Heres my 2 cents..
We have been running the LX 800 for a few weeks now.
The current project and main reason we bought the machine will keep the machine fed 24/7 until April with a total of 850,000 s/f of print. The requirements for the project would not allow Solvent or UV cure printing as we have done in past and Latex was the only way to do it and meet requirements.
http://www.piworld.com/article/merr...ntal-demands-hp-scitex-large-format-printer/1
This project requires to print 2 rolls up of 51" x 450' foot media.
The dual roll system on the LX is not as user friendly as some of our other machines and takes a bit longer to web up also. It is also very particular to the weights of materials. Part of the problem is on our end using such big heavy rolls the other part of the problem is the differential system on the dual cores which could and I am sure will be upgraded over time.
The quality coming off machine is amazing but speed is slower than what we have run this job at in the past on our Vutek. That is the trade off we went from running at 1800 s/f/h to right around 650 s/f/h on the LX. With that being said we did get 6 extra weeks to meet this deadline.
I would not suggest a 104" machine the size is going to limit you. You cannot run 10ft goods and even if you were going to run 2 up on the machine you cannot run 54" rolls or 60" rolls just 48". If you are gonna make the investment by the bigger machine. You will most def grow into it and expand capabilities.
As far as rip stations go I have or will never run two machine off of one rip. Not only for bottleneck bust it is just plain counter productive. Each machine should have a dedicated rip station. Also running Caldera on a Mac is foolish also. Why use a $4,000 Mac that should be in pre press to rip the same files a $1,200 PC can do? Yes, Caldera is well worth it over Onyx...
All in all the LX and latex technology is great and we are pleased so far. The machine is also super easy to run and way less of a learning curve than any Grand Format machine we have ever had. My 3rd shift LX operator guy never ran a printer before just did finishing. He was running on his own with no issues in 2 days...
THE MACHINE WILL MAKE YOU $$$$
Hope that offers some help. Feel free to hit me up if you have any other questions.
M-