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S80600 Users: Do you print Red and Orange ink for outdoor use?

Do you print with Red and Orange ink for outdoor use?

  • Yes, with zero issues related to R/O ink.

    Votes: 3 50.0%

  • Yes, unsure of issues because printer is less than 1 year old.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • No, because we had issues in the past.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • No, because we heard of issues but never experienced them ourselves.

    Votes: 3 50.0%
  • Total voters
    6
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We've had an s80600 for about 8 months now, great machine. Because of mainly reading on here about poor durability of R and O ink outdoors, we use an outdoor profile that omits R and O ink. I'm wondering how many shops do this, and how many shops use R/O for outdoor. And how have the R and O inks held up outdoors?

We printed some tests and put them on the roof, laminated and unlaminated, with and without R/O ink. Only been 8 months in the northeast, but they still look as good as the control prints.. The thing is some colors look a whole lot better using all the ink colors, but we don't want prematurely fading signs out there either. And I can't help but wonder if we are avoiding R/O just because a couple people had issues and posted all over about it, or is this actually a problem. To compound the matter, I've read back on some threads and it seems maybe this was more of an issue with the previous generation surecolor s70.

So if you could please answer the poll and post some details about your experience, good or bad. If anybody has photos to share of any fading or failures that'd be great too.
 
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Is it possible for a Moderator to change the poll results to public? Would like to be able to message some respondents directly. Sorry, first poll I've created and didn't realize what that option was.
 
Christian @ Visual Graphx

Christian @ Visual Graphx

Active Member
Epson and the dealers. The material manufacturers even cover it. Here is 3Ms where they specifically exclude Red and Orange from any warranty: https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media...0-s80680-epson-3m-ultrachrome-gs3-ink-red.pdf

Its misleading when it says with Red, but if you call 3M they will tell you it is excluding Red and Orange like the subheading states. This is the reason why we were going to stick with the S60, the expanded gamut isn't covered so why even run it unless all you do is indoor.
 
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2CT Media said:
Epson and the dealers. The material manufacturers even cover it. Here is 3Ms where they specifically exclude Red and Orange from any warranty: https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media...0-s80680-epson-3m-ultrachrome-gs3-ink-red.pdf

Its misleading when it says with Red, but if you call 3M they will tell you it is excluding Red and Orange like the subheading states. This is the reason why we were going to stick with the S60, the expanded gamut isn't covered so why even run it unless all you do is indoor.
Click to expand...

Yes I've seen this before for the waranty from 3M, but I've not seen anything directly from epson about it. And I would imagine there are quite a few s80 owners who have never heard about the R/O ink being bad, so there is most likely a lot of people printing it for outdoor. And if that's true, they've been out long enough now that you'd hear a lot more about actual fading issues?

Even without R/O we see a huge difference in print quality vs 4 and 6 color printers because of the Light Black. So for us this is more important than the additional speed of the s60.
 
Christian @ Visual Graphx

Christian @ Visual Graphx

Active Member
Signed Out said:
Yes I've seen this before for the waranty from 3M, but I've not seen anything directly from epson about it. And I would imagine there are quite a few s80 owners who have never heard about the R/O ink being bad, so there is most likely a lot of people printing it for outdoor. And if that's true, they've been out long enough now that you'd hear a lot more about actual fading issues?

Even without R/O we see a huge difference in print quality vs 4 and 6 color printers because of the Light Black. So for us this is more important than the additional speed of the s60.
Click to expand...
I agree with you, I was just giving you our input. Also with the PL dot size on the epson, you don't need LK, LC, LM honestly... its achievable through a really good profile build and the proper dot pattern selection.
 
U

unclebun

Active Member
Even though our S70670 only has the orange ink, before we found out that it wasn't outdoor durable, the prints we did with it lasted about 6-9 months on vehicles and signs before the orange fading was becoming evident. We had a fleet of trucks that had a yellow to orange fade plus some red lettering. The fade turned to just yellow in about a year and a half, and the red lettering turns magenta. Once we figured out what was happening (there was no documentation from Epson except for the white and silver) we made profiles that didn't use the orange.

We still use the orange ink for powersports graphics because of the better gamut, and don't encounter fading problems because the exposure to sunlight isn't constant and the graphics are generally replaced every few months anyway.
 
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greysquirrel said:
Orange, red, white and silver only good indoors. Silver cannot be laminated or else it turns grey.
Click to expand...

What about the use of white as a base when printing clear decals? How do they hold up outdoors?

unclebun said:
Even though our S70670 only has the orange ink, before we found out that it wasn't outdoor durable, the prints we did with it lasted about 6-9 months on vehicles and signs before the orange fading was becoming evident. We had a fleet of trucks that had a yellow to orange fade plus some red lettering. The fade turned to just yellow in about a year and a half, and the red lettering turns magenta. Once we figured out what was happening (there was no documentation from Epson except for the white and silver) we made profiles that didn't use the orange.

We still use the orange ink for powersports graphics because of the better gamut, and don't encounter fading problems because the exposure to sunlight isn't constant and the graphics are generally replaced every few months anyway.
Click to expand...

So this is partly why I started the poll, because I haven't really heard of any issues related to the GS3 inks in the newer surecolors. We are right in that window of 6-9 months for our test prints. So I'll keep an eye on them but so far no issues.
 
BVG

BVG

New Member
When we did our 80600 demo their lead tech guy said they have an internal white paper on the durability of red/orange inks being the same as regular CMYK.

I could look at the paper there, but couldn't take a copy because it contained proprietary info on their ink.
 
ProColorGraphics

ProColorGraphics

New Member
Signed Out said:
That's good to know. Any red or orange prints out in the field that you've been keeping your eye on?
Click to expand...
Not in particular. I have never been worried about it, so haven't kept track. I will look at various signs/graphics when I go by them. But that is to mostly check out to see that there aren't any edges lifting, etc.
 
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BVG said:
When we did our 80600 demo their lead tech guy said they have an internal white paper on the durability of red/orange inks being the same as regular CMYK.

I could look at the paper there, but couldn't take a copy because it contained proprietary info on their ink.
Click to expand...

Good to know. Are you printing R/O for outdoor use?
 
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