HP L26500 or Mutoh 1624

[ProColorGraphics]

Just got the new Roland RE-640 and I love it. Decided against the HP because of price and customer service, and the printer itself. If you don't have a custom made room for the HP good luck printing, everything has to be perfect. Roland support is top notch, I think the best in the industry.

Mine is out in my open workroom, no special ventilation or setup and the environment has never caused any troubles.

 

[tomence]

It's funny how all of you HP owners say this printer is the best and you never had problems with it, but on the other hand at some point after your purchase have complained about something, from errors, to material curling, to material shrinkage, burning, RIP problems, ink drying, new printheads not working properly, and thanks to BigFish if he wasn't MM here you would still be looking for compatible materials for this printer.

 

[jasonx]

It's funny how all of you HP owners say this printer is the best and you never had problems with it, but on the other hand at some point after your purchase have complained about something, from errors, to material curling, to material shrinkage, burning, RIP problems, ink drying, new printheads not working properly, and thanks to BigFish if he wasn't MM here you would still be looking for compatible materials for this printer.

I've gone from three Rolands to three Latex Machines.
Had a SP540V, XJ640 and still have an XC540W.
I now have 2 x L25500's and a L26500.

I've had no more issues with my HP's then I did with my Rolands.

If your a small sign shop and print here and there yes the Roland is better. Less warm up time, easier to load can have print and cut. The Roland also uses less power.

But if you're doing anything with volume the HP wins hands down. Faster speed, less ink consumption, can use prints straight off the printer, cheaper then the Roland even factoring in heads, cleaning cartridges and even the over priced waste container.

I say less ink consumption based on our real world usage.

Here locally the reason why we even looked at HP was because the service we got with Roland wasn't what we expected. Being down a week for a tech to come out is unacceptable in our situation when its under warranty. With HP as mentioned earlier next business day support.

The new pro 4 are still eco-solvent. Single head configuration. Faster, better quality then the pro 3 series.

 

[401Graphics]

I have used a roland sp300v, roland xc-540, and a mutoh 1204. and my favorite is the 1204. I have had this printer for about 3 years and there isn't a single bad nozzle. The only thing i dont like about it is that its a pain to clean around the print head by hand, hardly any room.

 

[FrankW]

It's funny how all of you HP owners say this printer is the best and you never had problems with it, but on the other hand at some point after your purchase have complained about something, from errors, to material curling, to material shrinkage, burning, RIP problems, ink drying, new printheads not working properly, and thanks to BigFish if he wasn't MM here you would still be looking for compatible materials for this printer.

There are a lot of compatible media on the market. And if people like their HP's, specially the ones who have used other technology before, thats enough of an answer.

Not only the HP Latex-Forums on Signs101 are full of people who have problems with their printers. I'm a supporter for large format printers since 15 years, have a lot of experience with Water- and Solvent-Printers, work with latex for 9 months now and I can tell you that all machines have their advantages and disadvantages.

By the way: I don't think the Pro IV will be a latex-printer. The introduction spot with the little boy walking through a corn field let me imagine something completely different. Does anybody knows Mutoh's Mubio-ink? Perhaps something of this kind.

 

[Tonio0920]

The pros of latex is you have a wider range of materials you print on,leather canvas,backlit,uncoated paper,the cons are you have to spend more on power consumption,more time on setting up the like warming up and time of changing of media.
With eco solvent like mutoh,you are limited only to solvent coated materials,but the preperation time is much less,the power consumption is less and as i know mutoh now uses new version of epson printhead with a bigger drop size that can print on higher speed,brochure speed they say its 300 sq.ft per hour,i test it by my self the real speed with good print quality is around 180 to 220 sq.ft depends on the mode and wave effect.