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Oce Arizona or Vutek QS ?

Wintersun

New Member
Weve had a Vutek PV200 for 3 years and its now getting very unreliable.
Weve been offered a trade in for a QS, but im inclined to go for a new Arizona.
And have advised our directors in the direction of the canon oce.

Anyone out there got any opinions or advice about this ?
Were really put off by the over engineered and overpriced and unreliable vuteks, and were looking for alternatives.
Were based in the UK so some of the Us machines would be out of the question for us.

Regards

Chris
 

HulkSmash

New Member
Oce is more intro level for the flatbeds, where the vuteks are the more high productions shops.

The oce is deathly slow compared to the vutek.
 

Wintersun

New Member
Roll to Roll on a vutek though is a disaster,
anyone know if CET's are available in the UK ?
Heard good things about those..
 

WYLDGFI

Merchant Member
Depends on the material and if the tech sets up the belt tensions correctly. If youre doing long runs on banner with the QS...yes..a disaster. PSAs are good on it. I would go with the EFI QS due to the cost of support alone being less on it vs the Oce. I know that oce charges more for FE support here.
Vutek is a more capable machine overall and very reliable. We switched from PV200 to QS and never looked back.
 

ellsmako

New Member
Wow , I service Vutek ( not a Factory FSE, But Factory trained ) and I am hearing alot about how badly they are being serviced by the factory, I am sorry. IF you would like to say whats unreliable I can try and help here.
If you are un happy with the support from Vutek I think you will not be pleased with the supposrt on the QS. But as others have stated the Vutek is faster, inks on the QS are far more flexible and stick better ( sorry the newer inkset on the Oce machine is flat ). The accuracy on the true flatbed is great and the dots are great too on the oce. it all about the numbers that work for you. Speed pricing, ink costs, range of materials and support. I never cared for the QS and prefer the GS but many get good results from the QS.
 

WYLDGFI

Merchant Member
Vutek Service

I know our service guys in the area are really good from EFI.. Not sure how they are across the pond. If they're not servicing well, push it up the chain of command. Scream and shout until it gets fixed right! EFI does listen to a point.
 

jhanson

New Member
It also depends on speed vs quality. The QS series uses fixed 15pl dot Seiko SPT-510 heads, while the newer GS series uses variable 12pl dot SPT-508 heads. As a result, the QS series quality (which looked excellent six years ago) is starting to look very grainy compared to output from newer flatbeds like the Oce and Vutek GS.

The Oce might be slow... but it produces amazing quality. It just depends on whether you're trying to sell quantity with low margins, or producing quality output with good margins.
 

artbot

New Member
i'll be in china in three weeks at the china sign expo looking at the new dual dx5 LED flatbeds. of all the chinese flatbeds, the winwin/ntek looks the best. over the next five years the overhead metric will be greatly altered by shops running these printers. from a speed/resolution/serviceability/replacement parts cost it will be tough to beat. a 6x10 dual dx5 LED costs $38k.

i have a video of last year's model running if anyone would like me to email it to them.
 

artbot

New Member
attached are two photos of the 4x8.

there are four different sizes.

i asked the company to print on some sintra and film it for me. of course
in china, i'll be bringing my own sintra, coro, gatorfoam, petg, polycarb,
pmma, glass, dibond, aluminum, canvas, styrene..... the works.

i'm not sure if i have "complete" permission to post upload this video but
they didn't express that it was private. i believe this is a printer that is the chinese model (RED!). i'd assume that what i see in china in three weeks will be similar.

all in all it looks like a confident machine. gravity feed just like a roland or mimaki, cheap ink, white and varnish capable without "upgrading", the sales staff speaks excellent english (i'm quite impressed), i believe the service manual will be available to all and edited by someone with a master's in english from what i'm told.

http://youtu.be/n0FVhPr8FrM

we might want to move this thread to a new spot. i think this qualifies and a hijack.
 

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Jack Knight1979

New Member
that was pretty impressive. dual dx5's with LED lamps?
THK Rails?

I like it. My only complaint is that the sheet metal on it looks like it would bend if you looked at it wrong.

Please get a good amount of detailed photos when you're there. I'm interested.
 

artbot

New Member
stock build is hiwin rails. a THK upgrade is available but i don't remember how much. i think i read that you could pick which rails. of course the gantry would be the main place to upgrade. THK on the x rails wouldn't seem to improve performance.

the rigidity is one thing i want to look at. i plan on printing on a lot of very heavy glass. i might have them add a "slide out" that can be bolted in to the table for heavy objects.

it will be really interesting to see all these printers up against each other. the trade show is massive. i also like the longrun konica printer for $42k. but then it's the subtanks and negative pressure and expensive heads low res'.

also, i'll be looking at the ink cure. i'm not at all concerned about the machine itself. but i do want to confirm that the LED is beefy. the mimaki jf's had so much trouble curing they later added a "post cure" lamp.
 
