Right time to purchase new machine / inks

[ams]

Roland is the way to go. Why do you want a stand alone cutter? What is wrong with a print/cut?

 

[GAC05]

Roland is the way to go. Why do you want a stand alone cutter? What is wrong with a print/cut?

Only so many hours in the day.....
In a production environment you want to be cutting and printing, not cutting or printing.


wayne k
guam usa

 

[BigfishDM]

Roland is the way to go. Why do you want a stand alone cutter? What is wrong with a print/cut?

Its slow speed is the main reason and when your cutting you cant print. The cutting speeds on the print then cut machines is about 23ips and a stand alone cutter like a Graphtec is about 59ips so its more than twice the production speed. Plus its solvent inks that are bad for the environment, where do you dispose of your ink? What do you do with your empty cartridges? How much do you pay to store your waste ink in those 50drum barrels? How much does it cost you to dispose your ink? What a hassle in my opinion, oh and LATEX is a waterbased 3-5 year OUTDOOR ink and you don't have to worry about those questions above.

Do you ever laminate any of the prints that you cut? If pricing for a print then cut combo printer is more expensive than a printer that is twice the speed on printability with a stand alone cutter that is twice the speed of my combo machine then it would make sense to me to go with the faster better quality printing solution. The print quality in my opinion is superior with HP Latex vs. Solvent/Eco and there is no outgassing which in theory can save you countless hours of cure time that your suppose to do with Solvent prints.

Other great things Latex has that no others have are.
1. Virtually No Banding.
2. Only machine under $50k that has a MCS warranty. (Just upgraded to 6 years)
3. Most Scratch Resistant Inks, literally eliminating the need to laminate in many applications.
4. 3-5 year outdoor durability with indoor quality.
5. Many more materials available to print onto. (My favorite part )
6. Its less expensive to buy.
7. Its faster and more efficient.
8. Only machine that has on onboard Optical Media Sensor. (Makes it so you can run at much higher speeds without banding)
9. No need for a variable dot when your print heads have 3 times the density of all others.
10. MOST EVIORMENTALLY FRIENDLY MACHINE IN THE INDUSTRY.
11. Best machine for Vehicle Wraps, Backlit Signage, Paper, Decals, Banners, Fabric that is not Dye Sub, Wall Graphics, Interior Design, Hospital Graphics, Corporate Graphics, Canvas, and SGP Graphics.
12. Lower ink costs vs. OEM Ink.
13. Best in its class for media profiling and color management.
14. No Daily or weekly maintenance. (This comes out to a significant amount of money when you consider the time involved)
15. Changeable print heads allowing you to keep the highest print quality. (In solvent machines your print heads start degrading instantly)
16. Its Web connected.


I'm sure there is more.

 

[BigfishDM]

I would bet a lot of money that if HP setup every dealer who wanted to distribute this technology that solvent printers would be eliminated from the market in a matter of years. Lol I have been one of those guys for many years. I had access to another brand of Latex and it just never came close to the price and speeds of the HP unfortunately and I don't see anything coming close to competing, UV is also very similar to the Latex and those are excellent options as well in my opinion.

 

[jfiscus]

Excellent real time feedback thanks for sharing! Do you happen to be running one of the older latex models? I am under the impression that the time has been drastically reduced now with the new convection heater element. Something like under 2 minutes is what one user said. Also what did it cost to add an additional heater?

No, we have the brand new HP 360. It is quite slow at warming up after idling, especially if you want to change materials. You have to let it wake up, then tell it you want to unload, then go through unloading, removing the roll from the core, putting the new roll on the core, loading, fixing skew errors, approve a couple quick prompts, waiting 1-2 minutes to warm up, then getting it taped down. Once you've got that accomplished, it prints well and fast. After printing it takes a couple minutes to cool off before you can cut it off, then start unloading.

With the Epson you put the roll on the holder, slide it through, clamp it down, hit "ok" to confirm material and you're printing moments later.
The additional dryer came with the Epson when we purchased it, but I think they said it was about a $1500 upgrade originally.

Getting back out of the printer room and to our desks faster is always better.

And I don't care what ANYONE here says - the latex produces an "odor" that hurts our throats if we stand in there for a minute.
The Epson you can barely smell when running heavy ink, and you all know how bad a Mimaki smells (and how bad it is for you).

 

[DerbyCitySignGuy]

Wasn't there some kind of issue with the internal profiles on the HP latex printers superseding any custom profiles? I remember reading a thread on Signs 101, and I think it was the HP, but I could be mistaken.

 

[papabud]

i like everyone else do not like the wake up and warm up times of my hp 360.
my other printer is a mutoh. its load times are a lot faster but i mostly only run one material. which is a quick and easy load on either machine.
but i dont think i have even used my mutoh in 6 months. the quality of my latex out weighs the start up times.
i print laminate and cut pretty much everything so i am normally laminating and cutting something while i have something else printing.
as far as the odor. i havent really noticed anything that is bothersome.
i really love the quality and having a built in color calibration is a time saver.
the take up leaves a little to be desired but once your used to it. it really isnt that big of a deal for us.
we dont do a lot of rush same day prints but when we have to. its really nice to have not to wait on something to outgas