Old flatbed

[10sacer]

Have a CET Q5 sitting in a storage unit I would dearly love to stop paying for (storage, that is). What do I do with this thing? Anybody want it? It's a special made 16-head unit that worked really well before "life" happened. Needs all new heads. All else is fine. Can't find a scrap metal company who will come get it in Charlotte, NC.
Any ideas welcome.

 

[balstestrat]

Put it on ebay?

 

[netsol]

wouldn't the price of 16 heads be almost the Gross Domestic Product of a small country?

 

[netsol]

Have a CET Q5 sitting in a storage unit I would dearly love to stop paying for (storage, that is). What do I do with this thing? Anybody want it? It's a special made 16-head unit that worked really well before "life" happened. Needs all new heads. All else is fine. Can't find a scrap metal company who will come get it in Charlotte, NC.
Any ideas welcome.

in the 1970's i ess involved with a convenience store chain. thry had a dairy and bottling facility.

thry bought a bottle sterilizer that weiged about 20,000lbs, was 12 ft in diameter and cost over $500,000. 3 years later the whole industry went to blow molded plastic bottles.
we put the machine outside, (it was stainless steel). we turned down $40,000 for it, from a buyer.

3 years later, we needed the space for an expansion. we paid $25,000 to have it cut into manageable pieces and carted away. this is a lesson in the meaning of TIME VALUE.

 

[Mike Paul]

Craigslist free.
The scrappers will be all over it.

Years ago I had really old piece of crap stand up file cabinet I kept paint in. It was rusted, full of dents and paint drips. Put it Craigslist free and got around 5 calls in an hour or two, gone the same day.

 

[netsol]

yes, the scrappers went to the trouble to unbolt and steel the heavy steel cover for the generator on my versalift bucket truck while it was at a friend's shop. they can be very enterprising

 

[GC Decor]

Scrap it, or put it on FB Marketplace for free. The cost of the heads alone makes the machine worthless.

 

[ikarasu]

You only need 2 heads. With 2 heads you can print a 4x8 in 12 mins... Not the fastest but pretty good.


Heads are 3.5k each, and easily user replaceable.

If all that's wrong with the machine is heads... You could buy heads for 7k, out then in yourself and sell it for 15-20k easily... A lot of used ones go for 30-45k depending on head config.


It's an older machine, but still a great one! I wouldn't scrap it. Get it up and running and sell it to a local sign shop.... At 20k a shop can make their money back very quickly, and in my experience everyone with space would buy a 20k flatbed so they can skip roll to roll printing. It should sell quickly if you get it running.

 

[netsol]

You only need 2 heads. With 2 heads you can print a 4x8 in 12 mins... Not the fastest but pretty good.


Heads are 3.5k each, and easily user replaceable.

If all that's wrong with the machine is heads... You could buy heads for 7k, out then in yourself and sell it for 15-20k easily... A lot of used ones go for 30-45k depending on head config.


It's an older machine, but still a great one! I wouldn't scrap it. Get it up and running and sell it to a local sign shop.... At 20k a shop can make their money back very quickly, and in my experience everyone with space would buy a 20k flatbed so they can skip roll to roll printing. It should sell quickly if you get it running.

I am not an expert on these, but,
I am not sure you can "back off" from 16 heads, all the way to 2
As you increase the number of heads, I would think the machine overwrites firmware, juggles memory addresses, etc, changes encoding.
While the engineers anticipated UPGRADES & allowed an upgrade path, I don't know that they were greatly concerned with DOWNGRADE path. It might be necessary to replace a formatter board or whatever holds the firmware.

If I thought it was that simple, I would have the box truck warming up already (nobody is more fearless about starting a project that might be above his skill level than I am)

 

[balstestrat]

I am not an expert on these, but,
I am not sure you can "back off" from 16 heads, all the way to 2
As you increase the number of heads, I would think the machine overwrites firmware, juggles memory addresses, etc, changes encoding.
While the engineers anticipated UPGRADES & allowed an upgrade path, I don't know that they were greatly concerned with DOWNGRADE path. It might be necessary to replace a formatter board or whatever holds the firmware.

