New Guy New to everything, hopefully not for long.

[Orion_c]

Hey signs101!

I'm an engineer working a 9-5, and i'm new to the signs industry, but I have ideas and I hope to be in the business soon. I've just been lurking for now, and reading up a lot of different topics. Unfortunately what I want to make requires a lot of expensive equipment and it's hard to start small with cheaper hobby grade equipment because of quality.

My goal is to start a business making trinkets for businesses. After a lot of research, I would need a laser cutter and a UV flatbed printer.

Hopefully within the year, I can take the plunge and buy what I need. I've been looking at various uv printers (mimaki, mutoh, roland) and laser cutters(epilog, trotec, fsl, boss) to compare, quality of prints, cutting time, printing time, ink cost per product to get an estimate to see if it's a viable business.

I'm here to learn, and hopefully everything works out and I can contribute soon.

Glad to meet you

PS - If you have experience with any of the brands above (or other brands you think are better) for a Small format UV printer/Laser cutter, I'd be glad to pick your brain.
I have a few questions on print application onto materials such as wood/acrylic and if they need to be treated? And what makes a printer have great resolution/quality?

 

[Solventinkjet]

Welcome! I can't help you with the laser cutting stuff but the owner of this forum also runs a CNC forum so hopefully some of the new members he brought over can help with that.

As far as printers go, you want to avoid ones that use Epson based heads which pretty much rules out Roland and Mutoh for the smaller desktop printers. Epson based UV machines just don't work very well and they have had many problems. Full disclosure I am a Mimaki and Mutoh dealer.

Mimaki uses Ricoh heads that are more suited for UV and therefore are more reliable. Any of the new Mimaki UV machines will have these heads. Ink cost is going to be about the same between all of these printers which is about 15 - 35 cents per square foot depending on coverage of the print. Some materials do require what is called a primer but it varies between manufacturers and products. The product itself will usually have a specification whether it needs to be primed or not. There are tons of materials that don't require it however.

Quality can be a convoluted topic. You have two resolutions to think about; the resolution of the image you are printing and the resolution of the actual printer/profile. If you have a low resolution image to start and print at a high resolution, the image will still look low res. So you get out what you put in. Printer resolution is more about crispness. If you print at a low printer resolution, solid colors will tend to look more grainy, fine lines will be sort of fuzzy looking, small text will blur a little bit and fine super fine details get lost. These resolutions are good for banners and simple designs like large lettering or geometric shapes. It also prints faster because the lower the resolution, the fewer passes the print head has to make to print the same file. So speed and quality are intertwined.

There is a whole lot more to things but hopefully this starts you down the path. Good luck!

 

[Scott18]

Hey signs101!

I'm an engineer working a 9-5, and i'm new to the signs industry, but I have ideas and I hope to be in the business soon. I've just been lurking for now, and reading up a lot of different topics. Unfortunately what I want to make requires a lot of expensive equipment and it's hard to start small with cheaper hobby grade equipment because of quality.

My goal is to start a business making trinkets for businesses. After a lot of research, I would need a laser cutter and a UV flatbed printer.

Hopefully within the year, I can take the plunge and buy what I need. I've been looking at various uv printers (mimaki, mutoh, roland) and laser cutters(epilog, trotec, fsl, boss) to compare, quality of prints, cutting time, printing time, ink cost per product to get an estimate to see if it's a viable business.

I'm here to learn, and hopefully everything works out and I can contribute soon.

Glad to meet you

PS - If you have experience with any of the brands above (or other brands you think are better) for a Small format UV printer/Laser cutter, I'd be glad to pick your brain.
I have a few questions on print application onto materials such as wood/acrylic and if they need to be treated? And what makes a printer have great resolution/quality?

I have experience with a ULS 60 laser cutter (Universal Laser Systems, 60 Watt), if I can answer any questions about how those work I'd be happy to.

 

[The Big Squeegee]

2

 

[Sindex Printing]

I currently have a Mutoh 1638uh uv printer. I had it installed at the end of Augustand it has been the most temperamental piece of equipment I have every seen. When it printing correctly the prints come out beautiful.
We have an 80 watt Trotec speedy 400. We had a couple issue with the machine and it took Trotec a little time to figure it out and fix it. The quality of that it produces is amazing

All the manufacturers will send you samples.

I would honestly make sure you a good with a design software. I prefer adobe for my design software. I would suggest to make the investment once and but if funds are an issue there are community work shops opening up. We locally have 2 workshops that have a laser and that is how we started. We would give the a credit for printing everytime we used the equipment until we were in a spot to make the purchase ourselves. I would travel to one of the trade shows and bring a couple files and have the different manufactures do a demo for you.

I print on acrylic and wood and have had great results without any pre treating. I am a firm believer in quality over speed.