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jhanson

New Member
If that other printer is running KM1024, or even KM512 heads, it can go as low as 4-6 picoliters; the DX5 goes down to 3.5 picoliters. Basically, if the printer is designed to use the heads well, you can easily print 4pt type with Konica heads.

I have some samples printed on the new Jetrix 2030FRK that simply look amazing; the quality easily compares to most Epson-printed artwork.

So the whole thing about print heads is a wash. You can get similar quality with any of the current crop of print heads, so it's all about performance and speed now. Epson DX5s are basically disposable, and to get any real good quality you need to run 1/8th inch passes. Industrial heads like the Konicas should outlast Epson heads at least by a factor of 2 and are more tolerant when it comes to ink (Chinese ink is a great way to ruin Epson heads, since their QC is usually inconsistent at best).

Negative pressure and subtanks aren't really a hassle if the system is well designed, you have a negative pressure gauge, and you have a good idea what you're doing. It's just that when you have a negative pressure failure, and there are no ink traps, the ink can get sucked into the vacuum system and cause all sorts of headaches.
 

artbot

New Member
most of the km512s i've seen are 14, 35, and 42. does the 14 grayscale go below 14? if so that is something to consider. (i haven't seen any chinese models running the 1024)

the passes are the same quality familiar to all epson base printers. i run most of my prints at 720x720 four pass, varnish at 360x360 one pass, white ink at 360x720 2 and 3 pass. also, this company mentioned an epson tfp upgrade in the future available. some flatbed upgrades cost $50k. i'd assume this upgrade would be about $5000, maybe less.

also this is a small/medium shop printer. replacement parts are inexpensive.

encoder strip $40, encoder reader $16, ink pump $11, y motor $475, x motor $475, print head $798 (model F18600)

that's brand new channels for $1600. and the heads are practically plug ins. calibrating 16 heads is a chore compared to just two.

looks like you could buy a 6x10 for $38k and refurb it every two years for $3000. oce, vutek, agfa, jetis become prohibitively expensive to refurb. so the life span of
a printer and it's resale value are inextricably tied. buy it for cheap, print, refurb it and experience very little depreciation compared to a high end printer. not to mention
what if a shop with a $100k 4x8 flatbed printer was bidding against a shop with three $30k 4x8 flatbeds for a rush job? that is an unavoidable metric.

i'm sure a $100k konica printer has advantages. but for the same $100k i can go to china and get a printer, a cnc router, a glass laminating oven, a vacuum former, and a cnc wall glass cutter, and more. if all you do is print. then get the super expensive printer. but if you do specialty fabrication and such, capability trumps speed.
 

jhanson

New Member
Oh, I don't doubt that you can get more bang for your buck in China. However, all that capability is coming with the tradeoff being overall quality. You're going to experience more downtime due to random failures like bad solder joints, crimped cables, burned-out motors, and flaky (read: improperly grounded) solid-state electronics.

In your case, you love to tinker with your equipment and I have no doubt that in a month or two with Chinese equipment, you'll have it upgraded, altered and singing like a dream.

A complete novice who's just starting off with a print shop, on the other hand, would be pissed off and up to his eyeballs in debt because nothing he bought was working.

A lot of it comes with having a manufacturer willing to stand by their product for years. Chinese companies come and go so fast, with super-high employee turnover, that a product they launch today might be unsupported in a year or two. You'll still be able to get equivalent components in five years for most of it, but custom-designed components such as Epson head driver boards will be hard to come by without reverse-engineering (and since most of the Chinese logic is done in software, keyed to a security dongle, what happens when the dongle breaks 3 years down and the manufacturer has moved on?)

I know they're making great strides forward on this stuff -- and most of what I'm saying today will probably be fixed in a few years' time -- but it's always hit and miss over there.

In my case, the print shop I'm at doesn't go for the fast, cheap market. We strive for the best quality possible, so we need machines that will consistently produce high quality output, at high enough speeds to allow a reasonable turnaround, consistently. We can't really afford to have a machine that might barf on one out of every six boards it runs (I've seen Taiwanese-designed printers that do worse than that). Or a machine that goes down for days on end while we wait for parts; or a manufacturer that ships the wrong parts, with the wrong shipping method.

Now obviously it helps if you have multiple machines, but if all the redundant machines suffer from the same design flaws, it's no help -- or if you have to rob parts from one to fix another, and then run out of parts before new ones come in...

