Need Help Mimaki TS55 - 1800 sublimation printer, anyone?

[sublimationguy]

Hello dear printing community.
Our company is in the move to get an new sublimation printer.
Due to the COVID-19 situation, we have recieved some great offers, and one printer
catched my eyes:
Mimaki TS55-1800 .
It's a demo printer with 10l ink bulk system, and mini jumbo roll unit.
On paper the printer looks great. And when I tested the printer on 70 sqm/h printspeed the print looked good, thanks to the Mimaki MAPS bandingless printing technology.
But when I asked the salesperson to specify the printheads, he told me the TS55 has four printheads, but coupled 2+2 printheads.
Meaning, you can't replace just one printhead, you got to change both connected printheads.
And thats a 4000+ Euro price. If both doubleprintheads have to be replaced, it's an 8500€ + service cost.
That's almost as industrial Kyocera printheads - 4500-5000€/head.
I have no problem with that if the new Mimaki printhead, which they claim is an industrial printhead (the price is industrial, but doubt it is mimakis own printhead) will work like the Kyocera printhead. But if the Mimaki printheads don't work as they should, and if they can't take the lifecycle of ca. 500litres of ink, like the Kyocera, then I somehow don't trust it. I have a feeling theese TS55 prinheads are similar to Epson DX5,6,7 printhead, I'm not familiar with anyone other than Epson, with 8-channel/prinhead configurations.
Personaly, I dont like printheads with more than 2 channels/per head. Big problems with my last Mimaky (JV5) 10years ago, reason why I gave up on Mimaki printers.
And these TS55 coupled prinheads have 16 channels/colors, and if only one of the 16 channels has a failure, you got to pay more than 4200€ for a new coupled printhead.

So, my question:
Has anyoune in the comunity already bought the Mimaki TS55?
Any experience? I plan to run the machine not slower than 70sqm/hour.
Any printheads change already?
Anyone knows the printhead producer, as I said, I dont think it's a Mimaki printhead (they don't produce printheads, right?)

So, you see my dilemma: Good price, but is it worth, regarding the high maintance costs hidden somewhere in the near future?

Thank you in advance.
Regards.

 

[gelink]

Hello dear printing community.
Our company is in the move to get an new sublimation printer.
Due to the COVID-19 situation, we have recieved some great offers, and one printer
catched my eyes:
Mimaki TS55-1800 .
It's a demo printer with 10l ink bulk system, and mini jumbo roll unit.
On paper the printer looks great. And when I tested the printer on 70 sqm/h printspeed the print looked good, thanks to the Mimaki MAPS bandingless printing technology.
But when I asked the salesperson to specify the printheads, he told me the TS55 has four printheads, but coupled 2+2 printheads.
Meaning, you can't replace just one printhead, you got to change both connected printheads.
And thats a 4000+ Euro price. If both doubleprintheads have to be replaced, it's an 8500€ + service cost.
That's almost as industrial Kyocera printheads - 4500-5000€/head.
I have no problem with that if the new Mimaki printhead, which they claim is an industrial printhead (the price is industrial, but doubt it is mimakis own printhead) will work like the Kyocera printhead. But if the Mimaki printheads don't work as they should, and if they can't take the lifecycle of ca. 500litres of ink, like the Kyocera, then I somehow don't trust it. I have a feeling theese TS55 prinheads are similar to Epson DX5,6,7 printhead, I'm not familiar with anyone other than Epson, with 8-channel/prinhead configurations.
Personaly, I dont like printheads with more than 2 channels/per head. Big problems with my last Mimaky (JV5) 10years ago, reason why I gave up on Mimaki printers.
And these TS55 coupled prinheads have 16 channels/colors, and if only one of the 16 channels has a failure, you got to pay more than 4200€ for a new coupled printhead.

So, my question:
Has anyoune in the comunity already bought the Mimaki TS55?
Any experience? I plan to run the machine not slower than 70sqm/hour.
Any printheads change already?
Anyone knows the printhead producer, as I said, I dont think it's a Mimaki printhead (they don't produce printheads, right?)

So, you see my dilemma: Good price, but is it worth, regarding the high maintance costs hidden somewhere in the near future?

