I think I am going to toss my hat into the "This printer is garbage" ring.
Mind you, I have a 2015 era unit. So, things might have changed. Here's why:
1) Capping station, just a plastic tray, caps just drain straight into a pan that then goes into the waste tank. As far as I can tell, no real point of this other than catching drips.
2) Drips, holy hell, so much dripping ink. There is ink ALL over this stupid printer and only 2-3 absorber pads to catch some of it. It drips into the frame, it drips onto the sides, it drips all over the floor. This thing craps ink all over the place. Even the 48V power supply had a nice coating of ink ($1500 to replace should it burn out, but lucky on that front so far.)
3) Ink bottle stations in the worst possible place and off the worst possible design. 2 monster umbilical lines coming off these chonky units and they're basically floor level. Definitely would benefit from a nice clean top-left mounting.
4) Parts availability, just awful. Seems people did the smart thing and stuck to the UJF-6042 MKII line. Hard to find a lot of parts for these stupid things.
5) Noisy motors, insane high frequency noise output. If you can hear this stuff, it's like being in a room full of CRT monitors.
6) Suction/Wiper system is similar to the UJF-6042 MK1 type, thin sheet metal and they all seem to be bent out of shape/alignment. Total pain to mess with.
7) Price, even used, pretty awful. Not many 'good deals' to be had.
8) Use of recirculation heads, a great idea on paper, but poorly implemented in this printer. This thing feels like it came out of 2010, and somehow it's a current model. The Plus II version just has more heads and seems to share almost all the same parts. Got a suspicion Mimaki will abandon this form factor entirely and maybe just roll a bigger 6042 out on generation/MK III. Not sure even why it shares the UJF designation.
9) Head cables and the lack of replaceability. Chasing the cursed 12e error and it looks like I am going to have to buy an entirely new head. Toshiba's terrible design there. The heads seem to be epoxied or glued together, and the cable is permanently attached. Honestly, would've just been better to use CE4 heads. Wouldn't be able to pull off silver ink without the recirculation system, but at $1545 ($309 for 200mL at the time of writing this) a liter and no reason for the aftermarket to bother with this printer, no thanks.
10) Head cost at a minimum of $1600 each, and real option to just replace the circulator assembly. Not many of these kicking around, seems almost no other printers use these heads.
For some positives, the form factor is pretty nice. Has lots of unutilized potential. The circulator assembly above the heads is just a double subtank/heater assembly that CAN be cleaned up and rebuilt. Good luck finding any gaskets however and dust off a PZ1 screwdriver for all those tiny screws. Having 1 bottle of clear and white for a total of just 6 bottles is great and 2 channels worth of print per color compared to the 3042/6042 MKII is nice. Just gotta get this cursed machine up and running.
