HP 800W - what do you think about it?

[ikarasu]

My point is the edge holder issue has been valid since their introduction and OP is coming from a 365. We leave ours on on our 360, and have had one major crash that I would imagine would turn most people off from using them. We've decided their usefulness exceeds the risk, but that's just us. If you tell me that the edge holder system has been redesigned and is more problematic now, then that's something I was not aware of.

It was re-designed...and its garbage now. At first we loved them because theyre longer, so they hold down thicker materials better without them lifting and rubbing before it gets into the heater - IE: Traffic vinyls. Then... as pointed out, the flaw of them being flimsy showed up. Now it'll lift them up since theyre so wobbly... and here comes to carriage going so fast, bends them and they destroy not one, but multiple heads.

Don't get me wrong - we've had that happen once or twice on our 360 / 560... but usually it doesnt destroy anything, and if it gets bent... its easy to fix. We've used the edge guards with the 360/560 for probably 6-7 years and replaced the edge guards once... and that was from loading media while they were in the way.

We've gone through 4 sets of edge guards in the year we've owned the 800W. Theyre like a $400 part too (Canadian, not sure about American). Our printers under warranty so our dealer submits a warranty request and HP sends them for free - This last time they requested 3 sets for us, and surprisingly HP sent us 3 sets. BUT they were backordered for months... So that shows its not just a small issue, seems to happen enough that theyre having supply issues.

But thats not the worst part. They bend and twist and get jammed under the carriage... they wedge their way in too, so you cant move the carriage at all without using a lot of force... Everytime we've lost at least 1, sometimes up to 3 heads in the crash. we NEVER use the guards unless we have to... and thats only when we're printing on traffic materials... otherwise theyre banished from the machine.


Love the new printers from HP, but they feel so rushed and have so many glitches - Our dealer told us we would hate it compared to our 560... And our operators despise using it, I dont mind it... but I like new things. And if I'm honest... the amount of replacement parts we put into it for heads and edge guards...if I were the one footing the bill, I'd hate it.


By no means is it a bad printer though. We dont regret the purchase... Finally HP / 3M certified something thats not the 360. I would pick the 800 over the 360 anyday... But the 560 seemed more reliable and well built for us. White ink is awesome, but slow. Its nice being able to take the heads out and only use it when you need to - Weve used it a dozen times, maybe 700 ML of ink... operator just told me when he tried to put the heads back in, a week after taking them out, the printer is saying theyre damaged and unusable.... I have a gut feeling he did something he shouldnt have to them... Like take them out when they were still hot... But for the amount we use white ink... buying 2 new heads pretty much killed any profit we've made on those jobs. So again... while the white ink system in theory is awesome, I still wouldnt buy one unless you print white ink every other day

 

[ikarasu]

No it about the all the checks it has to go through, finding edges, finding the front edge, checking skew blah blah blah, the Roland you just line up, drop the clamp and away you go, if you didn't put it in straight that's your problem. The HP has made it into a plug and play machine so that people with no knowledge of print can use it like a home printer.

It takes about a minute to load and do all its checks - Pre heating is about 2-3 minutes. It does checks and does a cleaning while its pre heating... So theres been a few occasions where that has hit the 5 minute mark from hitting start print, to before it starts to print. Then theres a 3-4 minute end of print where it still has to heat the end of the print... then a 1-2 minute cooldown. The heating element is what takes forever vs a solvent, IMO - The checking skew and everything isnt bad, takes under 1 minute to do. running small jobs on the latex you waste 2-4 FT of material (front and back) as well as you still need 10 minutes of heat up / down time. Where as in our solvent... printing the 1 sign will be done before the latex is even heated up. The latest epsons check skew as well, most newer printers do - it adds seconds to under a minute to the load time.

The checks arent bad, and the print speed isnt bad, if you're printing 10+ FT at a time it doesnt add much time overall.

 

[Pauly]

Sorry, disagree

Anyway, You need to look away from the new tech & features of new machines.. they're all like that one way or another.

Anyway...is what i would suggest when looking at new machines.

Forums are great for opinions etc but the best thing you can do is go and book a demo.
Bring your own stock, your own sample print files.
Get them to run it, get them to print a whole roll for you. see it in action.

