metallic printing

[danno]

Need some serious advice. Roland and Mimaki both offer ink sets with metallic ink. What are the positive and negatives of the metallic? I'm sure speed will be greatly reduced, cleanings more frequent and extra ink usage, for circulation and resisting clogged nozzles, are just a few items. Just wondering if there was anything specific to watch for.

 

[Solventinkjet]

I don't usually recommend metallic ink unless you have a product that sells constantly and in large quantities.

Pros:

-It's a cool effect that may sell a few more decals

-Sets you apart from the local competition by adding a new product

Cons:

-Maintenance is a huge problem even with circulation systems

-Print head life is lowered

-Print speeds are cut by about half even when not using the metallic

-Metallic ink costs about double the cost of regular ink and gets wasted in the cleaning cycles just like the rest of the colors. This means that if you don't use the metallic, you could have $200 - $250 of ink wasted within 6 months to a year.

-Every customer I have ever sold a silver capable printer to has sold it back to me or had me flush it and refill with CMYK.

 

[usdsoccer]

Check out the Epson S80600. Has Silver ink but you can freely swap between white, silver, or a cleaning cartridge in the 10th channel. Gives you the ability to print without having silver ink installed until you have a job that requires it.

 

[Solventinkjet]

Check out the Epson S80600. Has Silver ink but you can freely swap between white, silver, or a cleaning cartridge in the 10th channel. Gives you the ability to print without having silver ink installed until you have a job that requires it.

Haven't heard of this yet. If it works, that's a nice feature.

 

[lgroth]

We didn't get the metallic option on our new Roland for all the reasons stated above... If you're not using it every day and making money off it, all you've spent ends up in the waste bottle. We went with the white ink, even that wastes a lot "circulating", but I do use that option almost daily. If you want to offer something different for decals & stuff you can always experiment printing over metallic and reflective materials (some you'll have luck with/ some not), or use something like Mactac's 6398 metallic lams. There are plenty of ways to be creative without breaking the bank... Do lots of experimenting and thinking outside the box, it's made us money

 

[scott pagan]

... you can always experiment printing over metallic and reflective materials (some you'll have luck with/ some not), or use something like Mactac's 6398 metallic lams.

^^This

 

[jfiscus]

We have it in our Epson S70670 printers, but it is disabled in one printer (cleaning cart instead) and even through it is active in the other printer we still never use it. We DO use the white ink option frequently though.

 

[petepaz]

we have the roland xr-640. great machine over all. metallic leave a little to be desired. it is slow as hell as already stated. i probably use the metallic once a month and haven't had any issues (yet?) when you print silver it's great but when you print colored metallic you print the silver and then the color over the top so it's not the greatest (kind of like a tinting process)
gets the job done for the amount of metallic we print. we do use the printer everyday just not the metallic so no extra cleanings. i clean it around every 7-10 days. don't know anything about the mimaki.

 

[danno]

Thanks for the feedback so far. I didn't know about the Epson machine. Will look into that. We have informed our customer the he would need to keep the machine running and the jobs we have previously ran for him would slow down from 2-3 hours to 12-13 hours. He is wanting something I can't hit with metallized laminates and light silver metallic films.

 

[Case]

The Epson S80600 is awesome... Also has a red ink cart as one of it's 9 standard colors for beautiful reds... Take up reel is great now.......... The ability to swap between white and metallic is great and have cleaning cart in there when not using...

Much improved in every aspect over the first SureColor series...

Case