There is a lot of variation in printing costs and speeds. Alot will depend on resolution and if you are using white or varnish ink.

Feel free to message me with any questions and I will do my best to help. If you are ever in Sparks Nevada feel free to stop by and I can show you the equipment and what we have had success with. I am more than willing to share some cost points through private messages.

Hope this helps

 

[Orion_c]

Welcome! I can't help you with the laser cutting stuff but the owner of this forum also runs a CNC forum so hopefully some of the new members he brought over can help with that.

As far as printers go, you want to avoid ones that use Epson based heads which pretty much rules out Roland and Mutoh for the smaller desktop printers. Epson based UV machines just don't work very well and they have had many problems. Full disclosure I am a Mimaki and Mutoh dealer.

Mimaki uses Ricoh heads that are more suited for UV and therefore are more reliable. Any of the new Mimaki UV machines will have these heads. Ink cost is going to be about the same between all of these printers which is about 15 - 35 cents per square foot depending on coverage of the print. Some materials do require what is called a primer but it varies between manufacturers and products. The product itself will usually have a specification whether it needs to be primed or not. There are tons of materials that don't require it however.

Quality can be a convoluted topic. You have two resolutions to think about; the resolution of the image you are printing and the resolution of the actual printer/profile. If you have a low resolution image to start and print at a high resolution, the image will still look low res. So you get out what you put in. Printer resolution is more about crispness. If you print at a low printer resolution, solid colors will tend to look more grainy, fine lines will be sort of fuzzy looking, small text will blur a little bit and fine super fine details get lost. These resolutions are good for banners and simple designs like large lettering or geometric shapes. It also prints faster because the lower the resolution, the fewer passes the print head has to make to print the same file. So speed and quality are intertwined.

There is a whole lot more to things but hopefully this starts you down the path. Good luck!

Thanks for a lot of useful info! It does look like the Mimaki MKII series is the best option so far. It'd be in contention with the mutoh valuejet. They all seem to just say piezo printhead in the specs though and not the exact brand of the print heads. I will have to get some samples, and maybe find trade shows or dealers that do demos.

If i was printing a high res image, how many passes would a small uv printer have to make generally? Also, because you are in the industry, when it comes to resale value, what's the general depreciation on printers such as these? The used market is hard to find, considering a lot of these printers are relatively new to the market, so it's hard to gauge.

 

[Orion_c]

I have experience with a ULS 60 laser cutter (Universal Laser Systems, 60 Watt), if I can answer any questions about how those work I'd be happy to.

Thanks a lot scott! I was looking into ULS and they have some really nice lasers. Does your laser have registration mark capabilities? I've been looking into laser cutters with this feature, since it would reduce manual labor for placement and the need for cut lines. Though I'm not sure how effective this will be on see through materials such as acrylic -- or if this would even save me any time in the loading process. Say if i had 2"x2" sticker sheets with images, would having to load the cut file and line up the material be time consuming.

 

[Solventinkjet]

Thanks for a lot of useful info! It does look like the Mimaki MKII series is the best option so far. It'd be in contention with the mutoh valuejet. They all seem to just say piezo printhead in the specs though and not the exact brand of the print heads. I will have to get some samples, and maybe find trade shows or dealers that do demos.

If i was printing a high res image, how many passes would a small uv printer have to make generally? Also, because you are in the industry, when it comes to resale value, what's the general depreciation on printers such as these? The used market is hard to find, considering a lot of these printers are relatively new to the market, so it's hard to gauge.

Piezo is just the technology the heads use which is a quartz crystal based system. HP for example uses heat instead to fire a dot of ink. In general if the resolutions that are on the spec sheet for the printer are divisible by 180 (180, 360, 540, 720, 1080, 1440) it's an Epson head and if they are divisible by 300 (300, 600, 900, 1200), it's a Ricoh head. That is a pretty big generalization as there are obviously other brands of print head out there but for the brands of printers we are talking about it is true.

Think about passes this way: A standard Epson print head has 180 nozzles per channel. A single pass would result in a 180 dpi print. 2 passes would result in 360 etc. So it's not how many passes to complete a print but how many passes to achieve the desired resolution. A high res print usually is going to be anywhere between 8 (1440 dpi) and 32 (prints 1440 dpi with just with more passes to avoid banding effects) but keep in mind that is 8 to 32 passes to print about 1 inch of material not the whole print.

Printers are a lot like cars, as soon as ink runs through the system is loses a fair amount of value. The only example I have knowledge of is Mimaki CJV30 machines used to sell for about $16,000 new and now you can find used ones for about $5,000. The most value you can get out of a used machine is within the first 3 years of use. Every year after that the value will go down due to the fact that it will need new print heads soon which cost $$$$.