HP 9000 is dying. Do we replace with HP latex or Epson EcoSolvent?

[houston_newbie]

OK, so the HP 9000 we use as a workhorse is on its last legs and the bosses are going to replace it by the end of the year. The question we have is 'what with?'. The big issue is we do a lot of outdoor signage, laminated, but it'll all be stuck out in full Houston, TX sun and weather and pollution, so just what technology should we be looking at - latex or eco-solvent? (Or something else I don't know about and my bosses haven't thought of?) The idea of the Epson's metallic inks is really appealing, but HP's more-or-less instant dry latex is also a really cool idea as well. They (and I) just don't have enough of an idea about sun and scratch resistance, even with laminate to make an opinion one way or the other.

Is there a consensus amongst the forums about which way is better? Any things to watch for and weigh, or unforseen pitfalls for us to try and avoid? Any and all advice the community can provide would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[CropMarks]

I checked out the following printers (printed the same test print on all 4) before I bought my new machine. An HP latex L26500.... an Epson S30670...... A Roland VersaCamm VS540.... and a Mimaki JV33 (dual CMYK configuration)

I ended up buying the Mimaki JV33. - insanely fast. Dual CMYK SS21 full solvent ink (dries WAAAAAAYYYYY faster than the ecosol max I used with my old roland SJ540 and I think it has no more smell than the ecosol) Cost: I think they are around 16K new? (mine was "used" 3 hours total on it, I think I got it for something like $15k). Awesome color out of it... DEEP reds, great blues. Quality of small print is the best I've ever had. You can get them in different ink configurations, but the more I looked into it, the standard dual cmyk made the most sense. Fantastic and simple take-up reel design.

 

[chrisphilipps]

I would also check out the Mutoh ValueJet 1324 or 1624. Mutoh has a very nice trade in value on the printers right now, I believe $4k off of the 54" and $5k off of the 1624. The printers have the latest Epson print heads and are much faster than the HP latex, both printers have a max speed of over 500 sfph. The units also come with a two year warranty and have proven to be very reliable. You can also get the optional SpectroVue which will allow you to create custom profiles. Both ValueJet models also allow you to use Mutoh's 1 Liter ink bags that reduce the cost of ink. Finally the Mutoh comes with a rip software included and I believe this is additional on the HP. You can see more information about the trade in here:

http://www.signs101.com/forums/show...in-Promotion-is-back-thru-September-30th-2013

 

[xxtoni]

What kinds of speeds are you looking to get out of it ?

What's your main market ?

What do you print on your current one/what do you want to print ?

We are currently running 3 printers. One is a VS-640 and is our high quality printer. On it we do the fine stuff like smaller car wraps, interior prints, POS and things like that. The print quality is honestly the best I've seen on pretty much any printer, the new Epson's are nice as well by the way. Soon after buying this fella we realized that our market is more of a more volume/cheaper, less quality thing. Just one more note about the VS-640 and thereby eco-solvent. A lot of people bring up this issue of drying time as the main advantage of latex. We do a fair amount of car wraps, laminated of course and most of them go to the laminator the instant they get out of the printer and we never had any trouble with that, no bubbles or anything.

For production printers you're probably looking at something running either mild or full solvent. Outdoor life will depend on conditions like rain, extreme heat/cold, sunlight exposure but with solvent you can probably get away with 2 years outdoors before it starts fading, at least that has been my experience.

I don't have experience with latex so from my end you're only getting one side but the choices are pretty much made for you. If you're looking to do high production printing most of the non-latex machines will be solvent, either mild or full. For fine print you will usually be looking at eco-solvent but you may encounter solvent as well depending on what kind of head the printer uses.

If you have any questions. please feel free.

 

[rjssigns]

I've said it before and it bears repeating. Buy the printer from the dealer that is closest to your shop and has reliable techs. You may get a smokin' deal from a place in another state. But when things go bad, and they will, you're down until someone can come and repair it.

I'm stuck with Roland here in the north woods. Service is 40 minutes away and they're sharp. If I bought a Mimaki service would be many hours if not days later. Same with HP.


Very happy with the Roland though. I still like to watch it print "money" everyday.

 

[Pixels 'N' Print]

Have a good Look at the HP latex

We bought into the HP latex technology when it first came out so we have the HP L25500 60" I love the printer, granted seeing as it was a first gen product there was a learning curve and the odd hiccup. But those are all sorted out we run it off an ONYX RIP here's what I would look at.

