Mimaki VS Roland - Metallic & White Color Inks

[VL]

Hi Everyone:
I am in the market for a new printer. I have narrowed it down to the Mimaki CJV30-160 or the Roland VS-640. I know I would use the Metallic and White color inks so I was looking for any advice and knowledge about how these colors print. Does one printer do a better job than the other. Do you have to laminate these colors if they are used inside. Can you print white and silver together (silver on top of white) I want to print onto smooth chrome and fantasy films (sequins and sparkles). Will be printing onto adhesive vinyls too. Any info would be great.

Thanks
Shawn

 

[tomence]

I am a Roland user and love the Rolands, but when it comes to white and silver inks i think that Mimaki has the best white and silver comparing to the Roland.

 

[Robert M]

Mimaki vs Roland

They use similar inks (maybe the same, depends on who you talk to) Running that ink set will slow down the printer and you will need to laminate everything going outdoors. Shop your dealers and get the best price. The Mimaki does have an auto take up that works with the print and cut feature (allows the media to come back off the auto take up when cutting) the Roland will not. Mimaki also comes with a seperate vinyl cutting software which is a nice feature.

 

[MikeD]

I've used both, and the white is not very opaque and requires more maintenance. The metallic ink rubs off with light thumb pressure.
From my experience, jobs that require white, or jobs that are to be printed on specialty films, should be processed on a UV or Thermal Transfer.
Ask the manufacturer / dealer for print samples that include pass counts, resolution and print time. You may see a sample that you like, but it's important to know what it took to make the sample in order to judge it's "quality."
Check these people out for comparisons of lots of different equipment; not sure if your specific question will be in there. http://www.flaar-reports.org/
Good Luck!

 

[VL]

Thanks for your all of your insight. I have also check out the Flaar in the past. Expensive but good info. At this point I plan on taking actual files to the dealers to get examples made. This would give me a better idea. I am also going to look at the Roland Soljet pro 4 xr-640 and the Epson SureColor S70670 printers. Someone at the ISA show said that the Epson metallic ink was really slow. I wonder if that is true.

Shawn

 

[Matt-Tastic]

all of them are slow. when you switch the mimaki from 4- 6 color, it halves the speed. when you add white or white and silver, it halves the speed again. at that point, you are near 20 sqft/hr.

the metallic inks have about 2-3 week outdoor life, due to the fact that it's actual metal and tarnishes in the sun. There is also extra maintenance involved with the system, and unless, in my opinion, 30%-50% of your work can utilize the specialty ink channels, you're going to lose money on it on the whole.

If you want to print specialty colors on occasion, get a standard printer and an EDGE unit.

 

[particleman]

A friend of mine bought the CJV with metallic and white. He has a very niche market and we both thought he would be able to use it a lot. In the end he used it a few times a week and had to convert back to 6 color. The CVJ according to Mimaki cannot go from CMYK LC LM W S to CMYK LC LM W W. The metallic ink is really the issue, not the white. The white behaves like white in most other machines it does require regular use and extra cleaning, the metallic constantly clogs the print head. You waste a massive amount of ink (all the colors) keeping the metallic flowing through the machine. It will prompt to do ink fill ups much more often because of the metallic. We estimated based on the cost of the ink and the amount that was wasted daily from cleaning/ink fills that it was a losing venture attempting the metallic. The machine as a whole is pretty good, but don't take the decision to use metallic lightly.

 

[VL]

particleman; This really concerns me because that is exactly about the same amount of work I was going to be doing. Does anyone have any more info about the Roland VS-640 and it's W M inks?

 

[WI]

We run both a Mimaki JV33 (solvent) and a Roland LEJ-640 (UV), which is not the hardware you're talking about but hear me out.

The white on the Mimaki sucks. I've yet to come up with an amount of ink that you can put down that isn't both highly translucent and slightly blue. The metallic options are equally unimpressive. Of all the colors available, the only option that really looks metallic is raw silver ink, and even that's not much better than el-cheapo calendared silver vinyl, and chrome-finish material blows it away.

Yeah, I get that you can certainly do things with ink that you can't do with vinyl, but it's still a bust. I wouldn't spend money on it.

Now, understand that I absolutely love the JV33, it's my go-to machine for top-end jobs that have to look great from three inches away. If we could only keep one machine of the five that we've got in the shop, I'd keep the JV33, but the silver and white setup is a total waste of time.

Now, if you've got to be able to print a respectable white, you might want to think about a UV printer. We've got a Roland LEJ-640, and I've gotten pretty good results out of it. Now I have to lay down a whole lot of ink to get decent opacity, and the ink ain't cheap. Furthermore, it's still not as opaque as straight-up white vinyl or screen-printed white ink, but as I've said you can do stuff with ink that you can't do with vinyl, and with some tinkering you can do fun stuff like print your own short runs of double-sided stickers. The Roland's white also has the added benefit of actually being white, as opposed to pale blue. A UV printer would also be a good option if you're interested in printing on stuff that's not solvent printable, of which glittery / confetti / shiny / holographic vinyl is a prime example. You also shouldn't have to laminate anything that comes off of a UV printer.

Unfortunately you might be S.O.L. when it comes to printing a decent metallic. I'm willing to believe that it's out there somewhere, but I haven't laid eyes on it.

HTH.

 

[VL]

Today I went to my local dealer and checked out the Roland SOLJET Pro 4 XR-640 and the Epson SureColor S70670. We are able to print metallic silver ink onto Red Chrome Vinyl material. That looked really hot! The Metallic inks from both machines look really nice and bright but it is not mirror like (I knew that going in). I think I would still consider going with the metallic inks if I purchased one of these machines. Now for the Green color ink: I was not impressed at all. The Epson was brighter but I am able to get brighter vivid greens from my old HP5000 with Dye inks. Are greens an issue with Solvent printers? I also wonder if the Production guy at the dealer has not using the correct profile (I know media has a lot to do with color too). All of the other test prints we did looked really nice and they were done on in the production mode.

 

[hyperdrive]

We have had the vs640 and now the xr 640 with metallic ink and white..The opacity is great on the new max 2 inks..I put alot of my white prints on black wheels..with great results!! Maintenance is no problem on the rolands.. It circulates the ink every 6-8 hours...No more maintenance than any other printer.. The vs is slow at printing white and opacity can be an issue with the original max inks.