Printer advice

[Gabriel N]

Hello, Signs101 members!

My name is Gabriel, and this is my first post on the site. I'm looking forward to being part of the community.

I need some advice on buying a printer. It will be used mostly to print wallpaper and canvas.

I narrowed it down to HP Latex 800, Colorado 1630, and Epson R5000.

Every printer has its pros and cons, and it's hard for me to make a decision. For the HP Latex 800, I am concerned about the consistency of color and the differences in the length of the panels. At Colorado 1630, the higher maintenance costs, and at Epson R5000, being a new model, it is difficult to estimate how reliable it is.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

Thank you!

 

[Pauly]

Welcome!

Colorado high maintenance cost???
All you do is weekly cleaning on it.

For wallpaper, Colorado is your answer anyway. Especially matte mode.
No need for laminate as the ink is very durable and no dry time.
Colour is consistent and so is the print size.

 

[GC Decor]

I agree with Pauly. Colorado has been an awesome printer for us.
Maintenance is once a week and printer stays powered and cleans and adjust automatically. There is so much automation from color tracking to loading. Loading is the fastest I have ever seen - place the roll rod into the roll and drop it in the feeder drawer. With the 1650 you can automatically switch between 2 rolls - saves so much time.
If you can front the cost of the 1650 - check it out. You get double the printer heads and all the options like matte and double roll feeder for no additional add on fees.
Hope this was helpful

 

[karst41]

There is an HP Latex Group on FB

The 700/800 series gets bad reviews. You have some seriously disgruntled users
of the 700/800

After the Latex 365 comes the 560/570 These are roll to roll wrap machines
and you forfeit 6' minimum from every roll.
But those are designed to crank out 2 rolls per day, and does it quite well.

The comments on the Colorado are interesting.
Cost Factor? The right printer for you and your customer negates cost factor.
- should -

 

[Mike Perth]

Hi Gabriel,
Welcome aboard!
We have a 800W which we use for wallpaper and glazing film. I can’t fault the print quality with white on clear and frosted films, it’s stunning even if sandwich printing is super slow.
There are better options available for wallpaper printing as mentioned above.
Cheers

 

[victor bogdanov]

Get the Colorado 1650, the lower ink cost over the 1630 will pay the price difference between the 2 machines if you are printing even a couple of rolls per day. I recently made the 1630 vs 1650 choice, very glad I went with the 1650

By maintenance cost you probably are referring to the service contract price. I did not get the service contract yet but will once the 1 year warranty comes to an end. There is no 64" printer that comes close to the Colorado

Do the math on ink cost of 1650 and 1630

 

[victor bogdanov]

Also I think the ink cost savings with the 1650 will more than cover service contract etc. I'm averaging about 9 cents per sqft in ink cost, I think most other printers will be higher.

 

[Gabriel N]

Thank you very much for the warm welcome and answers!

Colorado high maintenance cost???

I was referring to the service contract, which is much more expensive than HP or Epson, and the cost of replacing the printheads.

Get the Colorado 1650, the lower ink cost over the 1630 will pay the price difference between the 2 machines if you are printing even a couple of rolls per day. I recently made the 1630 vs 1650 choice, very glad I went with the 1650

I'll do the math to see if it's worth buying the 1650.

 

[Pauly]

Thank you very much for the warm welcome and answers!

I was referring to the service contract, which is much more expensive than HP or Epson, and the cost of replacing the printheads.

I'll do the math to see if it's worth buying the 1650.

You wont be replacing print heads as often as the rest of the printers.

The service contract is not really needed, but always recommended for the first year to solve any hiccups etc.

The colorado is on another level compares to the other 2 machines. Go get demos.

 

[Gabriel N]

You wont be replacing print heads as often as the rest of the printers.

The service contract is not really needed, but always recommended for the first year to solve any hiccups etc.

The colorado is on another level compares to the other 2 machines. Go get demos.

I went to a demo. It's the same dealer for HP Latex and Oce Colorado. They promoted Latex as the best solution for the application I needed. I was convinced by Latex, for odorless prints, easy and quick replacement of printheads, and a cheaper purchase cost and service contract. Then I started looking for user reviews on the forum and there were a lot of reliability issues.

I'm going to do a new demo for Colorado.

Thanks a lot for the answers; they were very helpful!

 

[jfiscus]

I have not used a Colorado, so I cannot help with that.
I have used Latex and we were never able to get consistent color out of ours, even in a VERY well climate controlled environment. The color always faded a LOT from the start of the print to the end of the print. And then reprint panels were always a different hue. Print sizes did vary, but most of what we print are wraps so they could stretch if necessary. Wallpapers and non-stretch would definitely be sketchy for panel alignments. We sold our latex after 6 months. The only advantage to going with latex is that it had some particular wallpaper substrates you can print to that eco-solvents cannot print to, but there are probably new solutions out there for that.

We are currently running 3 Epson S60600 printers here. They absolutely FLY through vinyl. We can easily print 3 rolls per printer in an 8 hour work day. You can laminate next day, and even same day if you can speed up the offgassing or if the print isn't very saturated. We have had no issues with our heads and only do about 5 minutes per printer per week of manual cleaning.

I hear the Epson R-series are very nice also, but why get a slower printer? They cannot compete with an S60600 as far as speed.

 

[victor bogdanov]

The service contract is not really needed, but always recommended for the first year to solve any hiccups etc.

The printer comes with a one year warranty, the 1st year is when the contract is not needed imo. I've had Canon out 2-3 times (including part replacements) and have called them a few times all covered under warranty. (printheads not covered under warranty but same goes for the service contract)

After my year warranty is up I'm getting the contract for the printhead discounts as I'm printing a good amount