What printer should I buy? Latex or UV?

[greysquirrel]

The iq of the Epson is great..the smell of the ink is horrible. Why the smell? Epson chasing HP to be ready to laminate within 8hr. The HP off-gasses immediately. L365 and 570 can write their own color profiles, support 2 sided printing, ability to print on mesh without backing...end user head replacement...I get 6 sets on average per printhead...the only maintenance on the HP is to oil the carriage rail every 6month...

Epson cost per sq’ $.24
Epson needs swabs, cleaning solution and waste ink to be disposed of...did I mention that the ink smells. Epson head wont fail within first year while under warranty...once out $2400 repair...cap tops are not replaceable...have to buy whole cleaning assembly...you are forced to deal with D1 for service...Ha

Hp cost per sq’ $.24 based off of 1 set of heads, 2 sets of ink and a maintenance cartridge....I get 5-6 sets per head...no I’m sub $.20/sq’
Oh and no daily maintenance, no waste ink to dispose of...no swabs and cleaning solution to buy I can use anyone’s media and create my own color profile...I can change my own printhead and do not have to wait or pay for a tech, and did I mention my ink does not smell?

But hey..The Epson does produce a nice print....

As far as the banding guy...send some pics..what media are you using? What pass mode and ink density?(you know you can control this) are both carriage rails and the carriage pads oiled? Friction causes unexpected movement...is the printer level? Where any of your heads under warranty before your replaced them? HP would send you new ones for free...is the ink in warranty? What is the environment...just trying to help

 

[Bly]

HP latex prints - you can laminate right away and are super scratch resistant unlaminated so are perfect for short term promotional work. Glitchy communication with Onyx. Media loading sucks.

Epson Surecolor prints - faster, better colour, consistant length, better quality. The 60600 uses less ink being only 4 colour but has such a small droplet you don't need light inks. So easy to load media and the takeup rocks.

We have both. We use the HPs more.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

HP latex prints - you can laminate right away and are super scratch resistant unlaminated so are perfect for short term promotional work. Glitchy communication with Onyx. Media loading sucks.

Epson Surecolor prints - faster, better colour, consistant length, better quality. The 60600 uses less ink being only 4 colour but has such a small droplet you don't need light inks. So easy to load media and the takeup rocks.

We have both. We use the HPs more.

2 questions to derail the thread...
In onyx are you experiencing crashing when communicating to more than 1 latex at a time?

Your surecolor is faster than the latex? We have looked at the surecolors and quality to quality they were slower.

 

[rjssigns]

To the OP. Doesn't matter the make or model. If you don't have enough business to justify the cost of the printer, inks, materials, etc... sub out until you do.

 

[greysquirrel]

Bly, the s60 uses duel cmyk..8 cartridges every latex has 6 inks plus an optimizer(7)

It makes up for lm and lc by creating variable droplet sizes to mimic those colors...any latex printer that has a linearized or color calibrated profile will be more efficient with its ink usage than any other printer on the market.

If I were to go Epson, the s40 is the way to go from a price perspective...you could have bought 2 for a little more than your s60. You would have had more profiles available and redundancy...

Reupdate your print drivers in onyx on all units..that may be why you guys are getting lag...

Yes the spindles suck..but the loading tray and less floor space required make up for that..or just go 560.

 

[Bly]

2 questions to derail the thread...
In onyx are you experiencing crashing when communicating to more than 1 latex at a time?

Your surecolor is faster than the latex? We have looked at the surecolors and quality to quality they were slower.

Not crashing but when one finishes a job Onyx shows it as still printing so you can't start another job.
We just went to v19 which supposedly has printer isolation which hopefully that lets you shut one down and restart without having to reboot the rip. Haven't tested that yet, only been installed a day or two.

The 60600 is much faster.
Granted in the video they include the time to cut each print off.

 

[iPrintStuff]

We went UV and I must say being able to laminate right away is great! There’s always going to be that customer that wants their sign yesterday so naturally it’s great not needing to worry about outgassing.

We’re running an oce Colorado so 430 sq/ft an hour on high quality isn’t bad either. Very little maintenance required (once a month) and the inks are half the price of the third party inks we were using for our mimaki!

(That being said, the actual machine is a PITA. Lots of service calls so far - needed boards replaced after about two weeks! and canons shady business practices with releasing the1650 instead of fixing the issues with the 1640 leave a sour taste!)

The mimaki UCJV looks great. Heard good things about the white

 

[Bly]

I saw one at the recent print show here and have to say the Colorado 1650 looks pretty good.
We have some samples and the ink seems nearly as flexible as latex.
The ability to print in matte would be handy.

 

[Superior_Adam]

We're getting installed on Monday.....stand by for full review....

What are the UCJV Printers costing? We have looked into selling our EFI 16H and going true roll to roll but it sounds slow. The max print speed is 277 sqft/hr where the max print speed on the EFI is 976 sqft/hr. Why the big difference is my question. Going to go to Printing United show to hopefully see one running.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

What are the UCJV Printers costing? We have looked into selling our EFI 16H and going true roll to roll but it sounds slow. The max print speed is 277 sqft/hr where the max print speed on the EFI is 976 sqft/hr. Why the big difference is my question. Going to go to Printing United show to hopefully see one running.

Print head swath size, banks of heads, gantry motor speed, etc all play factors in print speed. If you go true roll to roll look at the UJV55-320

 

[iPrintStuff]

The 16h EFI is a production level machine, the UCVJ is closer to entry level. Not completely familiar with the EFI costs but I’d guess you could easily get 3-5 of the UCJV for the price of that. They’re around 20k in the uk.

