We recently purchased a new latex 365 from BigFish here on Signs101. I've waited a few years due to some horror stories about the latex and I understood that it was new tech that could take time to build a great printer.
My friend Justin has a signshop and he uses all HP equipment for this production runs. He has shown me the 360 latex prints from his printers and I was really impressed with the print quality. That helped me make the move from Roland to HP Latex for our smaller roll to roll media.
I spoke with BigFish about purchasing a new printer from him. He had great knowledge on the printer series from HP and talked about the pro's and con's of the latex. He was very honest from the start and followed through with everything he said he would do. We will be buying more units from him in the near future. We are either going to run multiple 365's or look to the 1500 series.
I waited to make a post about the print quality and how it was to run the printer being new to latex until I had some real time on it. We printed about 1200+ linear feet of banner media on the latex the first week it was online.
I was worried about running full rolls on the printer until I saw it in action. So, the first 3 rolls we only printed 9' long banners in groups of 5 to 8. By the 4th of roll we were printing them from roll to roll all at once. The only time I had a head strike was when we first started and I did not have the media fed out enough on the front trying to print a single test banner. Once we connected the take-up reel it was a very smooth process for printing long production runs. It took about 2.5 hours to print a roll on 6-pass using 13oz banner media. I was very impressed that the 6-pass looked so good for the colors on the text.
Pro's:
- Excellent print quality. Looks more like screen printing when we print on phototex at 10 passes.
- Ready to laminate directly after printing.
- Easy to use the profile new media functions within the user interface. (I still wish I knew more about heat & pass settings.)
- Very good scratch resistance on banner media.
- Excellent take up reel system for roll to roll printing.
- User interface has some good options to review settings for comparable media.
- It's pretty quite and has a cool LED light to help see the prints better.
- The head firing pattern is virtually non-existent. I am very impressed with the smoothness of the print fire pattern.
- Inexpensive parts compared to our Roland.
- No odor on the prints. Our UV and Eco-Solvent both have an odor.
Con's:
- The take up reel is a bit tricky for me to setup quickly. I can set it up from the front or back, but it takes me a couple extra minutes from the start of the screen process to attaching it to the core.
- Not designed for speed when doing one print at time. It takes time to warm up and dry. We don't print many of them that way, when possible. But I wanted to point it out to those that may be doing a lot of them and looking at latex.
- The load system is different and it works. I just think they could improve the process. I had to reseat a couple rolls a few times that wasted about 2 to 5 min each time. That was when we were printing them 5 at a time.
- I don't think the machine will last as long as our XC-540 did. But it's great that you can replace a head (Low Cost) and get back to great looking prints quickly. It's better built than I expected, but does not seem as sturdy as our Roland's from the past. They are priced about half of what a new Roland cost... so who cares if it last 10 years. I prefer to upgrade for faster and better looking prints. I waited on the XC-540 upgrade as the XR was a failure based on many threads here. I love our XC-540 and it's still being used, but it will not go up for sale.
We are very happy to have made the move to latex. The printer is worth every penny and the first order basically paid for it. The price point on the HP printers makes me smile as I like to upgrade and they seem to be more like Apple in terms of new models being released very quickly.
We have profiled 3M cast media, GF cal media, PhotoTex (AMAZING LOOKING PRINTS), Gans banner, Ultraflex banner, poster, and window perf. It wasted about 10 feet of the media to profile it so that is where I wish I had more info for heat and passes.
Is it possible for us to share that kind of info on here? If so, we could create a master thread to help see the heat and pass settings on the profile process to help better gauge the starting point during the profile process.
I was not impressed with the marring on pop-up style banner media. We will continue to use our flatbed printer for that media. Maybe I had the wrong settings. It was not greasy and it did not flake/scratch away ink. It just showed the path of the scratch from the slightest of touches. I can print on our Vutek and rake my nails across it and not see anything. I wasted a roll trying to get to a point that it would not show the marring effect, but no luck.
Great machine and BIGFISH is a man of his word. He has my business now for purchasing latex printers. If you are on the fence about latex vs solvent or eco-solvent, take the leap of faith that latex is not a horror story waiting to happen. I had several large deadlines on big orders and was a newbie to latex. I lost no sleep and walked away from the printer knowing it was going to provide great results for my clients.
Latex like any printer is not the solution for every project. But it's a solid choice if you are printing wall wraps, vehicle wraps, posters, decals, and other forms of vinyl. I have not tested any fabric prints yet as I don't like to read temporary for the life expectancy of the print. Anyone care to give feed back on soft signage fabrics with their latex that would be great. For now I will stick with ordering in our dye sub prints.
