New Printer

[bigdarr]

We are looking to buy a new flatbed printer for our business and I'm coming to all you experts for advice. Our main product is wood plaques that are 1/4" to up to 2" thick. The sizes on them will range from 12" x 12" up to 24" x 34". We sell wall decor that will have different sayings or patterns on them. Quality is important but our customer but price is crititical. Due to this I anticipate we will run our new printer in mostly express mode but will use white with 4 color for items we want to show brighter colors. At this point we do much in banners so we won't need/use the roll option.

My question is we are down to 4 printers we are looking at, 2 hybrids and 2 true flat bed printers.

EFI 1625
HP Scitex FB550
Oce Arizona 365
Fuji Acuity Select 26

The HP is the cheapest product and the heads are the cheapest to replace. I've heard their machines don't last as long and the quality isn't up to par with a true flatbed. From what I saw the true flatbed seems to be a lot easier to operate.

Of these 4 what would anyone recommend. Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[Ditchmiester]

If you are going to be running production of a lot of these blank sizes throughout the day non stop then take a very hard look at the loading and unloading process of the FB550 it has always been heads and tails above (to me at least) the competition when it comes to running smaller blanks like those sizes.


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[ikarasu]

We are looking to buy a new flatbed printer for our business and I'm coming to all you experts for advice. Our main product is wood plaques that are 1/4" to up to 2" thick. The sizes on them will range from 12" x 12" up to 24" x 34". We sell wall decor that will have different sayings or patterns on them. Quality is important but our customer but price is crititical. Due to this I anticipate we will run our new printer in mostly express mode but will use white with 4 color for items we want to show brighter colors. At this point we do much in banners so we won't need/use the roll option.

My question is we are down to 4 printers we are looking at, 2 hybrids and 2 true flat bed printers.

EFI 1625
HP Scitex FB550
Oce Arizona 365
Fuji Acuity Select 26

The HP is the cheapest product and the heads are the cheapest to replace. I've heard their machines don't last as long and the quality isn't up to par with a true flatbed. From what I saw the true flatbed seems to be a lot easier to operate.

Of these 4 what would anyone recommend. Thanks in advance for your help!

can't comment on the others, but I have a HP FB500...We dont use the white ink option, but everything else prints good. The onlything is our reds really suck... But it could be because we dont have proper profiles on them. been using it for a few years, and besides normal maintenance... Nothing, all heads firing perfectly... never had to replace one. We mostly print real estate signs. But we print on coro, Alupanel, Banner material... even vinyl when our roll to roll is busy. It's a nice printer... I dont have experience with other flatbeds, so maybe it's not a "true" flatbed, but It's fast, and good quality... I can't see it being a problem for printing wall art on. I have had issues with smaller pieces though. Anything under 12" Does't get held by the roller.. .and it sometimes causes banding. It's only happened to me on plexi-glass though.

 

[woldy]

If your a FB550 & Onyx user I recommend looking at your rendering intents to get a better red... in particular using Absolute Colorimetric can do wonders.

 

[noisegeek]

We run an Acuity, and just added a EFI Vutek at the beginning of the year. The Acuitys are just rebadged Oce Arizonas, but with Fuji doing the support. In my experience (running Acuitys and Arizonas side by side at my previous job) Oce's service is far better than Fuji's. For that reason alone, I'd drop the Acuity from your list.
I've never run one of the HPs, but have been to a few shops running them, and had a similar impression to you. They just strike me as cheap.
Since we got our Vutek (a GS2000 Lx), our Acuity sits idle a whole lot. The Vutek is just a fantastic machine. The print quality and speed are fantastic. The color is great, and it has probably the single best white ink system I've ever seen. I haven't had any issues running small pieces, down to 5x8 pieces of precut plexi. So far the heads seem pretty indestructible. We've had a couple of crashes that would have been disastrous on other machines I've run (including a Durst Rho 800), and all it took was a couple of purges to get everything back into shape.
Be sure to include the Fiery XF RIP when pricing the EFI. You can drive it from other RIPs, but Fiery is incredibly powerful, and the color tools are some of the best.

 

[Robert Gruner]

bigdar,

FB550 would work well and it is by far the least expensive. You could probably find a deal on a FB750 which would be priced closer to EFI, Oce, and Fuji; however, your production would be near doubled printing the sizes you indicated.

If you decide to go conventional flatbed, I would suggest you look closely at the Mimaki JFX200-2513. It is a 98"x51" table that sells for under $80K.

I also like the idea of using fixed jigs for the two sizes you print if you select a true flatbed.

 

[ChrisN]

Another +1 for a true flatbed. I'm a bit skeptical that a hybrid could pull a 2" wood blank through the printer. Another issue with hybrids is tracking as the part is pulled through. Supposedly the HP's are fairly good in this regard, but you'll get far better placement accuracy with a flatbed where the part is not moving.

