thoughts on non-oem ecosol ink?

[fresh]

Our CJV30-130 is out of warranty at this point, so we are considering switching to non-oem ink. Has anyone switched with no issues? We were frightened into only using Mimaki ink when we bought our machine, but at this point, it kills me to drop so much loot on ink.

What brands have you used? Do you have to do anything before changing brands?

I haven't done a ton of research, and I'll only switch if I can save at least 35% over using oem. I'm not sure if that is even possible. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

 

[Solventinkjet]

As a tech who works in the field I can tell you that at least 40% of people are using aftermarket inks and I would not be surprised if it was higher than 50%. I even have guys who go straight to 3rd party and void their warranty on day one because they want to save money on the ink so badly. Using the 3rd party inks will save you some money and there are good brands out there that have proven themselves as reliable. In fact, most 3rd party inks will save you around 40-50% on ink cost. However, you need to weigh that with the piece of mind you get with using OEM inks. I have customers who would rather pay the extra cash to know they are using the exact ink the machine was built for.

Let's say that you have a 2'x2' full coverage sign to make. Your ink cost is around 20 cents per square foot. Your vinyl cost is about 30 cents. Let's say you laminate it for about the same as the vinyl. So right now your total cost per square foot is 80 cents per square foot. So the whole sign costs you $3.20 to make. Now lets save 50% on ink cost. The sign now costs you $2.80 to make. You saved 40 cents. You would have to make 1000 of these signs to make $400 in savings. Not every sign is full coverage so on some signs you are going to have an ink cost of less than 20 cents per square foot. So the real question is, is losing the piece of mind of using OEM inks worth $400 for every 4000 square feet you produce? In my honest opinion, as a seller of 3rd party ink, is that if I owned and ran a shop I would run OEM inks and sleep well at night. Now if you are doing 10's of thousands of square feet per year I would suggest going 3rd party for sure. But for most smaller shops it's just not that much savings.

 

[Gino]

I never understand these questions for 2 reasons.

What Vander just said is the main one. How much are you really saving when at regular price, you're making $1,000's of dollars worth of signs from that cartridge and if you save $100 total on those same signs, is that worth the piece of mind ??

Next...... are you just cheaping out and saving a few bucks for yourself.... or are you gonna turn around and still charge your customer as much as you can get ??

 

[ewded]

What the heck is PIECE of mind??

 

[Solventinkjet]

What the heck is PIECE of mind??

It's like when you give someone a piece of your mind except you used the wrong word when writing a comment on the internet!

 

[Gino]

Oops.......... Power of suggestion.

Besides, over in Europe, they see and spell most things differently than here in the Western Hemisphere.

 

[fresh]

I never understand these questions for 2 reasons.

What Vander just said is the main one. How much are you really saving when at regular price, you're making $1,000's of dollars worth of signs from that cartridge and if you save $100 total on those same signs, is that worth the piece of mind ??

Next...... are you just cheaping out and saving a few bucks for yourself.... or are you gonna turn around and still charge your customer as much as you can get ??

First of all, it costs about $130 for a cartridge of ink. My printer holds 8 cartridges at a time, so my cost is over $1000 to replace all ink. I'd save a few thousand a year switching to non-oem. Second, i'm not "cheaping out". I'm being a smart business owner. Who doesn't periodically look at where they can save money? If you didn't notice, everything is getting more expensive, so I either have to spend a little less money on things, or raise prices. Honestly, I need to do both right now. And I'm asking if non-oem is comparable. We know that printer manufacturers make all their money on ink. On my inkjet printer, I can spend over $100 on HP ink, or $30 on ink from a bulk place. They both work just fine.

And if I save $0.40 a sign on ink, do you think it makes sense to pass that savings on to my customer? Why in the world would I do that? I'm trying to SAVE ME money.

Gino, what kind of printer do you have? Do you use oem ink? I posted this in the Mimaki forum because I'd like to hear from other NON-OEM MIMAKI ECOSOLVENT INK users. If you're not in this group, I don't need your input. Thanks

 

[fresh]

As a tech who works in the field I can tell you that at least 40% of people are using aftermarket inks and I would not be surprised if it was higher than 50%. I even have guys who go straight to 3rd party and void their warranty on day one because they want to save money on the ink so badly. Using the 3rd party inks will save you some money and there are good brands out there that have proven themselves as reliable. In fact, most 3rd party inks will save you around 40-50% on ink cost. However, you need to weigh that with the piece of mind you get with using OEM inks. I have customers who would rather pay the extra cash to know they are using the exact ink the machine was built for.

