Replacing LX850

[enis1986]

So finally after a year and a half of messing around with the LX850, and having ton of problems with it. My boss is looking to replace the LX850 with another printer. We need a workhorse basically and with all the color inconsistencies from panel to panel we were having with the LX850 there was no way that we could continue with this printer. Not only the color shifts but also banding and heat marks on solid colors.

After our research of different printers I keep going back to Seiko's H2 series and the new M-64.

Does anybody have any other suggestions.

 

[Robert Gruner]

Enis,

Sorry to hear your trials and tribulations with the LX850? We have many clients running that printer with no serious problems. That said, what is your specific application?

Do you really want to go back to mild solvent? Smell? Cleaning?

Speed would seem to be important to you ere you wouldn't have sprung for the LX850.

I would recommend you look closely at the Mimaki UJV-500 63" wide high speed LED UV ink roll to roll printer. It screams and the output is very nice.

Let us know what you settle on?

Good Printing!

Bob Gruner

 

[enis1986]

We mostly print vehicle wraps and signage. But fleet wraps are a huge part of our company that is why it is important for us to purchase something reliable. I am still researching about the Mimaki you have mentioned but as far as LX850 we've had numerous techs out here and nobody could tell me what was wrong with it. HP even told me thats the nature of the beast. That is ridiculous!

 

[Robert Gruner]

I wish some of the LX850 end users who post here would comment. I resell the product, so I must be biased?

We have many (yes, many) LX850 and LX600 customers who rely heavily upon their latex printer for "fleet graphics", and very few complaints. I would like to think HP is doing something right and that we are doing something right.

Our clients are printing from Onyx or Caldera PS RIPS onto 3M, Oracal, and Avery products with huge success.

What seems to be your problem?

BTW, the Mimaki roll to roll UV is right up Fleet Graphics alley! Nice UV, nice color, very fast, and laminated with clear cast pvc will last as long outdoors as any others.

Bob Gruner/Houston

 

[jmcnicoll]

I too see issues with the LX850. I don't believe it to be a high end high quality machine, but rather a high production printer meant to print entire rolls at a time, roll after roll after roll.

jim

 

[BigfishDM]

Oh man that sucks because latex is a great machine for vehicle wrap applications, is there anyway to use the smaller latex models and get a big solvent for all your other needs? I see a lot of shops that are running a combo of latex and solvent and majority are using their latex just for wraps and everything else goes onto a vutek or other high production machines.

 

[Nishan]

We have run approx 3000sqm thru our new seiko m64s , since we installed it 2 weeks ago. We have some industry leading printers... Durst Rho500r, Durst p10 250, latex 26500, mimaki jv5 320ds, jeti 5024. We bought this to run a fleet branding contract of 3 to 4000 sqm of temp vehicle branding... running 50m rolls of ritrama rijet100 every 2 hours. I would have bought mimaki jv33, but the speed is 3 times faster... we just find it easier to run this type of work on a mid solvent thanthe latex.

 

[danno]

We have a LX800 here running the 600 series ink set. Have had panel matching issues from the day we fired it up. We have written custom profiles and played with various temperature settings and have arrived at a happy medium. If a panel gets botched during install a day or 2 later, we see a colour shift. Some colours are harder to match panel to panel than others. We have also looked at the H2 and the M series. I do like the way the solvent prints on a few of our medias over the latex. I have found that room and outdoor temperature, humidity, barometer and just general weather conditions affect the print colours of the latex. We are fully climate controlled in the shop, but sometimes the outside does affect what is going on inside.

 

[KevSign]

why LX850? Sorry not working for you.

We bough used LX800 2 months ago (175,000 sqft) with 610 ink working great for us. Print too many 10ft banners and Fibermark paper for window display from Nusign, Vinyl wrap and mural we print on our L25500 or L28500.

I think local tech or HP tech properly not good support for your LX (Nusign is great call them next day or same day service)

Our shop only HP Latex working day in and day out without any problems, lover the quality, less smell, less problem or print head dry.

Our equip for wholesale to trade local sign shop only: HP FB500 64", LX800 10ft, LX28500 104" (great for 2 sided print on window graphic), New addition but used L28500 replace our L25500.

 

[enis1986]

If it's a busy image the lx850 runs great but soon as I get into solid colors I will get banding everywhere and heat marks will start popping up in different spots of the panels. And the techs that were out here keep telling to slow the printer down to 18 pass and that doesn't make sense when I am running a 53' trailer. Now we have 2 L26500 which are running great but you cannot print below 10 pass if you want really good quality.

We are keeping the the 2 L26500 and are looking to replace the lx850 with a solvent printer.
We will be going to demo a H2 and M64 Seiko pretty soon.

A lot of our business is 53' Trailers and we need more reliable printers when it comes to color matching. I had several jobs that I printed at the start of 2013 and had to reprint a few panels in June and cannot get them to match...it is a huge headache.

 

[chafro]

Too bad, we been printing roll after roll after roll, day and night,,,, it's been a workhorse of a printer for us.