We were invited by our sales rep Jim Peterson from Advantage Sign Supply to come down to Atlanta to visit the HP Demo facility. Got to Atlanta Tuesday night for an early Wednesday morning demo. I must say that they have really put a lot of time and money into this facility and it really showed. The facility itself is over 300,000 square feet and cost over $4 million not including any equipment.
They offered us breakfast, but passed since we had just eaten and wanted to start the demo. The first part was an over all tour of all the lines of equipment (Indigo, Webpress, Designjet, Scitex). Really a neat to see everything they offer, even though we are only interested in the Scitex part. The Indigo line seemed like a great break through in techonolgy for off-set printers. Not sure what the price points were, but they were impressive machines.
The second part was a presentation to give you a run down of all the products HP offers (computers, servers, printers, ink, etc.) and little bit of history. They explained what portion of the market they had a hold of and how fast their business is growing (mainly analog presses to digital). They asked questions to get a feel for what demands we had and that they hoped to fill.
The third part was getting a hands on demo with HP FB500 and FB700. We were allowed approximately 3 hours to play and print whatever files we wanted. Our solutions architect was Craig Schultz and man oh man does this guy know his stuff. He was great to work with and pretty amazing to watch. We printed every file we had in about every mode the machines offered on several different substrates.
The FB 500 and 700 were outstanding machines. These things were incredibly easy to use and could crank out some great production for a small to medium sized shop (like us). The over all build of the machine was very solid. It seemed that HP had thought of just about everything the other flatbeds did not have and offered it on these machines. The way the boards are loaded and printed keeps production flowing. There is no down time in between boards to unload and load. Once one starts, you are already feeding another board right behind it. Reminded me a lot of how a screen press works.
The resolution on the machines was great, but I have seen better. Don't let this fool you, because we did not print one thing that was not sellable/acceptable. We are traditional screen printers and we ran a lot of stuff on the express mode for the speed. The quality was very acceptable for any kind of yard sign. We ran the highest quality mode + white and thought it was acceptable. The only problem with running white, you have to convert the machine from a 6 to a 4 color. The qualtiy loss was noticeable in the fleshtones.
Over all, the FB500 and 700 are two of the best machines I have seen for under 150k. They are both the exact same machine, except the 700 is 98" wide and prints in "billboard" mode (the fastest setting). Though I have seen better quality on other machines, these machines make up for that in the speed. The speeds they advertise are true and accurate speeds.
After demoing both of these, we hope to make a purchase on one in the near future. I really think we could shift a lot of our short runs to a flatbed and open doors for new opportunities. If you are in the flatbed market, do not over look these machines.
They offered us breakfast, but passed since we had just eaten and wanted to start the demo. The first part was an over all tour of all the lines of equipment (Indigo, Webpress, Designjet, Scitex). Really a neat to see everything they offer, even though we are only interested in the Scitex part. The Indigo line seemed like a great break through in techonolgy for off-set printers. Not sure what the price points were, but they were impressive machines.
The second part was a presentation to give you a run down of all the products HP offers (computers, servers, printers, ink, etc.) and little bit of history. They explained what portion of the market they had a hold of and how fast their business is growing (mainly analog presses to digital). They asked questions to get a feel for what demands we had and that they hoped to fill.
The third part was getting a hands on demo with HP FB500 and FB700. We were allowed approximately 3 hours to play and print whatever files we wanted. Our solutions architect was Craig Schultz and man oh man does this guy know his stuff. He was great to work with and pretty amazing to watch. We printed every file we had in about every mode the machines offered on several different substrates.
The FB 500 and 700 were outstanding machines. These things were incredibly easy to use and could crank out some great production for a small to medium sized shop (like us). The over all build of the machine was very solid. It seemed that HP had thought of just about everything the other flatbeds did not have and offered it on these machines. The way the boards are loaded and printed keeps production flowing. There is no down time in between boards to unload and load. Once one starts, you are already feeding another board right behind it. Reminded me a lot of how a screen press works.
The resolution on the machines was great, but I have seen better. Don't let this fool you, because we did not print one thing that was not sellable/acceptable. We are traditional screen printers and we ran a lot of stuff on the express mode for the speed. The quality was very acceptable for any kind of yard sign. We ran the highest quality mode + white and thought it was acceptable. The only problem with running white, you have to convert the machine from a 6 to a 4 color. The qualtiy loss was noticeable in the fleshtones.
Over all, the FB500 and 700 are two of the best machines I have seen for under 150k. They are both the exact same machine, except the 700 is 98" wide and prints in "billboard" mode (the fastest setting). Though I have seen better quality on other machines, these machines make up for that in the speed. The speeds they advertise are true and accurate speeds.
After demoing both of these, we hope to make a purchase on one in the near future. I really think we could shift a lot of our short runs to a flatbed and open doors for new opportunities. If you are in the flatbed market, do not over look these machines.