I would suggest looking at CET printers as well. We have their Q5-1000 flatbed, and I like it. Their 4x8 flatbed is similar pricing to the FB550, and the 5x10 is similar to the FB750. Another manufacturer to consider would be Vanguard Digital.

Another thing to note: white ink soaks in to wood and it can take a lot of ink to make wood white. Depending on the look you want, a nice white will take 400% ink or more. Also, a lot depends on the wood and how it is prepared as to how your whites will look.

 

[Pauly]

First off, How much are you planning on printing a day?

The fuji acuity is a rebranded oce.
the Oce arizona 365 seems to be their new "affordable" flatbed after the 318 GL.

I honestly would take the EFI and the HP out of question.
The problem with wood is that it's never flat. And having a true flatbed with vacuum zones will pull the media down flat which gives you a better, more sharp print.

With the Oce, there's no express mode when using white. You'll need to use a quality layered mode which does take some time to print. I use this mode a fair bit. It doesn't take for ever but it takes time.

If you're planning to print a lot. Look at the Oce Arizona 2200. It'll print twice as quick as the 1100 or the 365.

 

[bigdarr]

Thanks for all the feedback so soon everyone, great answers!

We plan on using express 75% of the time and the quality layered(white) the other 25% of the time. On average we would use the machine 4 hours a day. My thinking is I'm down to either the HP or Oce and my Pro/Con of each is

HP Pro

Lower cost machine
Heads are cheaper to replace
Supposed to be very low maitenance
Self Cleans to save labor cost and hopefully less head breakage
Automatically scans media to get height to avoid head strikes

Con:

Quality not as good
Longer time for set up
Will be print squarely or bleed out
Print Quality?

Oce Pro:

Print Quality is better
Easier to Operate
Lasts Longer

Oce Con:

Not self cleaning
More Expensive

I have read that Oce has more heads go bad than others, do you all find that to be true?

Thanks again everyone and after we decide I will let you know what we picked. We are a small company so a 100K+ investment for us is a big deal!

 

[ikarasu]

If your a FB550 & Onyx user I recommend looking at your rendering intents to get a better red... in particular using Absolute Colorimetric can do wonders.

Thanks for the tip! To be honest, I was thrown into printing 6-7 months ago, and learning most of this stuff myself, since the company's only printer left. I've tweaked the profiles a lot so far... And been pushing to buy a profiler, I guess tomorrow I'll be playing with the rendering intents.

[Edit] Thanks again! I just spent a good 30-40 minutes researching rendering intents (On my own time... My work should be happy!). I guess perceptual makes sense... makes the image more "pleasing", but now I'm interested in trying out absolute. Already VNC'd into the computer and made a new quickset. First thing in the morning, I'm going to try another red color chart, see what it looks like!

 

[ikarasu]

Thanks for all the feedback so soon everyone, great answers!

We plan on using express 75% of the time and the quality layered(white) the other 25% of the time. On average we would use the machine 4 hours a day. My thinking is I'm down to either the HP or Oce and my Pro/Con of each is

HP Pro

Lower cost machine
Heads are cheaper to replace
Supposed to be very low maitenance
Self Cleans to save labor cost and hopefully less head breakage
Automatically scans media to get height to avoid head strikes

Con:

Quality not as good
Longer time for set up
Will be print squarely or bleed out
Print Quality?

Oce Pro:

Print Quality is better
Easier to Operate
Lasts Longer

Oce Con:

Not self cleaning
More Expensive

I have read that Oce has more heads go bad than others, do you all find that to be true?

Thanks again everyone and after we decide I will let you know what we picked. We are a small company so a 100K+ investment for us is a big deal!

Does your supplier have demos setup? Usually they will allow you to bring some product in and some files and do some test prints in each machine.

I've never had quality issues with the FB... We use production mode for everything, sometimes bump it up to photo for stuff like photo canvas, or other stuff we require detail on, and it's all looked good. If you'd like... I can print something straight to plywood , if you have a sample file you'd like to see. No white option though, so not sure if that'd benefit you. You'd get to see the quality though.

 

[Pauly]

self cleaning i would take out the picture.

The newer oce machines are self cleaning to an extent. They just purge ink and vacuum the nozzles. You still need to swap with isopropyl daily or weekly depending on what media you use ect.

Clean it your self and keep it clean. Heads will last you a very long time.

 

[Mspec]

You can get good reds on the HP as long as you have the right equipment ( spectro and software ) and 2 inch thick wood pulls through the 550 without issue. Setup time is 1.5 days for hardware, and training can go as little as another 1.5 days to 3 days depending on your current knowledge / skillset.

The latest gen HP flatbeds are far and away more reliable than the earlier fb910/fb950 units. Like anything else, it depends on how well you care for the printer.

