Mimaki UCJV-300 Reviews

[White Haus]

I have a manual that shows it but I'm not allowed to give it out. They generally go overboard and want you to even change the pumps every year which in my experience usually last many years. I would say the most important things are going to be the cap tops every 1 to 2 years, wiper once every 6 months to 1 year, and flush the waste pump/tubes once a year or so.

Fair enough, thanks. Cap absorbers would be on that list too I guess? Those get pretty messy and we get prompted every couple of months to change them. I also bought a bunch of the black filters/sponges for different areas of the printer but don't really change those that often.

 

[Kemik]

When I was looking at them, I was told if you want white and clear, you can only do CMYK. You have to have 2 channels dedicated each to white and clear

Yes, you can only have CMYK with White and Clear.

 

[Kemik]

I am about to purchase one and I would like to have c,m,y,k,lc,lm, w, clear but the tech is finding out if this is possible.

It looks like you might have to drop the lm and lc to have both white and clear. I am quite new to this and previously have had 12 colour on a canon 8400ipf. Does any one have an opinion on loosing these two and if it will adversly affect image quality?
WE print a wide variety of exhibition (event) graphics and the white/ gloss effects look great.

Not possible to have lclm with white and clear.

 

[Kemik]

To answer a few of the questions I saw.

You can't have Lc and Lm with White and Clear, they both take up 2 ink channels.

Lamination is possible without a lot of silvering if you have a heat assist laminator, I find adding a bit of down pressure when laminating helps a lot, I have not tried laminating anything that has 3D texture from multiple over prints, I image this would be more difficult.

You have to print at 600x1200 minimum with clear, but if you are just printing white and CMYK you can get away with 600x600, although 600x1200 will produce a more solid white.

Day to day print on Mimaki vs. Roland? With my Roland VS640, when not laminating I can print/cut with almost zero waste. With Mimaki, it requires crop marks with every print for proper alignment so you lose about 2 inches between each print, which can be annoying on expensive material. However the cut accuracy is so much better than the Roland. Reading eyemarks on reflective material can be tricky, especially on Glitter reflective.

Do not stock up on ink, if it expires you will not be able to use it, unless you know the insiders work around! ;-)

Because the UV ink sits on top of the media, Die cutting can sometimes be tricky. if the amount of ink and clear is not consistent on every edge of the cut, you may cut too deep in spot or not deep enough in others. The cut setup does not account for this as you normally set the depth and pressure on unprinted material.

The dealer will tell you to use 100/100 Clear UV when printing, but if all you want is a glossy finish all you need is around 44/44. This will also allow you to charge more for Raised Gloss.

 

[Zendavor Signs]

The UCJV300 is a great specialty printer. As White Haus said, it is not a good machine to replace a solvent or Latex printer for typical adhesive vinyl prints, etc. We own one and use it mostly for 4c/white/4c exterior backlit prints. It does this very well. It is worth it for this purpose alone for us. We also use it for printing onto wallpaper (the pasted type), thin lexan and some other oddball materials. UV curable ink is pretty versatile, and seems to be more durable, without laminate, than solvent or Latex.

We have had ours for 3 years with no issues requiring service. The white ink, for us, seems to rarely clog and if so, is easy to fix. It has worked well for us even though it doesn't get used every day. Mimaki's lack of support for Onyx is my biggest gripe with this machine.

 

[TrustMoore_TN]

Fair enough, thanks. Cap absorbers would be on that list too I guess? Those get pretty messy and we get prompted every couple of months to change them. I also bought a bunch of the black filters/sponges for different areas of the printer but don't really change those that often.

Your dealer will be able to give you this document. They should have gone through all of the maintenance tasks during your training.

 

[White Haus]

Your dealer will be able to give you this document. They should have gone through all of the maintenance tasks during your training.

Thanks, I'll ask. There was very little discussion about preventative maintenance during the training.

 

[White Haus]

FYI changed the captops this morning and after a couple auto-cleans the nozzle check is back to 100%, even with both white channels.

 

[InkHead]

FYI changed the captops this morning and after a couple auto-cleans the nozzle check is back to 100%, even with both white channels.

After a little over a week since you replaced your captops did that resolve your issue 100%?

 

[White Haus]

After a little over a week since you replaced your captops did that resolve your issue 100%?

No it hasn't actually, we're still having lots of nozzle dropout and they move all over the head. Cleaning seems to make it worse.
I've run a bunch of air purges, nozzle clean, hard cleans etc etc. and am still having issues.