Make sure to have a 1m x 1m full coverage file, this way you can get them to print it and get the ink usage per sqm for full coverage.

good luck!

 

[studebaker]

I too have a 700W that I MUST babysit constantly. I can NEVER just print and cut a single file, it MUST be wound on the take up reel with the associated loss of unprinted material. I am actively looking for a dealer that will take this 8-month-old unit in as trade on an HP 365. I was so enamored by the white in option that it caused me to not do my due diligence research. I just had to have the white ink..... I have never sold a job using it since I bought it. I just print sample window decals in white to keep it active. It is great for jobs that require you to print full rolls at a time, but otherwise stick to the older versions of latex ink printers.

 

[balstestrat]

I too have a 700W that I MUST babysit constantly. I can NEVER just print and cut a single file, it MUST be wound on the take up reel with the associated loss of unprinted material. I am actively looking for a dealer that will take this 8-month-old unit in as trade on an HP 365. I was so enamored by the white in option that it caused me to not do my due diligence research. I just had to have the white ink..... I have never sold a job using it since I bought it. I just print sample window decals in white to keep it active. It is great for jobs that require you to print full rolls at a time, but otherwise stick to the older versions of latex ink printers.

What material do you print most? I'm just curious how people have so much problems with having to always use the take-up to start the print.
Like I can start a generic no name brand vinyl from the pinches every time succesfully if I want to. I'm not saying everything works, nope, but some do and usually if it works once it works every time.

This is not really for you but maybe someone else who doesn't know and wonders here. Basically you have three good starting points after loading.
1. Start from the pinches (do not move the material after loading, not even 1mm).
2. Move the leading edge outside of the heater.
3. Attach to take-up before starting to print.

But most important is to not try and start with 2" leader or something small like that. It's bound to fail by the design.

 

[RabidOne]

What material do you print most? I'm just curious how people have so much problems with having to always use the take-up to start the print.
Like I can start a generic no name brand vinyl from the pinches every time succesfully if I want to. I'm not saying everything works, nope, but some do and usually if it works once it works every time.

This is not really for you but maybe someone else who doesn't know and wonders here. Basically you have three good starting points after loading.
1. Start from the pinches (do not move the material after loading, not even 1mm).
2. Move the leading edge outside of the heater.
3. Attach to take-up before starting to print.

But most important is to not try and start with 2" leader or something small like that. It's bound to fail by the design.

The problem is that anything other than 3. leaves the possibility of the material buckling entering the heater.
It doesn't happen all the time, but often enough that you do not want to take the chance of wasting material, cleaning up the ink and reprinting the job.
It has happened with 3M IJ 40, Avery 1105 EZRS, Oracal 3651 & 3105 and worst of all Oracal 5400 reflective.
It doesn't matter if you leave the material at the machine start or move it into the edge of the heater, same result.

 

[Ezek0]

What material do you print most? I'm just curious how people have so much problems with having to always use the take-up to start the print.
Like I can start a generic no name brand vinyl from the pinches every time succesfully if I want to. I'm not saying everything works, nope, but some do and usually if it works once it works every time.

This is not really for you but maybe someone else who doesn't know and wonders here. Basically you have three good starting points after loading.
1. Start from the pinches (do not move the material after loading, not even 1mm).
2. Move the leading edge outside of the heater.
3. Attach to take-up before starting to print.

But most important is to not try and start with 2" leader or something small like that. It's bound to fail by the design.

I've had costumer's printers that no matter what still got carriage crashes. One particular costumer (700W) uses ATP bubble free vinyl that is literally IMPOSSIBLE to print with. Even with take up reel attached, the material touches the curing module and sticks to it (resulting in you know what).

We eventually tried to do a curing module calibration (the fan heater calibration) and it actually worked on most machines (700-800). You just need to print the calibration and then change the values on screen, pretty simple (after saving changes screen gets bugged tho so you have to reboot).
I would say 8 out of 10 printer stopped getting carriage crashes after this. I cant guarantee everyone this is the ever solution, but you should defenitly try it.

If anyone is interested I can give instructions to do this.