Thank you in advance.
Regards.

yes is brother printhead like for desktop !!! so no industrial for sur

 

[sublimationguy]

yes is brother printhead like for desktop !!! so no industrial for sur

Hey gelink.
Do you know from what brother model the printhead is?
We bought the TS55 about 2 months ago, and have run it for more than 13.000m2, and it runns very good so far. The problems are the Mimaki genuine inks, as always.

 

[CJ-NYC]

yes is brother printhead like for desktop !!! so no industrial for sur

It's been fine for me, the Mimaki TS-55, but during COVID its been printing less, and I've been bumping up against ink expiration where I never did before.
Just getting ink that isn't due to expire within a month or two is hard. My suppliers have NOT been able to get new ink. Otherwise, a good printer.
Does anyone know of a way to reset these ink chips or bypass?

 

[sublimationguy]

It's been fine for me, the Mimaki TS-55, but during COVID its been printing less, and I've been bumping up against ink expiration where I never did before.
Just getting ink that isn't due to expire within a month or two is hard. My suppliers have NOT been able to get new ink. Otherwise, a good printer.
Does anyone know of a way to reset these ink chips or bypass?

Hello,
regarding the chips for the TS55 inks, we have the same problem.
While I do have a full unused 10kg set of dual CMYK SB610 ink, the black ink made us big problems, so I switched the black ink for some third-party high quality black ink, and it works now lika a charm.
But I can use that ink only as long I have the original chips. So I'm in the same situation. Trying to find a way to "reset" the chips, or to buy new chips, but so far haven't found any on the market.

If the expiration date for the ink is what makes you problems, you can "revind" the time in the mainboard, (setting dates and time in service menu I think).
Just set it a few months back. Worked for us.

Regards.

 

[CJ-NYC]

Hello,
regarding the chips for the TS55 inks, we have the same problem.
While I do have a full unused 10kg set of dual CMYK SB610 ink, the black ink made us big problems, so I switched the black ink for some third-party high quality black ink, and it works now lika a charm.
But I can use that ink only as long I have the original chips. So I'm in the same situation. Trying to find a way to "reset" the chips, or to buy new chips, but so far haven't found any on the market.

If the expiration date for the ink is what makes you problems, you can "revind" the time in the mainboard, (setting dates and time in service menu I think).
Just set it a few months back. Worked for us.

Regards.

Thank you for the response. Yes, the black ink was an issue for us at the start as well, but it was NOT really the ink. Some of the sponges around the head cleaning station needed to be trimmed down -- the would apparently absorb a bit too much ink and potentially scuff along the bottom of the print heads (!!!) and also there was a change to the rubber wiper. The original machine comes with blue-colored wipers and I given new black-colored wipers by Mimaki techs, who actually recommended that I throw the original wipers away. That solved the black ink issue for me.

 

[Pine]

Hello,
regarding the chips for the TS55 inks, we have the same problem.
While I do have a full unused 10kg set of dual CMYK SB610 ink, the black ink made us big problems, so I switched the black ink for some third-party high quality black ink, and it works now lika a charm.
But I can use that ink only as long I have the original chips. So I'm in the same situation. Trying to find a way to "reset" the chips, or to buy new chips, but so far haven't found any on the market.

If the expiration date for the ink is what makes you problems, you can "revind" the time in the mainboard, (setting dates and time in service menu I think).
Just set it a few months back. Worked for us.

Regards.

Hi,
Can you share what third-party high quality black ink you are using.
Where you able to solve the ink chip situation?

Regards.

 

[DonCorleone]

Hello,
regarding the chips for the TS55 inks, we have the same problem.
While I do have a full unused 10kg set of dual CMYK SB610 ink, the black ink made us big problems, so I switched the black ink for some third-party high quality black ink, and it works now lika a charm.
But I can use that ink only as long I have the original chips. So I'm in the same situation. Trying to find a way to "reset" the chips, or to buy new chips, but so far haven't found any on the market.

If the expiration date for the ink is what makes you problems, you can "revind" the time in the mainboard, (setting dates and time in service menu I think).
Just set it a few months back. Worked for us.

Regards.

Hello, there is a company that now sells chips for this ink.

I tested their 2L and 10kg SB610 chips and they work just the same as original mimaki Chips.

I found them on eBay by searching ‘Mimaki Sb610 Chip’