Recommend a printer for big solid colors

[Thomasleppa]

Hi all,

Tricky question. We're currently running HP Latex 365 & 700 (with PrintFactory RIP), and are considering a new machine for a very specific job: printing big areas of solid colors. The HP is not doing a good enough job with these, as they are too prone to grain/banding/variation in quality.

We're printing solid color panels on 35m rolls of coated wallpaper, and main hope would be to find a machine which would be more consistent and reliable than the HP (specially with grain). All vendors claim that their machine is the best, and this is not really something you can test well enough neither just with a few test prints. So I was wondering if anyone here would have any specific machine to recommend that they would have used more extensively?

Our budget is not the greatest, so we would be looking at the lower side of the price spectrum.

Greatly appreciate any tips,
Thomas

 

[greysquirrel]

colorado M series if you have the budget or Epson s40, 60 80

 

[MarkSnelling]

The Colorado is amazingly consistent....but anything with permanent heads (solvent or UV) will give you more consistent solid colors than a consumable head will. I've sold some major wall covering jobs over the years and many of them fell into my lap because someone had latex and couldn't produce a solid color over multiple panels on one wall.

 

[victor bogdanov]

Colorado is hard to beat for wallpaper, always consistent colors and panel size. Reprints months later match perfectly

 

[Thomasleppa]

Thank you all. I have heard good things about Colorado before, so nice to get confirmation here.