I hope this helps someone who is wanting to know more about latex. If so, contact BIGFISH on here and he will take care of you!
Thanks!
My friend Justin has a signshop and he uses all HP equipment for this production runs. He has shown me the 360 latex prints from his printers and I was really impressed with the print quality. That helped me make the move from Roland to HP Latex for our smaller roll to roll media.
I spoke with BigFish about purchasing a new printer from him. He had great knowledge on the printer series from HP and talked about the pro's and con's of the latex. He was very honest from the start and followed through with everything he said he would do. We will be buying more units from him in the near future. We are either going to run multiple 365's or look to the 1500 series.
I waited to make a post about the print quality and how it was to run the printer being new to latex until I had some real time on it. We printed about 1200+ linear feet of banner media on the latex the first week it was online.
I was worried about running full rolls on the printer until I saw it in action. So, the first 3 rolls we only printed 9' long banners in groups of 5 to 8. By the 4th of roll we were printing them from roll to roll all at once. The only time I had a head strike was when we first started and I did not have the media fed out enough on the front trying to print a single test banner. Once we connected the take-up reel it was a very smooth process for printing long production runs. It took about 2.5 hours to print a roll on 6-pass using 13oz banner media. I was very impressed that the 6-pass looked so good for the colors on the text.
Pro's:
- Excellent print quality. Looks more like screen printing when we print on phototex at 10 passes.
- Ready to laminate directly after printing.
- Easy to use the profile new media functions within the user interface. (I still wish I knew more about heat & pass settings.)
- Very good scratch resistance on banner media.
- Excellent take up reel system for roll to roll printing.
- User interface has some good options to review settings for comparable media.
- It's pretty quite and has a cool LED light to help see the prints better.
- The head firing pattern is virtually non-existent. I am very impressed with the smoothness of the print fire pattern.
- Inexpensive parts compared to our Roland.
- No odor on the prints. Our UV and Eco-Solvent both have an odor.
Con's:
- The take up reel is a bit tricky for me to setup quickly. I can set it up from the front or back, but it takes me a couple extra minutes from the start of the screen process to attaching it to the core.
- Not designed for speed when doing one print at time. It takes time to warm up and dry. We don't print many of them that way, when possible. But I wanted to point it out to those that may be doing a lot of them and looking at latex.
- The load system is different and it works. I just think they could improve the process. I had to reseat a couple rolls a few times that wasted about 2 to 5 min each time. That was when we were printing them 5 at a time.
- I don't think the machine will last as long as our XC-540 did. But it's great that you can replace a head (Low Cost) and get back to great looking prints quickly. It's better built than I expected, but does not seem as sturdy as our Roland's from the past. They are priced about half of what a new Roland cost... so who cares if it last 10 years. I prefer to upgrade for faster and better looking prints. I waited on the XC-540 upgrade as the XR was a failure based on many threads here. I love our XC-540 and it's still being used, but it will not go up for sale.
We are very happy to have made the move to latex. The printer is worth every penny and the first order basically paid for it. The price point on the HP printers makes me smile as I like to upgrade and they seem to be more like Apple in terms of new models being released very quickly.
We have profiled 3M cast media, GF cal media, PhotoTex (AMAZING LOOKING PRINTS), Gans banner, Ultraflex banner, poster, and window perf. It wasted about 10 feet of the media to profile it so that is where I wish I had more info for heat and passes.
Is it possible for us to share that kind of info on here? If so, we could create a master thread to help see the heat and pass settings on the profile process to help better gauge the starting point during the profile process.
I was not impressed with the marring on pop-up style banner media. We will continue to use our flatbed printer for that media. Maybe I had the wrong settings. It was not greasy and it did not flake/scratch away ink. It just showed the path of the scratch from the slightest of touches. I can print on our Vutek and rake my nails across it and not see anything. I wasted a roll trying to get to a point that it would not show the marring effect, but no luck.
Great machine and BIGFISH is a man of his word. He has my business now for purchasing latex printers. If you are on the fence about latex vs solvent or eco-solvent, take the leap of faith that latex is not a horror story waiting to happen. I had several large deadlines on big orders and was a newbie to latex. I lost no sleep and walked away from the printer knowing it was going to provide great results for my clients.
Latex like any printer is not the solution for every project. But it's a solid choice if you are printing wall wraps, vehicle wraps, posters, decals, and other forms of vinyl. I have not tested any fabric prints yet as I don't like to read temporary for the life expectancy of the print. Anyone care to give feed back on soft signage fabrics with their latex that would be great. For now I will stick with ordering in our dye sub prints.
I hope this helps someone who is wanting to know more about latex. If so, contact BIGFISH on here and he will take care of you!
Thanks!