As far as production on the $100k vs 3x $30k machines, the $100k machine can get about 500 sq.ft/hr in production; the $30k machines can probably manage 180 sq.ft/hr on a good day at 4 passes. In 4x8 boards, that means that the $100k machine is spitting out about 14-15 boards per hour, while each of the $30k machines is doing 4-5 boards per hour. So again, it's kind of a wash -- until you factor in extra operators for the additional machines. From a labor perspective, it costs about the same to run 1 fast machine around the clock with 3 shifts as it does running 3 slow machines for 1 shift. If you have really good operators, they can probably keep track of two machines easily, go up to 3 and throughput is going to drop a little whenever the machines go out of sync.
 

artbot

New Member
i really appreciate all the input. i don't want you to think i am debating this. and i'm aware that if a seal or a heating element... whatever... isn't working. i will have to step back fix it, the whole time remind myself "this did cost $3800...not $22k" for each device. but knowing ahead of time, the cost of replacement parts and distance would allow for shelving everything. if i go with the dual dx5, i'll have two motors, encoder kit, capping station and pump all in stock at the shop. i've also seen a trend over the last year that these printers have become "open" ware from a build stand point. sure all printers of every cost level have outsourced motors and such. but the chinese seem to have doubled down on this. pumps, servo controllers, carriage boards, rails all seem to be the same and visibly labled right there in the machine appearing in all orders of machines across the range. i'd assume that this may change. but it's great to be able to just pull a part and get on the internet because the OEM part number for such and such is right there on part. and i'm sure after looking at the printer from linyi i'll oddly notice that the gantry is a "such and such" made possibly by a major chinese OEM, just transplanted. there are major players coming out of china and there are small builders.
the majors are here to stay.

from what i've seen, this last year more and more reviews of the chinese equipment ring the same. "it's not the best" or "it's not the most accurate"... but the horror stories of doa machines has ended. hell, HP and gerber and dupont are guilty of lemons in the last few years.
 
aye aye aye... yes there are good deals to be found in china. there are also how should I say this "not so good deals to be found as well"

service is hit or miss. unless you speak their language, communication can be hit or miss. and unless they have a US service staff..well if you can;t do it yourself...service is a miss.

i have mad multiple trips to china, ive met wonderful people, seem amazing technology and on the flip side i;ve seen a tremendous amount of equipment that is not yet ready for the mainstream. determining what you are buying based on a salesman's recommendation, a youtube video, or a 10 minute demo at a trade show is a foolish way to spend your money imo.

are there deals to be had...absolutely. finding them is harder than you can imagine. to the point of finding simple banner material, i can not tell you the amount of garbage i had to wade through before finding something suitable...and when we found it the savings were astronomical but it took a tremendous amount of time and money (not to mention training them to produce a product that would meet our standards).

if it sounds too good to be true, it most likely is...let the buyer beware.
 

artbot

New Member
we are at a tipping point guys. currently the chinese strike fighter is better than the US's strike fighter.

and that is why i'm going to shanghai myself. i know what to look for, no different than picking out any other piece of equipment. currently chris190 has got his dual dx5 chinese printer (witcolor 9000) inked up. it will be very interesting to see how well this printer performs over the next year.

here's a video of a "piece of crap" witcolor ultra 9000 printing one pass at 700 sfph. these are the same numbers that the linyi winwin flatbed will print at.

http://youtu.be/6RHt4jlRPaA
 

jhanson

New Member
Well, let us know what you see at Shanghai. I'm sure you would be able to put together a report rivalling Dr. Hellmuth's FLAAR reports :D

Having said that, single-pass 700 sf/hr with two DX5 heads strikes me as unrealistic given the nature of ink supply systems and the restrictions inherent in the DX5 itself. Mutoh (although, granted their heads were inline) had trouble getting a workable two-pass print mode for the ValueJet 1618, and it still didn't look as good as the four-pass output. I think the ValueJet 1638 (which staggered the heads and replaced the 1618) normally gets around 300 sq.ft/hr in production mode, with reasonable quality.

Expecting a Chinese printer with "roughly" the same head config as a 1638 (probably the more available older-model heads with the 21 picoliter max drop) to hold consistent 700 sq.ft/hr output... I just don't see it happening.

You'd need four heads for that, and we all know what fun Mimaki had getting that to work.

Then again, UV ink is somewhat of another story since the ink cures on every pass. Optimistically.
 

artbot

New Member
witcolor discusses in their literature a proprietary dither called "random fuzzy dotting technology" specifically running low pass prints.

trust me on this. if i go to china and all i see is squeeking, jiggling, banding, pausing,
non-curing printers, ...i'll come back and report that it was a waste of time and i decided to buy a used acuity, etc. i'm open minded. and will have to be convinced because i am spending investors money at this point. if i'm wrong, i'm dead.
 
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