Pros:
1 if you can feed it (media) you can print on it
2 Fully cured out of the printer no off gassing time
3 100% environmentally friendly printing
4 Min 5 year fade free ink
5 0 odor from inks (no venting required)
6 Prints with translucent ink
7 Runs quietly (relatively)

Cons:
1 Can produce a "smile effect" (adjustable)
2 Not a really high production system
3 Does not offer white ink
4 Initial investment can exceed 26K
5 Canceling a print can take up to 10 min
6 Inks are "scratch resistant" not scratch proof

This list is by no means the defacto list of Pros and Cons. Given the fact that we laminate almost everything that comes out of the printer that is going to see the elements we eliminate any concern about abrasion or scratching. Printing on paper with no lamination or post coating we produce a 100% recyclable product. The smile effect I refer to is caused from the amount of heat required to prep and cure the media and ink there are adjustment settings in the main control panel to account for this no biggie just make a list of media and the settings. In regards to the "production speeds" I tend to run most jobs at 10 pass so my speed is not the printers highest setting but my clients really like our solid colors and smooth gradients.

I myself like the HP L25500 I feel they are a good like of printers and offer some of the best cutting edge features out there. It is geared to a shop that does not need to be weighted down with fancy gimmicks that are generally a hard sell anyways. Would I like to print metallic... yes would I like a white option... you bet ya, would it be sweet to put and plot on one machine sure. But all those feature add time to the production that means that the printer is tied up.

We have a Graphtec cutter for our plotting and a seal base 62 for lamination this allows us to simply print on the printer. My bottom line is really simple if you can justify the HP option that would be my choice, in fact I would buy the largest model your accountant will allow. the 110" model will run dual rolls and that can be a great production boost.

just my thoughts

Regards

 

[xxtoni]

I've said it before and it bears repeating. Buy the printer from the dealer that is closest to your shop and has reliable techs. You may get a smokin' deal from a place in another state. But when things go bad, and they will, you're down until someone can come and repair it.

I'm stuck with Roland here in the north woods. Service is 40 minutes away and they're sharp. If I bought a Mimaki service would be many hours if not days later. Same with HP.


Very happy with the Roland though. I still like to watch it print "money" everyday.

That's a very good point. In our case it was not relevant though as our dealer was an idiot and we have to service out printers ourselves cause they don't dare do much more than take the covers off and we know more about the printer than they do.

We bought into the HP latex technology when it first came out so we have the HP L25500 60" I love the printer, granted seeing as it was a first gen product there was a learning curve and the odd hiccup. But those are all sorted out we run it off an ONYX RIP here's what I would look at.

Pros:
1 if you can feed it (media) you can print on it
2 Fully cured out of the printer no off gassing time
3 100% environmentally friendly printing
4 Min 5 year fade free ink
5 0 odor from inks (no venting required)
6 Prints with translucent ink
7 Runs quietly (relatively)

Cons:
1 Can produce a "smile effect" (adjustable)
2 Not a really high production system
3 Does not offer white ink
4 Initial investment can exceed 26K
5 Canceling a print can take up to 10 min
6 Inks are "scratch resistant" not scratch proof

This list is by no means the defacto list of Pros and Cons. Given the fact that we laminate almost everything that comes out of the printer that is going to see the elements we eliminate any concern about abrasion or scratching. Printing on paper with no lamination or post coating we produce a 100% recyclable product. The smile effect I refer to is caused from the amount of heat required to prep and cure the media and ink there are adjustment settings in the main control panel to account for this no biggie just make a list of media and the settings. In regards to the "production speeds" I tend to run most jobs at 10 pass so my speed is not the printers highest setting but my clients really like our solid colors and smooth gradients.

I myself like the HP L25500 I feel they are a good like of printers and offer some of the best cutting edge features out there. It is geared to a shop that does not need to be weighted down with fancy gimmicks that are generally a hard sell anyways. Would I like to print metallic... yes would I like a white option... you bet ya, would it be sweet to put and plot on one machine sure. But all those feature add time to the production that means that the printer is tied up.

We have a Graphtec cutter for our plotting and a seal base 62 for lamination this allows us to simply print on the printer. My bottom line is really simple if you can justify the HP option that would be my choice, in fact I would buy the largest model your accountant will allow. the 110" model will run dual rolls and that can be a great production boost.

just my thoughts

Regards

Some of those points are really interesting. What does ink cost ?

The 5 years of outdoor life are very impressive.