Let's say that you have a 2'x2' full coverage sign to make. Your ink cost is around 20 cents per square foot. Your vinyl cost is about 30 cents. Let's say you laminate it for about the same as the vinyl. So right now your total cost per square foot is 80 cents per square foot. So the whole sign costs you $3.20 to make. Now lets save 50% on ink cost. The sign now costs you $2.80 to make. You saved 40 cents. You would have to make 1000 of these signs to make $400 in savings. Not every sign is full coverage so on some signs you are going to have an ink cost of less than 20 cents per square foot. So the real question is, is losing the piece of mind of using OEM inks worth $400 for every 4000 square feet you produce? In my honest opinion, as a seller of 3rd party ink, is that if I owned and ran a shop I would run OEM inks and sleep well at night. Now if you are doing 10's of thousands of square feet per year I would suggest going 3rd party for sure. But for most smaller shops it's just not that much savings.

I do agree with everything you've said. And yes, its not a huge savings for us since our volume is relatively low. But it kills me every time I dish out all the loot on ink. I'd much rather spend $400 today than the $780 I need to replenish our stock. I know its small potatoes, but i have almost 3 year old twins who both just grew out of all of their shoes. do you know how much decent toddler shoes cost?

 

[bug]

My friend has mimaki and he says he got deal from mimaki for 2l ink bags, price is comparable to non oem, maybe you have there in us something similar what mimaki offers

 

[Gino]

First of all, it costs about $130 for a cartridge of ink. My printer holds 8 cartridges at a time, so my cost is over $1000 to replace all ink. I'd save a few thousand a year switching to non-oem. Second, i'm not "cheaping out". I'm being a smart business owner. Who doesn't periodically look at where they can save money? If you didn't notice, everything is getting more expensive, so I either have to spend a little less money on things, or raise prices. Honestly, I need to do both right now. And I'm asking if non-oem is comparable. We know that printer manufacturers make all their money on ink. On my inkjet printer, I can spend over $100 on HP ink, or $30 on ink from a bulk place. They both work just fine.

And if I save $0.40 a sign on ink, do you think it makes sense to pass that savings on to my customer? Why in the world would I do that? I'm trying to SAVE ME money.

Gino, what kind of printer do you have? Do you use oem ink? I posted this in the Mimaki forum because I'd like to hear from other NON-OEM MIMAKI ECOSOLVENT INK users. If you're not in this group, I don't need your input. Thanks

Do you even realize how generic your original question really is ?? Being in the Mimaki section means nothing.

Yes, all of our printers are still running on OEM inks. I just spent $1,200 yesterday and that didn't cover all of our ink for one printer.

And you don't hafta bother telling me what threads I can post in or not. I go... and do what I want, where I want. Don't need someone trying to save pennies backseat driving me around.

If you have 8 cartridges running, you are most likely doing that for speed and not 8 different colors, unless you are running white, and maybe metallics. Whatever........ you are most likely making $1,000s upon $1,000s of dollars on that 8 cartridge outlay..... and you think saving $400 is gonna put shoes on your kids feet ?? They outgrow their shoes every few months.

So, by not passing any savings onto your customers, you are in actuality raising your prices. Now, you wanna raise your prices by saving money and then turn around and raise them some more just because you need 2 pair of shoes ??

That's what I said in the first place, but some are too thick to understand common arithmetic.

 

[papabud]

i have used many printers over the years. some with oem ink and some with non oem ink.
i have used bulk systems also.
it is in my experience that non oem ink is way more hassle to work with over all.
look at all the mutoh threads on how to fix my non oem smart cards.
look at all the threads on bulk ink systems breaking and leaking or color consistency issues.
i have dealt with all of these at some point and its always when i try and use a non oem ink.
i am the type that is more than happy to pay the price for oem ink and not have to fight with my ink system daily.
other people have had great results. but i have never had a non oem ink system actually work as well and an oem one.
to me ink is cheap, its pennies compared to all the other expensives we as printers have.
you would save more money if you just randomly picked one person and lowered their hourly wage by $0.50
and you wouldn't have to lower quality or expectations to do it.

 

[NateF]

I can only chime in with my own experience. We run a Roland VS-540i. When the warranty ran out, I switched to Bordeaux inks. Cost is about a 40% savings over OEM. I've not noticed a difference in color, print quality, or durability. If we're running a long print with heavy ink coverage I do notice a slight solvent smell, which I never noticed with the Roland. We're still buying cartridges, so ease of use is exactly the same. I know there's more savings to be had with bulk ink systems, but the headache factor comes into play.

I understand that the cost difference is small per square foot. That's true. But with no difference in ease of use or quality, the switch makes total sense for us. That savings can easily add up to a couple thousand $$ per year that goes directly to the bottom line.

