Old "Dead" Printer - What to do?

[Warmoth]

I'm sure this is the right board for this, apologies if it's not.

Brief background. At our shop we ran a Roland SP-300v close to nonstop from 2005-2012.
In 2012 We decided to upgrade to a 54" for larger jobs (4'x8' prints, Yay) and to relieve the original printer.

Well, the old printer gave out on us about a year later or so. Various issues had arisen with it. Primarily, problems reading and recognizing material / Pinch Rollers, and the heater wasn't working right.

We didn't attend to it right away since we had the new printer taking the load. And to be honest, they wanted an absurd amount of money just to come look at it.
A few weeks had passed. We came in one morning and found that one of the ink cartridges had "exploded". I'm still not sure what happened but there was ink on the floor on both ends of the printer.

And it has sat there since then. I'd say close to 2 years.

We asked our Roland dealer if they would want to buy it back to refurbish/resell it or something. They guy pretty much said (without even looking at it) it's garbage, throw it out. I guess because of how old it was, also it only being a 30".

Should we just bite the bullet and toss it in the dumpster? It hurts, knowing how much it cost originally. But it's just sitting there rotting away.

Before anyone points it out, I do regret the way we've neglected this machine in it's final days. Lessons learned.

What would you guys do?

 

[Snydo]

Ebay it as a parts machine, some savvy individual will buy it.

 

[Solventinkjet]

We sell used SP300Vs more than any other used printer. They are one of the best in my opinion. Your machine probably needs about $2000 in repairs which mostly reflects the cost of the heads and if you do the work yourself. If you can get one or both of the heads firing, definitely don't throw it away. The exploded ink is probably from the cap top wicking the ink through the system while it sat and it just went everywhere once the waste bottle filled all the way up. That would be my only concern as the ink being on both side means it could have hit some electronics on the way as it traveled across the printer.

Long story short:

An SP300V in perfect working condition is worth about $4000 to $6000 depending on your area and how many miles it has on it.

An SP300V in the condition yours is in is worth about $1500 - $2500. (Not as much but much better than throwing it out!)

If you live in a populated area, especially a bigger city, you will find a buyer. As mentioned above, we take these in on trade in all the time and sell them within a month or so after refurbishing them. We rarely have one sit in the demo room for more than 3 months.

 

[MikePro]

heck of an effort to refurbish that machine, and hardly worth it for a 30". i have a 54" printer that's worth much more and haven't sold it in nearly 4 years, so I'm parting it out.
you can search for the parts on the machine worth salvaging & parting-out on ebay (boards, power supply, motors, sensors, etc.), bag it up, list it, and throw away the rest to recover the space it is taking up.

even if you did chuck it in all in the dumpster, its already paid for itself. no biggie.
buuuut a couple extra bucks in the Christmas party fund is always nice, and you might just be somebody's hero someday by having a part readily available to save their printer.

 

[Techman]

I have an old encad that I keep running from parts I got around the web. It still prints just fine for about 88% of the work I sell. For example. I just did a banner and some table covers for an expo here.
It still makes money and costs pennies to operate.
Likewise..
Some one will buy your printer parts if they have any skill at all to fix their own.

 

[Warmoth]

I appreciate all the replies. I guess we'll hang on to it for now. I'll have to look into listing it somewhere.

We're in the Houston area if anyone reads this and is interested!

 

[bannertime]

We traded two of our old printers 10 years and 15 years old in on a new printer. The company wanted the main boards for something and gave us more than what the actual machine was worth, picked up, and dumped them for us. It was great.

 

[boxerbay]

a 30" printer? not worth it to repair. strip it for parts and sell them on EBAY and toss the rest.

 

[boxerbay]

maybe hang on to it. Canon had a program with a $3000 rebate if you turned in your old printer. working or not. We scanned the SKU of it and bought a new Canon IPF9400 60" printer with the rebate.

 

[2B]

trade it in on new equipment, there are plenty of vendors who will offer rebates and you can upgrade your tools