Struggled to print 3 rolls on it last week but out of nowhere it would run an auto-clean (despite being turned off) in the middle of a job, blow out a bunch of nozzles then the job would be ruined due to unacceptable banding.

Still very confused. I didn't replace the lines below the captops when I changed them, I wonder if that matters/makes a difference?

 

[InkHead]

I'm not sure if replacing the lines below the captop will help. I did not do that either when I replaced the captop. If you have a clog in the captop line, ink could accumulate in the captop and the head would just sit in the pool of ink while the machine is not being used potentially clogging nozzles. I would think we would see that especially during nozzle/disway washes if the liquid wasn't draining.

I'm also stumped as my channel 7 still goes missing. I did replace the line from the bottle to the head but I may have to replace all the other smaller lines that run from the pump, etc. for this channel. Not sure what else could be the problem.

 

[balstestrat]

I would always replace the lines if you replace captops. Very least clean the lines with a wire or something, just don't poke a hole in it.
And those caps should be replaced once a year.
Upsie, I thought this was the other Roland thread.

 

[Scotchbrite]

Those of you with the UCJV300, how often do you laminate? One of our uses would be vehicle graphics, but not wraps. Typically we would print on ij180 and laminate with 8518. I'm curious if the laminate is needed for the prints off the UCJV300?

 

[InkHead]

We don't do wraps or vehicle graphics but we do a ton of stickers/decals. We give our customers the option of laminate or no laminate. Most go with no laminate because its cheaper and I've never had a complaint. We also put unlaminated stickers on our water bottles that go through the dishwasher daily and they still look like new after 2 years. I've had some in the florida sun for 2 years and I haven't noticed any fade in the colors. So its held up pretty well. If I did wraps, I'd most likely laminate.

 

[InkHead]

We don't do wraps or vehicle graphics but we do a ton of stickers/decals. We give our customers the option of laminate or no laminate. Most go with no laminate because its cheaper and I've never had a complaint. We also put unlaminated stickers on our water bottles that go through the dishwasher daily and they still look like new after 2 years. I've had some in the florida sun for 2 years and I haven't noticed any fade in the colors. So its held up pretty well. If I did wraps, I'd most likely laminate.

 

[White Haus]

Those of you with the UCJV300, how often do you laminate? One of our uses would be vehicle graphics, but not wraps. Typically we would print on ij180 and laminate with 8518. I'm curious if the laminate is needed for the prints off the UCJV300?

Like InkHead, we do both. We've done a fleet a box truck wraps and a food truck on Avery 1105 and laminated with 1360Z, worked well and installed really nicely due to not being saturated with solvent ink.

We've done tons of wall wraps using 3M 40C + Avery DOL 2080 matte and they turned out great. So nice to go straight from printer to laminator to flatbed cutter to quickly crank out panels. You can easily do a bit more than a full roll a day this way.

For decals, we'll do laminated and unlaminated depending on the use and finish required.

Keep in mind silvering is a real factor and you can get lots of it on dark/heavy coverage and small text/objects.

We're running the LUS-170 inkset (LUS-200 white) and I believe there is another (more expensive) inkset that is approved for wraps.

One thing to keep in mind if you're planning on doing spot graphics w/ shape cuts is that due to the thick ink, your weight needs to be dialed in perfectly. If you're cutting some areas that are unprinted and some that are printed, the extra thickness of the ink (it lays down a LOT of ink, even with custom profiles) will require more weight to cut through properly. On the plus side, the thick ink will cover any contamination/fingerprints on media so you'll never have to worry about that.

Hope that helps.

 

[InkHead]

Like InkHead, we do both. We've done a fleet a box truck wraps and a food truck on Avery 1105 and laminated with 1360Z, worked well and installed really nicely due to not being saturated with solvent ink.

We've done tons of wall wraps using 3M 40C + Avery DOL 2080 matte and they turned out great. So nice to go straight from printer to laminator to flatbed cutter to quickly crank out panels. You can easily do a bit more than a full roll a day this way.

For decals, we'll do laminated and unlaminated depending on the use and finish required.

Keep in mind silvering is a real factor and you can get lots of it on dark/heavy coverage and small text/objects.

We're running the LUS-170 inkset (LUS-200 white) and I believe there is another (more expensive) inkset that is approved for wraps.