The UJV-55 320 is probably closer to a comparison and that’s around 50-60k in the uk. That’s around 1200 sq/ft max speed but haven’t seen any prints at that speed so couldn’t tell you if it’s sellable! No white on that one though. Could always get one of each!

 

[ikarasu]

2 questions to derail the thread...
In onyx are you experiencing crashing when communicating to more than 1 latex at

Onyx seems glitch. We run 10.1 at the shop... If our 560 goes to sleep, Onyx won't read the media type or size from it anymore. Not too big of an issue! But you'd expect better from the software.

I figure it was outdated software. But I run a 19 at home with a 560 and it does the same thing.

You guys run 19 right? How is the crashing on multiple printers? I'll be printing 100ft of nested files.... Then if Onyx has too much stuff in its holding queue, when I switch over to the other printer Onyx will crash. And I'll be left laminating and going through 95ft of material to find which one job didn't print due to the crash... It doesn't happen to often, but when it does it's always at the worst time.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

Onyx seems glitch. We run 10.1 at the shop... If our 560 goes to sleep, Onyx won't read the media type or size from it anymore. Not too big of an issue! But you'd expect better from the software.

I figure it was outdated software. But I run a 19 at home with a 560 and it does the same thing.

You guys run 19 right? How is the crashing on multiple printers? I'll be printing 100ft of nested files.... Then if Onyx has too much stuff in its holding queue, when I switch over to the other printer Onyx will crash. And I'll be left laminating and going through 95ft of material to find which one job didn't print due to the crash... It doesn't happen to often, but when it does it's always at the worst time.

We still have crashing but it continues printing now that they have isolated print processes. We are having less issues overall now though. l really think its an HP error handling issue more than anything at this point.

 

[Bly]

Bly, the s60 uses duel cmyk..8 cartridges every latex has 6 inks plus an optimizer(7)

It makes up for lm and lc by creating variable droplet sizes to mimic those colors...any latex printer that has a linearized or color calibrated profile will be more efficient with its ink usage than any other printer on the market.

If I were to go Epson, the s40 is the way to go from a price perspective...you could have bought 2 for a little more than your s60. You would have had more profiles available and redundancy...

Reupdate your print drivers in onyx on all units..that may be why you guys are getting lag...

Yes the spindles suck..but the loading tray and less floor space required make up for that..or just go 560.

Epson output is far superior to latex and uses less ink. 4 colour printers will always use less than 6 when profiled correctly.

Sure the 40600 is cheaper but do you want to print at 17.6 sq metres/hour or 10.5?

 

[KeithMan]

We almost pulled the trigger on an HP Latex machine, but got the chance to talk to someone that owned one along with a Surecolor 40600 and they were kind enough to lest us run test prints on both machines.

The Epson looked better, was faster and almost as durable. We have dealt with D1 in the past on our Epson 9900s and they are on the ball. We put in a call and they are here the next day.

We bought the 40600 and have been extremely happy with it. Couldn't care less about the smell. It isn't nearly as bad as the smell we have when we wash up our presses.

 

[Dukenukem117]

Whats the print life rated for unlaminated?

 

[Case]

You would never pick the latex , but you own three. Did you mean you would only pick latex?

I own 3 Epson S Series.... The Latex I own was given to me for free....

Case

 

[Case]

Even the 300 and 500 series? That is kinda bizarre. Epson makes a great machine, but I don't see how it would blow a latex out of the water. I can still do more applications with Latex and I can do them faster than someone who runs solvent pretty easily because there is no out gas time. What are the biggest problems you see with latex? Why does Latex dominate the market by such a gigantic number? HP Latex is the #1, #2, and #4 machine in the industry. Companies like Mimaki, Roland, and Epson COMBINED make up #3. For someone who is just getting into wide format printing, I do not know of an easier machine to do that with than something like an HP-115 w/cutter is a crazy economical investment to get into an industry. For decals, no lamination either. Full bleed without curling is also hard to do without Latex.

I am hardcore latex advocate for way more reasons then what I talk about, I am not a fan of HP on so many levels its crazy, but Latex in my opinion is the only way to go in most situations. Inexpensive user changeable printheads is one of my favorite things about HP. No Banding is another one. No Fumes. No hazardous inks. Low cost of ownership. Lots of tech support available. Print on more materials. Output faster. No need to laminate most applications. Environmentally friendly is only getting bigger and bigger FYI, and HP dominates that space.

Several people were turned off by the Epson printers with their S30/S50/S70 models because they had numerous problems... Many users that did buy them didn't wanna hear Epson's name again... Meanwhile the S40/S60/S80 resolved all those problems and are one of the most reliable printers on the market........ I'm not a salesman on the unit, don't really care what anyone likes... But myself after being in the industry since 1996 and installing and repairing printers for 15 years, I know I would not choose Latex 200/300/500 over an Epson S60 or S80..........No way in HE**..... I don't care if more people own the HP.............Quality and color on the Epson is unmatched.... The hazardous inks and all that is for the salesman to talk about.... I prefer the better color and quality......
Full bleed without curling also can depend on material.... Not just by using the 12 picoliter grainy dropsize Latex......
I appreciate you support the product you sell...... I use to belong to a company that sold more of them then Epsons too.... I'm a tech, not a sales guy..... The Epson is a faster and better machine IN MY opinion...

Case

 

[whatsinaname]

How big is the difference in print quality between the Epson S series and HP latex? Which one is recommended for high quality decals/stickers and stuff like that and what kind of lamination will be required with either of these?

 

[KeithMan]

That is a horrible reason to not go with Latex! You want to spend thousands of dollars on print heads when you screw something up? I sell both FYI and I can tell you without a doubt that Latex is the right choice about 97% of the time.

So Latex colors are now consistent just like the Epson S series?