 

[Nate1n22]

On the Acuity's you can run white at express, production or regular quality. It doesn't have to be quality-layered. By doing this you have to run one file as a white file and another as a CMYK file, but on wood you can easily get away with a production white and production CMYK and still be faster than quality layered.
Obviously a express mode flood white is going to look terrible, but I have used express white for a few things.

 

[Typestries]

Good advice here thus far. Whatever you decide on, before fully pulling the trigger, go to a demo site. Bring LOTS of your blanks and your files. Run YOUR jobs, in real life, just as you intend to once the machine is delivered, before you pull the trigger. You'll avoid being disappointed after the fact

 

[Pauly]

On the Acuity's you can run white at express, production or regular quality. It doesn't have to be quality-layered. By doing this you have to run one file as a white file and another as a CMYK file, but on wood you can easily get away with a production white and production CMYK and still be faster than quality layered.
Obviously a express mode flood white is going to look terrible, but I have used express white for a few things.

Didn't know you can run a spot colour in express. Quality layered is the same quality as Quality mode. You have an option of 3 layers, but if you use 2 layers I.e Empty|White|cmyk then it's quicker than doing a quality print twice.

 

[Nate1n22]

Does this apply to Oce's as well? I just recently realized I could create a profile with just one layer of white (other two layers empty) and it prints much faster than regular 3 layer profiles, but I'm still stuck using quality layered. Using Onyx Thrive 11.

Thanks.

I don't know about Oce, since they use Onyx. But in ColorGate you can do a "quality" white. I think it prints faster than "quality layered"

 

[Nicky Zhou]

I see most of the printer you are looking for choosing a Toshiba T-Tec heads, such as Oce, Fuji, EFI. All in all, if you really do a lot job on wood, in case your wood will be very good condition surface and clean at all. Or the T-Tec print head is not easy to maintenance when printing on wood. Also, I see those printer all have their print head in one row, which means when goes for white in printing, you can only get half speed, and you will afraid the rest half heads condition.
If for wood printing, A Konica Minolta heads is more than enough. compared to 6pl, KM heads runs at 14pl, easy maintenance. also faster speed at 1024 nozzles. when go for wood printing , ture flatbed is a better choice, as you can install the white and color in two rows, printing with white will no longer loose speed. The big dots also gives you a better density for white printing as base color.

 

[WrapYourCar]

Thanks for the tip! To be honest, I was thrown into printing 6-7 months ago, and learning most of this stuff myself, since the company's only printer left. I've tweaked the profiles a lot so far... And been pushing to buy a profiler, I guess tomorrow I'll be playing with the rendering intents.

[Edit] Thanks again! I just spent a good 30-40 minutes researching rendering intents (On my own time... My work should be happy!). I guess perceptual makes sense... makes the image more "pleasing", but now I'm interested in trying out absolute. Already VNC'd into the computer and made a new quickset. First thing in the morning, I'm going to try another red color chart, see what it looks like!

You know you're an employee when you start counting 30 mins of outside work time lol

 

[FangMan]

I would suggest using a true flatbed (media remains stationary while printing). If you're running a large # of 12x12 blanks you can do 32 w/CMYK+W in about 10-15 minutes with the Ricoh Gen 5 printhead. As for loading and unloading, you don't have to wait until all 32 are printed. In the example of 4 rows with 8 blanks per row (4x8 bed) as print carriage advances from printing row 1 to print row 2, you can be unloading and reloading row one, then as row 2 completes you continue unloading and reloading until all rows are completed. As gantry returns to start over, you unload/reload row 4. In this way you are printing almost continuously. Full disclosure: I work for Vanguard and we mfg. and sell 4x8 and 5x10 UV flatbeds.

Best Regards & Happy New Year

 

[DougWestwood]

Pauly is absolutely right on wood not being flat. Ever.

I have done many wood fiberboard sheets on the OCE flatbed, and had to TAPE DOWN THE ENTIRE EDGE
to get a seal which will not cause a head strike. Wood sheets so warped they look like a potato chip on the table.

Maybe your wood supplier has totally flat pieces all the time.
I have never seen one myself. Bring your blanks and test them before buying.

Will also say I have run OCE and FUJI tables in the past. They might have upgraded since then,
but those heads were super-expensive, approx $5000 each. Check that price before buying.

Good Luck!

 

[ChrisN]

Even if something is warped, you can still print on it. The quality will definitely drop, but depending on what you're printing, you'll never notice it. This plaque was about 1/4" higher on the front left corner than on the back right corner. It was warped and did not sit flat on the table. With careful measurement, I printed on it with no problems. The key is to measure the highest point on the piece, and then the carriage will clear it.

[video=youtube;xQpx7FKjk_w]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQpx7FKjk_w[/video]

This plaque is 18" x 12", and the video is basically the entire print, so the video time is actual print time. This is on a CET Q5-1000 with a 3 head CMYKWW configuration. I set the white ink to heavy ink and the ink density to 2x (double strike), for a total of 400% white coverage.