If I thought it was that simple, I would have the box truck warming up already (nobody is more fearless about starting a project that might be above his skill level than I am)

It can be that simple. Many machines have a menu to select if you want to print with only some printheads or rows.
You might end up having to make a new printmode/profile or whatever but still many times you can disable some of the heads/rows.

 

[netsol]

It can be that simple. Many machines have a menu to select if you want to print with only some printheads or rows.
You might end up having to make a new printmode/profile or whatever but still many times you can disable some of the heads/rows.

If I didn't have the bad habit of starting 12 projects at once, I WOULD go warm the truck up, then

 

[garyroy]

Call CET, ask their opinion.
They might have a customer who is running two of them and would love to have yours.
You might even get 5K for it used.

 

[ikarasu]

I am not an expert on these, but,
I am not sure you can "back off" from 16 heads, all the way to 2
As you increase the number of heads, I would think the machine overwrites firmware, juggles memory addresses, etc, changes encoding.
While the engineers anticipated UPGRADES & allowed an upgrade path, I don't know that they were greatly concerned with DOWNGRADE path. It might be necessary to replace a formatter board or whatever holds the firmware.

If I thought it was that simple, I would have the box truck warming up already (nobody is more fearless about starting a project that might be above his skill level than I am)

We have a CET Q5 (Paid 20K For it, in good working condition... We looked it up and the next closest in price was 45-50k, so it was a steal) - It started with 4 heads, 2 werent that great...ran it for a few years, all on original heads - finally we decided to upgrade, bought 2 heads and just installed them last week... now it's printing great, all from youtube videos CET put out themselves.

CET is very user replaceable, they design it around the users doing all the repairs - They even have courses that teach you to be a "Tech" for free every once in awhile. Covid put a wrench in it, so we're awaiting for them to open it up - But their system is SO much more open than any other system we used... it's refreshing.


I've never seen a 16 head... I believe ours fits 8 heads. But on our machine you can select the head configuration in a drop down menu. CET is very open and will send you upgraded firmware / BIOS through E-mail if you ask, so if it is some custom firmare... I don't see why they wouldn't send you the original to flash it back to 8 heads.


If its been sitting in storage for years and needs all new heads... I'm going to guess the ink lines werent flushed though. Not a biggy... it's $20 for 50 FT of the line, so for under $100 you can re-run them all. Easy access underneath the machine... But It's like running Cat cable... "Easy" but a pain in the ass when you're crawling through such tight spaces! And I'm sure a slew of other things would need to be changed if it werent properly put into storage mode. But its honestly one of the easiest / user friendly printers I've found for repairs - We havent taken the course and we've reached out a few times and theyve sent detailed instructions on what the problem is, and how to fix it every time. Usually it's due to lack of training since we bought the printer used... but theyve done quite a bit of support for us, even though we dont even use CET ink and we use vanguard ink instead. It's a great company, and if I were to buy a new flatbed, I dont think I'd buy from anyone else!

 

[Django]

Would require 4 heads minimum. If I recall correctly, they are single channel heads.

 

[ikarasu]

Nope, the q5 is dual channel heads.


I just replaced ours last week - super simple, 3 screws, swap over the hoses and that's it. Took 15 mins for the first.... 2 mins for the second afterni knew I wasn't going to break it.

Then alignment which took an hourish to get perfect.

 

[trevorf93]

Have a CET Q5 sitting in a storage unit I would dearly love to stop paying for (storage, that is). What do I do with this thing? Anybody want it? It's a special made 16-head unit that worked really well before "life" happened. Needs all new heads. All else is fine. Can't find a scrap metal company who will come get it in Charlotte, NC.
Any ideas w

Have a CET Q5 sitting in a storage unit I would dearly love to stop paying for (storage, that is). What do I do with this thing? Anybody want it? It's a special made 16-head unit that worked really well before "life" happened. Needs all new heads. All else is fine. Can't find a scrap metal company who will come get it in Charlotte, NC.
Any ideas welcome.

Message me about this machine if you havnt done anything with it yet

 

[Django]

Shouldve added more details. I'm pretty sure it's a 500Q/Q500, which would be a 4x8 with gen 4 heads, which should be single channel heads.
CET never made 16head/4 row Q5s.

Btw, hey Sean! Hope all is well.