How often is your flatbed or other equipment down?

[ForgeInc]

Greetings S101-

I posted a thread a while ago about a specific printer, but figured I would modify that query with a little different question.

I am trying to get an idea of how often you all have equipment go down? I guess I am most specifically interested in flatbed printers, but the same question could apply to any piece of equipment.

I ask because over the years we've had a few different models of flatbed printers with issues. The problems come in waves on different machines, but generally we have techs in here pretty regularly. I also want to stress that we run our equipment HARD, oftentimes non-stop for 2 shifts daily. That said, all our equipment is on service contracts, we go above and beyond doing all the required maintenance, cleaning, etc - and our shop is cleaned regularly and doesn't have humidity issues.

We have 2 zund diecutters that rarely go down, and they run just as hard if not harder than the printers. Are flatbed printers in generally just "finicky?" Do we just need to plan for downtimes?

I would love to hear success stories of a shop that has a flatbed printer, running it hard with multiple types of substrates through it, with little to no downtimes or need for techs to fly in for repairs.

Does such equipment exist? If so, can it be purchased for < 350k, or do you need to step up to half a million or more for such a machine?

Don't even necessarily care about brand, just curious to hear other shops history with reliability of these machines, along with a brief description of how often/how hard they have been run.

We are contemplating another flatbed purchase and just trying to gauge our needs - any input would be greatly appreciated!

 

[LarryB]

I have had my HP FB500 for 2+ years and have been down only 2 times. We normally run it 5+ hours a day. Only issue I have is ink scratches easily on aluminum composite material.

 

[Gino]

We have a Dilli, which is almost an Agfa. We run an average of about 6 or so hours a day. Rarely are we going 2 shifts a day, but it gets used pretty good for an average sign shop. Some weeks it might go to 50 or 60 hours a week, but that's not the norm.

We got ours in 2009 and have been down maybe a total of 3 maybe 4 times and we've fixed all of our own problems. Our latest problem was a leak in an air line and we fixed it for a fraction of what the tech people quoted us. In fact, changing out the head to some of the other things they quoted us on, we've saved a huge bundle doing it ourselves. We're very fortunate to have an ace with this kinda stuff in our employ.

I consider us very lucky with downtime with that machine [knock on wood] and our other printers and plotters. Good luck in your search.

 

[ExecuPrintGS]

our CET has never been "Down" where it is not operational but it has never printed up to our standards or the standards we were sold... ive spent more time working on the machine with it torn apart, on the phone with tech or fighting issues than we have spent time making money with it and we have owned it since late December last year.

 

[10sacer]

I am on my third CET flatbed printer - and I started with serial number 001 of the original FK series.
None of mine have had major downtime issues caused by internal wackiness in the printer or controller that I didn't somehow cause myself.
My current CET is a 16-head CMYK 4x8in the Q500 series with Ricoh heads and it has run flawlessly for over two years now except for one time when the cyan ink line got a rupture in the line caused by the belt continually rubbing on it over time.

Am I an anomaly? I don't know. When I was more involved in this industry I heard many horror stories from every manufacturer that made or imported or rebranded UV printers.
I know of a handful of instances where Vuteks caught on fire. I know several owners who swear they will never buy anything from HP ever again due to major downtime issues.
There are so many environmental and service/maintenance factors that go into ensuring these things run as expected when expected that its hard to quantify across the board.

I come in in the morning and purge/wipe the heads and print a nozzle pattern and then start printing 99 times out of 100. Pretty easy. There would have to be nothing worse than having a ton of production jobs to run and you have no idea if your printer is going to perform as expected on a daily basis. I think what we all want whether we spend $75K or $1.5 million on a printer is that we get what we pay for and what we were sold which is a reliable printer that makes us money. If one or the other of those two things isn't happening on a consistent basis then we have problem.

All this being said - there is no "perfect" printer just as there is no "perfect" car.

 

[Andy D]

I have run several Agfa printers and I can tell you their printers are very well made
and their tech support is well above par. Anytime I have had an issue they had a tech or a couple techs
on site the very next day. Our latest printer is an Agfa Anapurna 2500i and we have a 4 year "bumper to bumper"
warranty. The main issue I had was when we had a head crash that was our fault, there wasn't any damage the print heads but put the print plate out of
whack, they fixed it the very next day no questions asked.

 

[rjssigns]

Whenever questions regarding flatbed reliability issues are posted I read them with great interest. I will never own a flatbed yet wonder where the real issues lie.

From the outside flatbeds look pretty dog gone simple, and shouldn't have any major issues, yet you hear the horror stories.

Of course as humans we are programmed to remember bad things and forget the good.

Would love to talk to one of their engineers and find out what design hurdles they have to overcome.

Would also like to hear from someone who has one of the mega-dollar Dusrts that can run lights out.

 

[petepaz]

we have a roland LEJ about 3-4 years now (maybe 4-5 have to check, my memory filled with current work load...haha)
ours has gone down a few times but not normally major stuff. we have replace a few heads (2 white,, 1 cyan and 1 magenta) the whites where under warranty and the other two were because of head strikes. we run some materials that you have to be careful with (.005 alum and .005-.010 polycarbonate. sometimes the fan will blow the material as it goes through and it bounces up hits the head)
other then that just normal stuff like capping stations and dampers. our tech guys are pretty good so we are not usually down more then a day or two. we use are machine pretty hard as well but not usually a double shift. maybe one or two jobs have come through for that. clean it pretty regularly over all for how much we use it i wouldn't say the issues are that bad.

 

[DerbyCitySignGuy]

We're currently running a VUTEk H2000 (which is technically a hybrid) and have only had it "down" one time, when we had a part replaced for QOL issues.