One thing to keep in mind if you're planning on doing spot graphics w/ shape cuts is that due to the thick ink, your weight needs to be dialed in perfectly. If you're cutting some areas that are unprinted and some that are printed, the extra thickness of the ink (it lays down a LOT of ink, even with custom profiles) will require more weight to cut through properly. On the plus side, the thick ink will cover any contamination/fingerprints on media so you'll never have to worry about that.

Hope that helps.

This 100%. Silvering is a thing with UV inks. I've had pretty good luck with running the laminated printed again through the laminator with a little more pressure and heat to reduce silvering even more. It will typically disappear in a couple days anyway.

I agree that the printed areas are thicker and can be a little more trickier cutting especially if you have unprinted areas to cut through. To little pressure, the printed areas won't pop out but the unprinted areas will. A little too much pressure, the unprinted areas could pop and snag while the printed areas pop out fine.

I've been using basically the double pass cut methodology to get nice clean cuts on the Summa but that requires you to dial in your blade and pressure just right. Otherwise cuts pop out and can cause jams or too little pressure the backer rips. I never had much luck with Flex cut and it would always leave weird cross-cuts on inside/outside corners and mess up prints.

However... just the other day an idea popped in my head out of nowhere. In Illustrator, you can make your stroke cut line dotted lines. So what I've tested this week is to only have a few dots around the whole cut line. Those dots act as little perfs that hold the print in place and pop out. (Basically the blade skips over the gap). Just like a perf-cut. It has worked amazingly. I've dialed up pressure and the print still holds in place because of the perfs. This makes it so you don't have to be perfect with the blade depth and pressure. In illustrator you can make the gaps in your cut-line as small or big as you want and as many as you think you need.

 

[APCInk]

Those of you with the UCJV300, how often do you laminate? One of our uses would be vehicle graphics, but not wraps. Typically we would print on ij180 and laminate with 8518. I'm curious if the laminate is needed for the prints off the UCJV300?

You should still laminate, it would be difficult to apply cast vinyl without laminate and the material isn't indestructable. You still need extra protectant for the material itself and the ink sits on top of the media so you will want to protect the ink as well.

 

[Elwood Kinder]

Hi there!

I'm running a Mimaki UCJV300-160. I love love it!! We use it primarily for decals, we have specialty materials that cannot use solvent inks and the UV ink made for a perfect solution. The ink is matte and has a texture to it, so if you're looking for a smooth ink application, it definitely does not do that. However, I have had that noted as a plus when customers have received their stickers and decals saying the textured ink makes it feel more expensive, but it ultimately comes down to personal preference I think. Nothing will scratch that ink off though!! It's amazing for outdoor application.

In terms of your question about printing, I've had nothing it couldn't print. So far, the detail this machine prints is amazing.

Positives: No drying time, the print/cut feature is incredibly helpful, and overall the detail on this printer is insane.
Negatives: Not many people have this machine, so it feels a little lone soldier-y when things go wrong. Of course my distributor and mimaki are both companies that I can reach out to and get help from, but when it comes to the decal/sticker category, they don't have many exact notes and answers on how to fix things! Clearly everyone is sort of learning at the same time.

My main issues have come from the cutter. I use reflective materials, so I have to use a pretty heavy weight blade and overall the contour cut is amazing - so detailed and incredibly quick, but the halfcut to cut through material and liner has proven to be a bit of a problem. However, from what I have heard of other machines, this machine truly cuts like a dream. Once you find the right weight and setting, it's pretty much smooth sailing.

I have been questioning if a flatbed cutter would make cutting the decals easier as I think a lot of the issues come from the roll of material having a curl and getting stuck in the plotter every so often.

Happy to answer any specific questions you may have! Also, if you want me to run a sample for you, I'm always happy to!

I just ran across this post from several years ago... Could I please ask... are you still happy with the UCJV?

 

[lubo1972]

No it hasn't actually, we're still having lots of nozzle dropout and they move all over the head. Cleaning seems to make it worse.
I've run a bunch of air purges, nozzle clean, hard cleans etc etc. and am still having issues.

Struggled to print 3 rolls on it last week but out of nowhere it would run an auto-clean (despite being turned off) in the middle of a job, blow out a bunch of nozzles then the job would be ruined due to unacceptable banding.

Still very confused. I didn't replace the lines below the captops when I changed them, I wonder if that matters/makes a difference?

We found that best way to fix missing nozzles is to turn off machine till next day or just leave it for 1-2 hours. Cleaning doesn't help!

We have troubles with magenta channel, all nozzles deflected and we need to change head :-( A lot of people have same problem!