I may be wrong about this but AFAIK latex is mainly done by HP. If the points above are true, and I have no reason to believe they're not the latex is probably a fine machine but I also happen to know that the 3m scitex printers, which have unparalleled print speed by the way, cost like...$200k and that's huge compared to the solvent printers at that size, except for VUTEK, but they're nutso too

 

[Pixels 'N' Print]

Some of those points are really interesting. What does ink cost ?

The 5 years of outdoor life are very impressive.

I may be wrong about this but AFAIK latex is mainly done by HP. If the points above are true, and I have no reason to believe they're not the latex is probably a fine machine but I also happen to know that the 3m scitex printers, which have unparalleled print speed by the way, cost like...$200k and that's huge compared to the solvent printers at that size, except for VUTEK, but they're nutso too

Myself i find the ink costs rather low a 700Mil cartridge runs us about $170.00 CDN if memory serves me right and printing full coverage on a perf job for a pickup truck was less than $5.00 CDN and that was with a solid black background.

 

[signworldusinc]

+1 to Mutoh Printers. The 1624 is a great work horse printer with fast print speeds for quality prints.

Regards,
-Signworld Team

 

[rjssigns]

That's a very good point. In our case it was not relevant though as our dealer was an idiot and we have to service out printers ourselves cause they don't dare do much more than take the covers off and we know more about the printer than they do.

Be a cold day in He!! before I would EVER attempt repair while under warranty. Perfect way for HP to void the warranty. Although I understand what you're saying as I do my own mechanical printer maintenance. But that's been after the warranty expired.

 

[PrintItBig]

1 if you can feed it (media) you can print on it

I don't think that's 100% true.

6 Inks are "scratch resistant" not scratch proof

That's definitely true though. Of all the printers we tested the L26500 prints were the most easy to scratch.

There are other draw backs as well.

 

[xxtoni]

Be a cold day in He!! before I would EVER attempt repair while under warranty. Perfect way for HP to void the warranty. Although I understand what you're saying as I do my own mechanical printer maintenance. But that's been after the warranty expired.

The problem for us was that we just couldn't wait that long for them to repair it, they didn't even try that hard. They were just a bunch of idiots really. I mean a technician came and he told us that it might be the servo motor and that he will see if it's possible to get a replacement. Basically what was going on, they wanted to exhaust every single possibility before they would try anything that involved them spending any money. At the same time we were late on work so we had to act fast (it was our only printer at the time).

We finally just said **** them and did out ourselves. We don't talk to the dealership anymore and found ourselves a very competent third party technician who actually knows what he's doing.

 

[milchad]

Check out the Seiko ColorPainter M-64s. There is a video on YouTube that goes into more detail on its features. We are in the market for a fast digital printer and its at the top of our list. Speaking of Seiko, does anybody know why they don't have their own discussion board on the main forum page? There are quite a few users out there that own Seiko printers, but no good forums to exchange information.

 

[Donny7833]

+1 for Seiko.

I don't think you can find a longer lasting outdoor ink, a pretty big deal in your location. You've been dealing with the HP9000, so your already use to the the inks, pretty much the same pigment load and chemistry. A W64 is faster than your 9000, in the $20K range and simple to operate. Nothing against Mimaki, Mutoh, Roland, Epson, HP Latex, none of those inks will outlast the Seiko inks.

 

[danno]

Latex or EcoSolvent

We currently have 2 HP9000's, yes one is fading away, and a HP L26500. While the L26500 is a good machine, we have had issues with the colour quality on the machine. Most common is matching the same colour to a print that has been previously printed. While our 9000's were rather good at this, we still haven't been able to duplicate the same performance on the latex. We are currently looking towards Seiko for when one of our 9000's decides to retire. We have investigated various EcoSolvent machines, inks, but keep heading back to the solvent based machines.

 

[rturner381]

Points and questions to ponder

ok, so the hp 9000 we use as a workhorse is on its last legs and the bosses are going to replace it by the end of the year. The question we have is 'what with?'. The big issue is we do a lot of outdoor signage, laminated, but it'll all be stuck out in full houston, tx sun and weather and pollution, so just what technology should we be looking at - latex or eco-solvent? (or something else i don't know about and my bosses haven't thought of?)

two questions: -is your core business soft signage (banners etc.) -or- rigid substrates (coroplast etc)?

