• I want to thank all the members that have upgraded your accounts. I truly appreciate your support of the site monetarily. Supporting the site keeps this site up and running as a lot of work daily goes on behind the scenes. Click to Support Signs101 ...

HP Design Jet L25500 Opinions?

M

MarioDesign

New Member
I just switched from my vp540 Roland and I am loving the prints. We just did our first wrap and the material felt crisp and solid for install right off the machine. Unlike the Roland where even after gassing off for 24 hours the vinyl still seems a little soft and flimsy. The room the printer is in is warmer because of the heat so I would recommend having a designated space for the printer. I miss the simplicity of versaworks and for the price of onyx you would think they would have thought of everything but maybe we just need to get used to it. We did have to play with the profiles as we found the heat settings were way too hot for some of the canned profiles but now that we have those down it's printing great.
 
J

joeshaul

New Member
Anyone have a graphtec+onyx+L25500 package? That's what I got sold on, and aside from some issues with the media feeding, or accidentally choosing the wrong type of material in Onyx and ending up with a bunch of uncured prints I really like the quickness I can usually pull something off the printer, and laminate it.

Anyway, I seem to be having an issue with the graphtec cutting way out of alignment, such as going outside of the print by over half an inch, I'm used to adding like a 1/16" bleed to my print/cut vinyl and having it cut damn neared spot on, so half an inch is getting ridiculous. These aren't some 1000 ft long runs, talking like a 54"x60" piece of vinyl with about 10 rectangles. It's gotten to the point where I don't trust the cutter to cut anything that's print/cut, and resort to using my SP300 or hand trimming. Only research I turned up pointed at onyx printing 25 millimeter registration marks, when the graphtec can only read 20 millimeter marks, but I'm not retarded enough to pay $800 or however much it is to inconvenience them and tell them their product is flawed. My supplier never got back to me on the issue.
 
smdgrfx

smdgrfx

New Member
I have a Graphtec 8000-160 and use Onyx 10 with Corel x4 to cut everything. Not really any problems here.
 
V

V-P

New Member
I am starting to like this HP version of latex.

I have some previous dye ink plotters from HP and to be honest I was somehow disappointed with them (speed, color issues).

One thing I don't understand.
I saw online that a cartridge of 770ml is priced at approx 150-160 USD.
So doing a quick math : 1 ml of latex ink costs 160/770 = 0.2 USD.

If we print a poster 36" x 42", it will take approx. 10-20 ml
(Note: these are numbers deducted by me for pigment printing, maybe latex uses less ink)
So the ink cost alone would be: 2-4 USD for that poster. Right ?

Is my logic correct ?

Meanwhile I see different web sites quoting a liter of eco solvent ink for 30-70 USD.

Now how is that comparable ?
 
Christian @ 2CT Media

Christian @ 2CT Media

Active Member
For HP Ink we pay $135 for 775ml cart equal to $0.1742 per ml vs OEM Mutoh Ink at $69 for 220ml that is equal to $0.3136 per ml.

Also, I've polled Onyx X10 for print averages and we are averaging 1.25ml per sq ft @ 600 di 10 pass bidi.
 
C

Case

New Member
joeshaul said:
Anyone have a graphtec+onyx+L25500 package? That's what I got sold on, and aside from some issues with the media feeding, or accidentally choosing the wrong type of material in Onyx and ending up with a bunch of uncured prints I really like the quickness I can usually pull something off the printer, and laminate it.

Anyway, I seem to be having an issue with the graphtec cutting way out of alignment, such as going outside of the print by over half an inch, I'm used to adding like a 1/16" bleed to my print/cut vinyl and having it cut damn neared spot on, so half an inch is getting ridiculous. These aren't some 1000 ft long runs, talking like a 54"x60" piece of vinyl with about 10 rectangles. It's gotten to the point where I don't trust the cutter to cut anything that's print/cut, and resort to using my SP300 or hand trimming. Only research I turned up pointed at onyx printing 25 millimeter registration marks, when the graphtec can only read 20 millimeter marks, but I'm not retarded enough to pay $800 or however much it is to inconvenience them and tell them their product is flawed. My supplier never got back to me on the issue.
Click to expand...

The cutting master plugin included with the Graphtec to do print to cut out of Illustrator or Corel--------------- a million times more accurate and reliable than using Onyx Cut Server.............Onyx is a great rip, but cutting reliability out of it is not great....

I would use cutting master to set up my jobs out of Illustrator/Corel, Rip and Print in Onyx, and go back and cut out of Cutting Master... I believe you will be pleased...

You can watch vids on Graphtec's website to use Cutting Master if you don't understand or know how to...


Case
 
MachServTech

MachServTech

New Member
CheapVehicleWrap said:
Factor in electricity consumption and it's about even no?
Click to expand...

No, the electricity bill here did not have any significant impact on the price per square foot. The amount of ink I was saving in cleaning and wasted material for nozzle checks in solvent makes the biggest difference.
 
D

divimaging

New Member
jc1cell said:
This and the smell of the material with so much heat makes me wonder if it really is a much better system. I think the inks would be an improvement, but the heat seems to be too much.

Just an opinion based on what I've read here. Never really seen one in action in person.

jc
Click to expand...
I've noticed a distinct smell when I've had the printer running full steam for 8 hours... and it is in fact the "media". I don't notice it unless I leave the shop then come back an hour later then it hits me as soon as I walk in the door. First time it scared the hell out of me because I thought something was wrong... The heat is a killer though. It totally wipes out any air conditioning I attempt. I put a giant fan in the room to move the heat along but because the edge of the air flow (it wasn't aimed directly at the HP) must have been hitting the front of the printer it affected the curing temp of the media and the ink never dried so it rubbed off in my hand. Moved the fan and everything was fine again. I think high ceilings is the only way to solve the heat issue with this thing!

I'm going to attempt to build a vented "hood" similar to one in a restaurant to suck up the hot air. Mine is in an office with me and room temp got up to 95 degrees one night... LOVE the printer though. Probably paid for itself 10 times now in a year...
 
Last edited:
S

signswi

New Member
An externally vented hood just to move heat out of the shop is a great idea, put a one way flange on it too like you would for a range hood. Interesting that you now notice the media smell I swear some medias offgas as many VOCs as our solvent machine does at full lilt. Translucent is the worst offender.
 
ProColorGraphics

ProColorGraphics

New Member
signswi said:
An externally vented hood just to move heat out of the shop is a great idea, put a one way flange on it too like you would for a range hood. Interesting that you now notice the media smell I swear some medias offgas as many VOCs as our solvent machine does at full lilt. Translucent is the worst offender.
Click to expand...

What translucent material are you using? I have some 3M stuff I am picking up Monday morning for a rush job, so I am hoping that it works good as I don't have any time for screw ups.

Any preferred settings?
 
S

signswi

New Member
We have yet to perfectly nail down translucent on the HP. There's an Oracal 3850SG profile that is decent, 3M doesn't provide one for their translucent yet which is a problem as several clients require it. So far we're just using the Oracal profile with the 3M trans when required as we haven't had time to create a unique profile for it. There may be an HP trans media but we haven't tested any of the HP medias yet.
 
HulkSmash

HulkSmash

New Member
signswi said:
An externally vented hood just to move heat out of the shop is a great idea, put a one way flange on it too like you would for a range hood. Interesting that you now notice the media smell I swear some medias offgas as many VOCs as our solvent machine does at full lilt. Translucent is the worst offender.
Click to expand...

Is it me, or when it's outgasing it kinda smells like pizza?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top