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Here we go again.. The true test for the LX850 year 2 .

2B

2B

Active Member
out of curiosity, on a job like this what is your markup?


Not looking for the actual cost or what you are charging, merely after all costs are calculated what percent of markup per SQFT are you doing? 20% 30% 40% etc....
 
HulkSmash

HulkSmash

New Member
Merritt Graphics said:
Production running pretty smooth. About 120 rolls into it. Then Tuesday it happened we went down HARD.. No one had any idea what the problem was.
Machine keep shutting off and would not print in registered at all would not allow us to calibrate or anything.. No sweat we will continue running on our backup LX. No luck there either since it was backed up running backlits for a national Vonage rollout campaign that had no wiggle room in deadline and 20 hours to finish and make the deadline. Since we have taken our LightJet out of productin a few months ago we print all backlits on a LX.

Turns out the entire encoder assembly and servo engine decided to call it quits. We had to rebuild the encoder assembly and replace servo engine. HP specialist was here Wed AM to make sure machine was stable. All is good now...

Found out yesterday someone had a lightly used LX600 for sale at pennies on the dollar and had to sell it. No brainer there so an LX600 will be here next week.

I still have major reservations if the LX850 dedicated to this project will survive without major issues. I must say HP support and the Latex specialist were on point which was a pleasant surprise.
Click to expand...

so, that's a ton of rolls.
 
cdiesel

cdiesel

New Member
We don't run ours nearly as hard has you do Mike, but we definitely have concerns too..

It's very quirky and likes to just throw an error code for apparently no reason. Kills the job and 20 minutes to reboot, clean, load media and get back up and running. Randomly crashes the internal print server and you lose all your jobs and have to resend from the RIP.

We're also having some banding issues--100% in the cyan channel. Head changes, alignments, wiper adjustments, nothing is helping. Getting very frustrated at this point...
 
National Sign Co. - Print

National Sign Co. - Print

Merchant Member
dedicated 850 for this job has gone down hard twice in the past 2 weeks. we were down for a couple days.. after replacing line filter(3rd one) and heating and curing elements. (8th time) we were up ... 1.6 million SF on that machine.. thank god for back up lx850 and as of today we have a lx600 up and running. The stress of pushing a 1.3 million SF project is now spread across 3 machines as it should be..

640,000 SF to go.. keep you all posted

now forget print capacity it is all about the cutting... zund and fotoba are concern to keep up even running 24/7.. we have 12 printers going to two cutters...

the saga continues...
 
National Sign Co. - Print

National Sign Co. - Print

Merchant Member
machine is a POS!,!, encoder issues every 10-14 days. Rebuilt encoder 4 times now ... Down again today. same issue... rebuild in progress . no tech till Monday... I am sure my guys will get up and running as we have all parts to keep running...

thank god we have 2 back up Lx machines
 
cdiesel

cdiesel

New Member
That sucks Mike. We don't run ours nearly as hard as you do, but it's still an integral piece of equipment and we've sure had our share of issues. One banding/dropout issue is ongoing and our tech can't seem to get it fixed. It's finally escalated within HP now so hopefully it'll get some attention. We've got a full uptime kit for our 800. Don't know what we'd do without it!

I think this is a prime example of how important redundancy is. Luckily you have other printers to run the job on.

I know what you mean about the cutters too. We're actually bottlenecking at the Zund, which I absolutely didn't expect to happen for a long time.
 
WYLDGFI

WYLDGFI

Merchant Member
How good TRULY is the LX 850?? IS it really that reliable from the start or like any other printer that has its own quirks you need to deal with? Im just not convinced I guess with the latex myself. I personally dont know HP or any techs. Unlike EFI...Im on first name basis with techs and support personnel....we are able to beat most issues with the Vuteks in short order when something arises.
 
National Sign Co. - Print

National Sign Co. - Print

Merchant Member
WYLDGFI said:
How good TRULY is the LX 850?? IS it really that reliable from the start or like any other printer that has its own quirks you need to deal with? Im just not convinced I guess with the latex myself. I personally dont know HP or any techs. Unlike EFI...Im on first name basis with techs and support personnel....we are able to beat most issues with the Vuteks in short order when something arises.
Click to expand...

you cannot compare vutek vs. lx ..

our vuteks have miles and miles over latex machines..

I could go way more hammering HP but will not...

we ran this same job issue free on a qs3200r 2 years in a row.. year 2 on the lx even having 2 of the same machine has been an issue every week...

lx is great for medium volume and insane quality..

vuteks are for awesome quality 24/7 no ,matter what...

for what it is worth we are about to drop the dime on the new durst p10... no one can even compare quality speed and reliability to that . This will replace both our Jetis...
 
WYLDGFI

WYLDGFI

Merchant Member
I think our QS is awesome....runs really well. Cant get pure light smoothing out of it though due to the tracking band issue with heavy coverage on inks. Looking at newer EFI machine that came out recently....only reason why Im considering it is due to the fact I know EFI support and what they are capable of when we call on them.
 
National Sign Co. - Print

National Sign Co. - Print

Merchant Member
WYLDGFI said:
I think our QS is awesome....runs really well. Cant get pure light smoothing out of it though due to the tracking band issue with heavy coverage on inks. Looking at newer EFI machine that came out recently....only reason why Im considering it is due to the fact I know EFI support and what they are capable of when we call on them.
Click to expand...

never would we buy an HP unless a client or project dictated it...
HP has good local techs but the company is a hassle to deal with especially when you have a machine down and just want to get it up...

the wave of new technology coming only coming from vutek and durst...
 
J

jhanson

New Member
What's Vutek doing that's so unique? I haven't seen much to suggest they're really doing anything besides switching (some of) their UV machines to use LED lamps.
 
J

jhanson

New Member
No, no real issues with Vutek... besides EFI's price gouging on parts and service since the takeover, that is. And some annoyance with the lack of any real troubleshooting information in the "service documentation". Compared to manufacturers of smaller machines like Mutoh, their service docs are a joke.

We have a QS3200 and comparing it to the newer GS3250 series printers, I just don't see a huge difference other than incremental improvements. If they have some major technological breakthroughs that are going to be announced at DRUPA, I'm interested in learning what they are.
 
M

miker

New Member
The GS vs QS debate is a JOKE. Major improvement in print quality.

Additionally, they are introducing a completely new machine that is supposed to "revolutionary" at Drupa.
 
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