On the other hand, our Rastek T1000 was down about a week or two a month. Right now it's a material shelf.

 

[ForgeInc]

Seems at first we had regular issues with our FB 700's, but honestly those seem to be running OK over the last couple years. Granted, we have 3 of them now, along with an OCE 660XT so they don't get the use they do when we first started but we still run 'em hard. Not saying they don't occasonally go down, but when they do it's usually minor then we're back up for a significant amount of time.

On the other hand we have already had our OCE replaced once, and we still have techs in here every week it seems for one issue or another. Our downtime became so frequent, that earlier this year we actually become certified by Oce to do a lot of the maintenance on the machine ourselves without affecting our service contract, so we don't have to call in a tech for issues like head alignment, etc. This of course helps us recover more quickly, but now we are paying our people labor to be an OCE service tech. Not ideal.

What I honestly want to make out is if our situation (or particular machine) is unique or if this particular model is an out and out lemon across the board? Are they simply not designed to run straight for 18 hours in a day? I have to believe we maintain and clean as much or more than similar owners out there. Heck, we even know how to service them. Doesn't matter. We can't get this thing to run solid for more than 2 weeks for the life of us. I have to believe it's not operator error, or environment. Oce was here a couple days ago and said the same thing.

So frustrated ....that Agfa Mira sure is looking attractive. Stay tuned S101, someone might be able to get a good deal on a fairly new (but finicky) Oce 660Xt soon if our issues don't get resolved ASAP, ugh.

 

[tollerdad]

Our Oce 460 was down once in 2 and a half years for a bad pump but that was resolved in a few hours and back up and running for lunch. I am very surprised that you are having such an issue, most Oce owners I know have very few issues.

I think some problems arise from under use but I don't think that is your problem. It would be nice to know what kind of problems you are having. Bad nozzles, dropout, banding etc.

 

[ForgeInc]

Our Oce 460 was down once in 2 and a half years for a bad pump but that was resolved in a few hours and back up and running for lunch. I am very surprised that you are having such an issue, most Oce owners I know have very few issues.

I think some problems arise from under use but I don't think that is your problem. It would be nice to know what kind of problems you are having. Bad nozzles, dropout, banding etc.

Most of our issues have been around the printheads failing or constantly going out of alignment, nozzle dropouts, etc. Of course, we are being told that it's mostly likely due to headstrikes, not swabbing them daily, etc - but we have logs to the contrary.

I think we are settling on the fact that the 258 ink set, while it has better adhesion on certain substrates (a necessity for us) it also seems to be problematic for the heads. I'd be curious to know if any other customers on the site use the 258 series of inks, and are having similar issues? Might be worth a separate post....

 

[ExecuPrintGS]

Just an update since this was bumped to the top.
We have had to have techs flown out twice now by CET.
CET as a company is trying hard to get the machine running right, its just not up to what we were told it would be and at this point i don't think it ever will be.

 

[ForgeInc]

Just an update since this was bumped to the top.
We have had to have techs flown out twice now by CET.
CET as a company is trying hard to get the machine running right, its just not up to what we were told it would be and at this point i don't think it ever will be.

We know the feeling, we're experiencing the exact same thing with Oce. Am beginning to think downtime is maybe just to be expected with flatbeds...

 

[ExecuPrintGS]

We know the feeling, we're experiencing the exact same thing with Oce. Am beginning to think downtime is maybe just to be expected with flatbeds...

For us its not so much downtime, it just quality. We have been having ink dropout issues since the beginning that causes terrible (at least in our opinions) banding. That just means we have to stop the machine and clean it way more often then we were lead to believe we would. We also cant run it nearly as fast as it was advertised without running into issues.

I love the machine when its running well, it really has been a time saver for production. But at the same time we spend a lot of time trouble shooting and constantly cleaning the printer/ heads.

 

[DougWestwood]

OCE flatbeds

Hi All,

Having run several OCE Arizonas, I can add some info.

The K1 inks are better. Adhesion is great. I tok a piece of printed coroplast, put in the freezer for 3 days. Took it out and folded it twice like a piece of paper. Not one single flake of ink came off, not one crack in the print.

Print heads are mysterious. I have seen them go slowly, I have seen them lock up and die overnight or between prints. I have seen a yellow head with a full inch of nozzles not firing, yet prints like a champion without any streaks. OCE once recommended their flush liquid as a head cleaner. Then they said alcohol. I have found alcohol to be better.

A couple of times, the tech has said "the ink in this head has turned to jelly. It's junk".
OK, great, but I have never heard WHY it has turned to jelly. Just "thanks for the $5K!".

Have also run the FUJI version of the OCE tables. Not much difference in repairs.
BIG difference in material profiling. The OCE required a different profile for each material. For the FUJI, I only ever used ONE PROFILE on every different material. Sounds unreal, but it's true. It was a roll-to-roll, too, so we did mesh, coro, foamcore, styrene, banner, everything with just one profile. Colors, resolution were all great.

Currently running a VUTEK GS3000. Not a bad printer, but not very clean or detailed in small text, and we have just spent a WEEK down with problems.

Good luck!
- Doug
Vancouver

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

The K1 inks are better. Adhesion is great.

Which inks are K1 in Océ speak? (256, 257, 258?)

 

[Nate1n22]

^ If I had to guess, 258. Since that has the best adhesion.

Also, I've had pretty much the exact same experience with our Acuity Advance (Arizona 360) as DougFastSigns. We went through so many heads on that machine for no reason. Heads would work fine one day and be completely dead the next. The machine had a lot of parts replaced in the 4 years we owned it, however the amount of money we were putting into it a year was still less than the service contract.

We just got the Acuity F back in June, and so far it hasn't had any issues. Luckily I'll be getting the service key, and tech training on the machine