner Matrix offended anyone I meant nothing by it...peace and love, peace and love!

 

[GAC05]

all good...I'll be the bad guy...am I the bad guy here? I'm so confused...I feel like we just went through two days of therapy and then to see that posting from 2015...argh...I cannot fault Brian fo not knowing about it or Signs 101 at that point...and maybe search engines back in 15 would not have pulled up that post to save him the aggravation.

And yes, if channeling my inner Matrix offended anyone I meant nothing by it...peace and love, peace and love!

Heh, I was looking on Google to see what the printer was being sold as and the first hit looped me back to the 2015 post here.

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

Whats bad is when you Google a sign question and it leads you to a post on S101 where you already asked it and got it answered before.

 

[GAC05]

I bought one when they first hit the market. After a year of dealing with them shipping me new and rebuilt units because of printhead failures (I went through 8 units in a year). I finally got a refund with the help of American Express and I let them know I would fly out and camp in their office until matters got solved. AMX stepped up and ended up handling it.

The PC 60 was a turd for sure.
I currently run Roland equipment and have been happy. We are currently looking at new printers and I'm importing a Wit-Color in. Its not a money thing. I just don't think the new models from US distributors are worth it for the quality and speeds. Depending on the quality of the printer, I'll be taking a trip to China to evaluate some larger units.

I am ashamed to admit that I also bought one (maybe we should start a support group?). It seemed amazing and I was making money. In my defense, I didn't know anything about wide format printing and did not realize it was a turd. I figured this printing stuff was just hard. After having to pay the freight back and forth to the west coast (everything except the stand) twice while it was still under warranty I started to detect a turd like odor. When it broke the 3rd time out of warranty it became a slow but reliable cutter that ran up until about 2014 or so.

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

Whats bad is when you Google a sign question and it leads you to a post on S101 where you already asked it and got it answered before.

Hah, had this happen a few times.

 

[player]

I bought an Encad with some Swiss solvent ink bulk system around 1994. The service guy never got it working and the day he left told me I needed to sign something to acknowledge it was being left. He swindled me into signing the lease. The printer never worked. I spent so much time and money. I was very young so it took me about 6 months of lease payments before I stopped paying. They eventually took me out of the lease and I only lost about 8K. Sales people are not to be believed or trusted. Same with the tech guys. Don't trust or believe they know anything. The whole industry is suspect in my opinion.

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

I wonder how much it costs them to make these big printers. $2,000 a pop maybe? Probably have more in shipping those things than making it.

 

[Gino]

The object for them is not selling the machine, but the ink and media afterwards. That's the business they're after.