Again, this is just my experience, but if I had to do it all over again, I would probably switch to aftermarket inks right out of the gate. Even if it voided the warranty.

 

[InstantOneMedia]

We ran Triangle bulk systems on our JV3, and JV33 for years. For what we do, while the difference is slight, we prefer the colors the triangle produced vs. oem. When we purchased a new JV33 in 2014, we immediately switched to Triangle, and jumped through all the hoops to have them take over the manufacturer's warranty on the printhead. After 6 weeks, we began having nozzle issues. We tried everything, flush, clean, etc . . . to get the nozzles to recover to no avail. We had to buy a new print head, and sent the original head to Triangle. They determined the issue was not with the ink, but with the head so they didn't cover the new head. 2 weeks later, the same issue began to happen. We noticed it was an issue with the black ink so we literally just took out the triangle black, and plugged in the oem black and the issue was immediately resolved. So we continued to run triangle MCY, and oem B for 3 years. We recently began to have chronic problems with the manifold and replaced numerous times w/ generic, and oem parts. We have since switched all inks back to oem and have had zero issues. We go through at least 16 cartridges a week so the savings made sense. However, the constant down time and hassle no longer made it worth while.

 

[d fleming]

When I had my seiko and it was out of warranty I used Nazdar inksets. Actually ran better and with less trouble than oem.

 

[fresh]

We ran Triangle bulk systems on our JV3, and JV33 for years. For what we do, while the difference is slight, we prefer the colors the triangle produced vs. oem. When we purchased a new JV33 in 2014, we immediately switched to Triangle, and jumped through all the hoops to have them take over the manufacturer's warranty on the printhead. After 6 weeks, we began having nozzle issues. We tried everything, flush, clean, etc . . . to get the nozzles to recover to no avail. We had to buy a new print head, and sent the original head to Triangle. They determined the issue was not with the ink, but with the head so they didn't cover the new head. 2 weeks later, the same issue began to happen. We noticed it was an issue with the black ink so we literally just took out the triangle black, and plugged in the oem black and the issue was immediately resolved. So we continued to run triangle MCY, and oem B for 3 years. We recently began to have chronic problems with the manifold and replaced numerous times w/ generic, and oem parts. We have since switched all inks back to oem and have had zero issues. We go through at least 16 cartridges a week so the savings made sense. However, the constant down time and hassle no longer made it worth while.

Thanks for the insight. I'm most likely going to stick with OEM. I figured if dozens of people said "switch to xyz brand, its awesome and saves money!" I'd do it.

We broke a printhead using cheap banner material recommended to us by our N Glantz rep. He was like "Its so good! you have to try it!" Well, it bubbled and there goes IDK how much money and time. The thing is, banner is so cheap anyway, I only bought it because my rep was so persistent that we HAD to try it. Anyway, it sounds like its not worth the potential savings.

 

[fresh]

When I had my seiko and it was out of warranty I used Nazdar inksets. Actually ran better and with less trouble than oem.

interesting. i think we're going to stick with oem for the time being, but maybe we'll look into Nazdar later this year.

 

[Gino]

A friend of ours has the same identical printer we have and bought it from the same place we did, but a few months prior to our getting it. They were talked into the Nazdar inks and had nothing but problems with it. In fact, we did jobs for them, while techs were at their place, shaking their heads.

 

[Terry01]

I use the same third part inks as you call them, in 3 different makes of machines. At $8 a litre and compatible with dx4 5 and 7 heads, why would I want to run oem inks?? They also make up my orders in any combination of inks and cleaner.. The cleaner is only $3.50 a litre. Just needs to be a total order of 20 litres. Noting the shipping costs to me is $90 per shipment.
I should also point out that i get my inks direct from the makers. Its not until you see the labels on the bottle, that you realise how salesmen rip you off.

 

[bug]

I think there is couple things to consider, that whoever gives you suggestion which ink to use, that he also tells you, or you ask:
- that he has same printer as you
- will it be cartridge system, bag, or just pour ink in,... i think cartridge or bag system are safest
- what kind of climate is in theirs, yours printing space, temp, humidity
- how long they use those inks
(i used original inks with mutoh 1624, printhead dead after 10month (pour in system)
, then used cheapest ink, after less than 2 years dead prinhead (pour in system)
then 1 year bordeaux ink, i couldnt get them anymore so my supplier selling me now last 2 years jetbest for roland eco max, last 3y its bag system
with none of the inks i got impression that i have some kind of hassle with extra cleaning,... i very much like bag system its closest to cartridges, cheaper, little less trash

 

[bug]

in my case if my printhead survive 1 year i already paid new printhead, with saving cause im using non oem ink