New chinese crate inspection company

[artbot]

chinasigns now has a chinese printing equipment inspection/agent service. it does not have to be a chinasigns product.

there are new chinese printer reports now on the web along with fespa updates (flaar).

it seems that astarjet, and micolor are making some solid equipment. along with wit-color.

http://www.micolor.cn/en/news/wj1545.htm
micolor is using THK rails! this thing must be smooth as glass. the flaar report says the output is gorgeous. this is the wj link. the sj is the solvent equivalent.

also, lexmark and lenovo thermal heads are in development in china so there will be some chinese latex printer runnning after market latex ink (sam ink?)

http://www.wide-format-printers.org...position_Epson-DX5_DX6_printhead-printers.pdf

"If you wish assistance in making sure your container load from a
Chinese printer contains what you ordered?
ChinaSigns (sign-in-china.com) has a new program to assist distributors and large printshops around
the world to keep track of what is really being packed inside the container that is being shipped to
you from China. You do not have to order the product from or through ChinaSigns: you can order any
product in China independently, but have ChinaSigns inspect the product as it is being shipped.
This is a new service and I am just learning about it. For further information contact “Rissa” overseas06@
chinasigns.cn. I have been to the headquarters of ChinaSigns company twice so I have seen their size,
their capabilities, and have learned of this frankly remarkably innovative service during my last visit."

 

[rjssigns]

Too cool artbot.
Have me a hankerin' for a little Chinese. (printer that is)
I am trying to tell people not to buy anything right now. Too much change in the market. Of course I am more than content to sit back with my old Roland and eat popcorn while others get sucked in by media hype. Then I'll listen to them wail about how they got banged by their supplier for not telling them something better was coming.

I checked out(online) one of the Chinese printers you liked. Eco-sol ink, 126" wide, and 1700sq.ft. hr. banner quality. Thing is a rocket! Think it had dual DX5's too. All for around 12k delivered.

The Chinese are quite capable of turning out gorgeous work. You just have to tell them what parts to use. Was involved with them for years in a previous capacity and left to their own devices will use complete doo-doo.
Once you spec the good stuff you then reap the benefits of cheap labor.
$1.78 an hour to build Apple products if I am not mistaken.

I also like the sound of THK rails that is high zoot right there.

About the folks that will poo-poo it for maintenance/warranty, I will tell them: For what they are charging I will buy a second for spares and still have a bag of money leftover.

 

[artbot]

yeah i did a bit of sunday reading. lots of change out on the street. epson is selling crates of dx5's to china without ink sales commissions while, roland, mimaki, mutoh have to pay up. mimaki has abandoned epson for ricoh.

and on top of all this latex is about to replace the low end with lexmark lenovo heads. eco solvent will be old school in three years, like water based ink.

the business of building printers is changing quick. bragging rights to "i have a such and such this wide printer" will not be the same. the world will be up to it's eyeballs in pritners in five years. also, the most common width in china is 72", most common head dx5.

if you can install a ten footer that cost you $12k, just how long would it take for it to pay for itself? a few billboards and you are done.

 

[Just Another Sign Guy]

I have 3 Americans who I have worked with who live the majority of the year in various parts of China who do nothing but source materials & verify that what you have ordered is what makes it into your shipping container. If you are ever in need let me know & I will put you in contact.

 

[rjssigns]

Hey artbot I forgot to mention that 126 inchers ink is only 50 bucks a liter! I pay $113 for a 440ml now.
I told the wife I would sacrifice my personal shop area for that printer.
And you're right it would not take long to pay the bugger off.

 

[artbot]

just about all chinese no name ink is that price. there are some high end chinese 3rd party ink companies (many of them make ink for mimaki, etc). for a local source, keep in mind that you are only discussing viscosity compatible to that head. so any dx5 ink (jv33, mutoh, gs6000) will also run in it. i'd do some testing on the printer parts for the jv33 ink. buy some extra comsumables (tube, capping station, wipers, etc). knock off a small piece of them and sink them in ink (or just straight MEK). if the mek doesn't destroy it, the ink certainly won't all the ink train of a mimaki can be sunk in MEK. strangely the least solvent resistant part is the head manifold. it will melt like chewing gum in seconds if sunk in Xylol.

i've never regretted getting a new piece of equipment. you really can't spend that money soon enough. it opens up doors, speeds up production ... as long as it's not redundant. trading across the same ink/printer type won't. but new width, new speed will.

 

[rjssigns]

I'm still going to take my own advice and wait out the new releases. My Roland SP is far from dead and I plan on running the whiz out of it. Don't know if I'll get rid of it once I get another printer. The cut unit works a treat with the bigger cut vinyl jobs plus I would have a back-up printer.

 

[Dice]

Artbot, you know you need to take the flaar reports with a gain of salt right?

 

[artbot]

i take everything with grain of salt.

i've learned a lot more from reading flaar reports about a machine than OEM pdfs. most of them are boring repetitive formulaic... but we are here in the US. americans can be xenophobic and at times believe that we are the only country on the planet. there is a huge world of printer innovation out there. and flaar is bringing that world right the internet. no one else is doing quite the same job. most websites dedicated to the print industry repost the poop sheet that the OEM releases. so you search and search and read the same article ten times. the flaar comes along and says "i saw the machine at the trade show, the ink stinks, the printer are flat and murky". that's good to know.

 

[Dice]

I agree. Just so you know that the Reports on specific machines are swayed by how much the manufacturer pays him. He uses the money from his various review sites to fund his archaeological digs in south america.

This was eye opening after 2 different manufacturers told me this.

Even then it's a good source of information as long as you keep in mind that it's completely bias.

 

[jhanson]

I played with one for a while, and it's a nice machine all things considered. They basically ripped Roland's design off as much as they could, and kitbashed it together with Mutoh-influenced parts (for the DX5 head carriage). The electronics are all local design, however. Print quality is somewhere between Mutoh and Roland (of course depending on how you align and profile it).

My only issues were that the USB driver system is somewhat flaky -- if you don't connect it right, it can be hell to get working again.

Most of the Chinese printers are "soft" printers, meaning that all the hard logic work is handled in the software. As a result, you need a really robust CPU to handle them: the slower the processor, the slower the printer.