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Mimaki Latex printer

Rooster

Rooster

New Member
It's interesting that Mimaki is claiming a 4pl dot size for these new heads and Ricoh shows nothing with that capability in their current offerings. If the heads are really going to be Ricoh, then they must be a brand new type for them. Especially since someone above is claiming it's a dual head machine and Ricoh has no heads that can print more than two colors at a time. With a CMYKLcLmWW config each head will need to have at least four channels.

Any word on head replacement cost, ink cost, end user serviceable?
 
artbot

artbot

New Member
found this in a spec sheet:

http://www.g-p-t.co.uk/solvent-prin...ki-jv400-130lx-and-jv400-160lx-detail_189.asp

Head---On-demand Piezo head (Array of 2 heads in-line)

here's what's going to happen over the next year or two. this ink will be reverse engineered by third party ink companies. there will be latex conversion kits for jv3 and jv33, and just about all epson based heads.

so yes it would be easier to just get the new model. but if you wait a bit, you can run latex in your current printer just like running eco-solve in what was once water based printers. the leap is far shorter from solvent to third party or mimaki latex than water based to solvent. 140F is quite low for drying/curing the ink. seems all the ink really needs is increased air flow on the substrate.
 
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Rooster

Rooster

New Member
I'm not so sure this thing is going to be all that fast. They're saying that the 18 sm/hr is with CMYK so I can only assume these 8 color units would be running dual CMYK to achieve that speed. At half that speed it's not exactly a big speed bump considering the jump to multiple heads. Drop it down a little more for a decent quality setting and you're about even with what they have now.

The JV34-260 can do up to almost 30 sm/hr with the dual epson heads.

If this thing is using an existing ricoh head it's probably these (http://www.rpsa.ricoh.com/gen4.html), but it only lists them a two color head. So either it's a new head from ricoh, more than two heads for the latex machine, or it's not using ricoh heads.
 
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signswi

New Member
Exciting stuff, can't wait to watch the industry rapidly shift over the next year or two. Glad HP kicked everyone in the butt and forced another revolution. 4 picoliter drop size is great though I don't exactly have any issues with the 12 on our HP. I do wish we'd get red/green/blue/orange whatever inks in latex formulations though. Crossing my fingers the latex white is actually useful and doesn't have settle problems.
 
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genericname

New Member
"double cartridge automatic switching function"

Coooooool.

Mind you, I don't see both lines pointing directly to the same head, as that would be one hell of a waste. I do see that creating issues with yet more tiny toss-em-away parts, as they'll need gates to change flow from one cart to the next, but still... cooooool.

Edit:

The Japanese site also states that it's using a newly developed head, so it's still possible that they're going with Ricoh.
 
SightLine

SightLine

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The double cartride deal is what they have been using for a few years now on the JV33 and a couple of other machines. Only works that way if you are running dual CMYK though. If you run LcLm and/or white or silver then you cannot use the autoswitching. The machine have 8 cartridge slots and a valving system. When setup for dual CMYK there is an H bridge connecting 2 cartridge slots ink lines together. When one cartrdige hits empty it closes it's valve and opens the valve for the second. Very very nice feature for long unattended print runs.
 
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genericname

New Member
SightLine said:
The double cartride deal is what they have been using for a few years now on the JV33 and a couple of other machines. Only works that way if you are running dual CMYK though. If you run LcLm and/or white or silver then you cannot use the autoswitching. The machine have 8 cartridge slots and a valving system. When setup for dual CMYK there is an H bridge connecting 2 cartridge slots ink lines together. When one cartrdige hits empty it closes it's valve and opens the valve for the second. Very very nice feature for long unattended print runs.
Click to expand...

Cool. Running two JV3's and a JV4, I had no idea. I wonder though, has anyone seen the bridge and/or valves cause maintenance issues? Thinking it over, I can't imagine it would be any worse than the issues provided by my setup. Print at a certain resolution, and it doesn't even bother using ink from the second cartridge. Might as well just pour your ink into the ground, it runs out so bloody fast.
 
SightLine

SightLine

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No problems in the valving system on out JV33 in the couple of years we have had it. Cannot say i've heard of anyone havign issues with it.

Also - translated into engrish

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&tl=en&u=http://www.mimaki.co.jp/jv400/

and

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&tl=en&u=http://www.mimaki.co.jp/jv400/

Based on the current exchange rate it looks to be about $45,000 - that aint gonna fly at all here in the US when you can get latex HP for a quarter the cost.


genericname said:
Cool. Running two JV3's and a JV4, I had no idea. I wonder though, has anyone seen the bridge and/or valves cause maintenance issues? Thinking it over, I can't imagine it would be any worse than the issues provided by my setup. Print at a certain resolution, and it doesn't even bother using ink from the second cartridge. Might as well just pour your ink into the ground, it runs out so bloody fast.
Click to expand...
 
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signswi

New Member
It'll fly for people who want white or are mid to high roll to roll volume, Mimaki builds extremely solid equipment. That said, would you buy one of these vs two L26500s? I'm not sure.
 
Robert M

Robert M

New Member
Print Cut

Looks like the printer / cutter set up will be released after the Print only unit. I don't have an exact price but it wil be more expensive then the HP. What kind of saleable speeds do the current HP latex printers run at?
This product will be the first of a list of new offerings from Mimaki
 
jasonx

jasonx

New Member
White ink would be interesting. Be good if they configured it to be 4 channel white with 4 channel CMYK for faster white printing. Roland Solvent printing white ink is painfully slow and UV cured white ink just doesn't have the quality for high quality work within the same price range or near.
 
HulkSmash

HulkSmash

New Member
Robert M said:
Looks like the printer / cutter set up will be released after the Print only unit. I don't have an exact price but it wil be more expensive then the HP. What kind of saleable speeds do the current HP latex printers run at?
This product will be the first of a list of new offerings from Mimaki
Click to expand...


In all reality... it would be foolish for Mimaki to not compete with the hp in pricing... They're 2nd coming to this.. and no one knows how well it will bear in the market in start up...

i do believe that mimaki makes a more stable machine.. when it comes to structure..but they still need to prove themselves.

It's like Mutoh, how do they name a machine a value jet, and charge more for it then printers that outclass it all day... so confusing.
 
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moggle

New Member
Mimaki won't be charging anywhere near double the price of a HP latex.

More like very comparable or a slight premium due to 2 more process channels and white.
Will be interesting to see how the quality vs speed goes. Look forward to getting my hands on it
 
Robert M

Robert M

New Member
30k

I was told it will be around 30K from my sales guy. So what is the current street price of a 60" latex HP
 
Baz

Baz

New Member
Just spoke with a Proveer rep yesterday. They have a promo with the new HP and a Graphtec plotter for 29k cnd.

I guess in the US, the printer alone would prob go for around 22k or so.
 
artbot

artbot

New Member
i can't believe the printer has lm and lc. a complete waste two channels. the only thing that lm and lc does is sell more ink. red and blue channels would immediately cause a drastic drop in ink sales.
 
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