-are you happy with the ink performance of your hp 9000?

the idea of the epson's metallic inks is really appealing,

i believe you will find the outdoor durability of the metallic inks to be questionable, if not short term.

but hp's more-or-less instant dry latex is also a really cool idea as well. They (and i) just don't have enough of an idea about sun and scratch resistance, even with laminate to make an opinion one way or the other.

if time is on your side, have hp (or other mfgrs) print one of your every day files with their latex printer and their flatbed printers and hang 'em in full south sun for the next 90-120 days.

is there a consensus amongst the forums about which way is better? Any things to watch for and weigh, or unforseen pitfalls for us to try and avoid? Any and all advice the community can provide would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

good luck!

 

[xxtoni]

We currently have 2 HP9000's, yes one is fading away, and a HP L26500. While the L26500 is a good machine, we have had issues with the colour quality on the machine. Most common is matching the same colour to a print that has been previously printed. While our 9000's were rather good at this, we still haven't been able to duplicate the same performance on the latex. We are currently looking towards Seiko for when one of our 9000's decides to retire. We have investigated various EcoSolvent machines, inks, but keep heading back to the solvent based machines.

We have a VS-640 and considered getting a high production eco solvent printer. The problem with eco solvent, especially the cheaper kind, is that it simply doesn't have the outdoor durability. Of course this depends on your needs but for us we need to be able to have prints for at least 2 years outside before they become white. With eco solvent cheap enough for high production use you're looking at less than a year before it starts fading and by the end of the year it will be close to white. If that happened our clients would be really pissed. So you (the OP) certainly have to consider what your exact needs are. We are also looking to get another printer and I have done a years worth of research about it, so if you have any questions hit me up on PM and we can have a chat if you want, but as said I only have experience with eco-sovlent, mild-solvent and hard-solvent printers.

good luck!

Regarding the metallics, those always have to be laminated. No matter how much they dry you can smear them with your finger. Lamination is a must!

 

[Mosh]

Roland VS-640 by far....Laytex Shmaytex!!!!

 

[xxtoni]

Roland VS-640 by far....Laytex Shaytex!!!!

Amen Brotha!

Something else to consider if you're not hell bound on the Metallics is the RE. It's fairly cheap and it can be pushed to some 20-30 sqm/h if you really need those kinds of speeds.

It really comes down to what you really want.

If you want a general purpose machine something like the VS-640 or the RE is probably the best choice. The VS was our first printer and I think that it was the best possible choice. While it doesn't do as much work as our other printers it is there to impress. We mostly print small car wraps on it (we do full car wraps) and none of our competitors are even in the same ballpark with us as far as quality goes so our clients are usually blown away by this.

The VS isn't a choice for you however if you are looking to print wall scapes, billboards or other huge stuff like that. Just today I had a salesman from a Roland dealership over and he was trying to sell me the "Monster", Roland's new printer that does some 100 sqm/h. While the speed is impressive there are two very big elemental problems with it:

1) Ink is crazy expensive (for our market at least)

2) Unlaminated Outdoor Durability

We used the original Roland inks on our VS for like 4 months. While doing so we were basically operating at a loss. The situation is probably a lot better in the U.S. as far as this goes but here everyone is printing for such ridiculous prices, terrible quality, Chinese media that what we were doing with the Roland and the original inks was suicide. We got OEM inks but the Roland still wasn't viable for high production stuff. For us the Roland is a printer to get clients and to impress. Canvas, car wraps for small vehicles, POS stuff...things like that.

2) After about 6 months we got ourselves a printer running on solvent. Ink is dirt cheap, quality is not too shabby for the kinds of applications it's used for. Car wraps for big vehicles, billboards, banners, one way vision and pretty much anything else that's meant for the harsh conditions outside like extreme summer heat and winter cold. The ink easily lasts 2 years outside and it's very cheap.

Right now we're looking into a 3.2m machine so we don't have to depend on anyone else and can pretty much do any job out there. It's gonna be a killer, 60-100 sqm/h (1000ish square feet/h).


What I'm trying to say is it really depends on what market you're servicing and what your (and your clients) needs are. Elaborate on that and we will be able to give you much better recommendations.


Heh looks like our buddy houston_newbie might have left us...last activity half a month ago.

 

[P8106jr]

Seiko Colorpainter Line

Houston Newbe! Seiko has three printer lines now that have replaced the what was the HP9000/ Colorpainter 64. The W-54/64, H2-74/104 and new M-64 series printer. All have the lowest operating cost, fastest real print speeds and longest lasting inks in their respective classes. With the addition of the New M series Seiko now has the highest quality, lowest operating cost, longest lasting inks, fastest printer in its class with a no smell ink! I sent you a private message. I live in the Houston area and would like to talk to you about what Seiko can offer to replace the your HP. How do you choose, it is all about Return on investment! Jamie Powers.