UV printing ornaments

[soggywinter]

I'm looking for a solution for printing photos and scanned paintings for holiday ornaments on small pieces of aluminum or steel with highly saturated colors and fine detail. Two UV printers that I have looked at are Direct Color System's 1800 series and Epson's V7000. Both have 1.5 picoliter droplets. The Epson V7000 has an impressive range of ink color, but it is a first generation machine and that makes me uncomfortable. The DCS 1800 line is quite mature and 1/3 the price, but may have gamut limitations. What are some printers that I should look at besides these? I'm in the US.

I currently sublimate ornaments and other small items, but there are supply chain hassles and the sublimation blanks have gone up quite a bit in price. I would also like to offer my customers custom shapes on short turn around. I can CNC my own jigs blanks.

thanks.

 

[Mr. Signboy]

I use a Vanguard VK300D, Kyocera 10 print head configuration. The print quality is amazing, and it’s lighting fast compared to most of the other flatbeds I’ve seen, it will print a 60” x 120” print in 2-3 minutes(single color not using white) with good image quality. If speed isn’t an issue you could run it with more passes and it would easily compete with most roll to roll printers. That print head set up is pretty pricey but well worth it if you plan to keep it busy.

 

[GC Decor]

We made over 100,000 ornaments on our fluidcolor last season - I would recommend getting test from both companies and checking how the ink holds up. We tested a few brands where the ink would just scape off - another concern for us was how did they smell. All UV products will smell but some are horrible and others aren’t bad. Our fluid flatbed and Colorado are near smell free.
Flat substrates is very important for flatbeds. You have to have consistently flat products when running. Head hits can be extremely expensive.
Use of white ink, check to see if you need white ink or not. Many metal substrates need a white layer for images to show up clear. This goes back to testing. Printing white will double or triple machine print times.

 

[Steve McKinzie]

Installed a Xante’ 33 yesterday. 24x36. Much less expensive and very impressed.

 

[ProColorGraphics]

I have had my Epson V7000 for a year now and haven't had any issues with it.

 

[Pauly]

Avoid looking deep into the specs.
Printing with the lowest PL means printing at the absolute slowest speed. It's usually a gimmick as it's very slow.
Dot placement is more critical than the picolitres.
Which means, a printer with larger picolitre and better head/table calibration will print better than a printer with a smaller picolitre dots with a less accurate calibration.

Some printers like Canon/Oce have variodot which means the the print heads can change the picolitre size depending on the density of the printed area.

The best advice is to go see the equipment in action.
Get samples.
Compare samples.

There's a lot of bias opinions and blind opinions.
I can go ahead and say Canons printers are far superior than anything mentioned in this thread, but being said, i haven't seen any of the mentioned in action.

 

[Superior_Adam]

Stay away from Direct Color. There are a few in town that the businesses keep coming to us to get stuff printed because their printers are always down. We run small format UV with 2 Mimaki machines being the 3042 and 6042. The 6042 we have had for about 6 years and only had 1 tech visit in that time the 3042 has been running for 4 years with 1 visit as well. Great machine and very durable inks with great scratch resistance. If your looking for large format we run EFI and have been pleased with the 2 machines we have from them. We also have a 2'x4' bed UV printer from Inkcups which is the X5T and it is a great machine as well. That has been installed for 2 years with no issues.

 

[ProColorGraphics]

Avoid looking deep into the specs.
Printing with the lowest PL means printing at the absolute slowest speed. It's usually a gimmick as it's very slow.
Dot placement is more critical than the picolitres.
Which means, a printer with larger picolitre and better head/table calibration will print better than a printer with a smaller picolitre dots with a less accurate calibration.

Some printers like Canon/Oce have variodot which means the the print heads can change the picolitre size depending on the density of the printed area.

The best advice is to go see the equipment in action.
Get samples.
Compare samples.

There's a lot of bias opinions and blind opinions.
I can go ahead and say Canons printers are far superior than anything mentioned in this thread, but being said, i haven't seen any of the mentioned in action.

I know on my V7000, the highest print quality is almost comically slow! haha. I actually started laughing the first time I used it. It did look nice though.

This makes sense. Look at SwissQ. They get amazing quality and they don't have crazy small dot sizes. But you pay for that accuracy too.

 

[Pauly]

I know on my V7000, the highest print quality is almost comically slow! haha. I actually started laughing the first time I used it. It did look nice though.

This makes sense. Look at SwissQ. They get amazing quality and they don't have crazy small dot sizes. But you pay for that accuracy too.

This is exactly what im saying.
The print quality is outstanding with small dots, but damn....
Customers will be paying though their teeth!!

And dot placement on the swissQ is probably the best and the dots are not small. larger than ours but looks way better.