Question What Printer would you stake your business on?

[iPrintStuff]

We can get a 54” roll printed in two hours give or take on high quality on the Colorado. The production mode does it in about an hour and a half and we had a crappy b/w label job once that quality wasn’t an issue and done a full roll in 26 mins. Laughable how quick it was. Summa couldn’t keep up lol

 

[MikePro]

still love my HP. Tempted to make the jump to their new hybrid line.
if I were to jump ship on a brand, however, I would gladly fall-back to Mimaki.

 

[ColorCrest]

We have been averaging 30,000+ sqft of vinyl a month on each machine and we are growing rapidly.

Fortunately with that volume and your existing machines, you don't really have to "stake your business" on a particular printer. However, I know of shops who made a leap into VuTeks, Durst, etc., with less than your volume and still run their latex.

I'm guessing you should easily be able to afford an Epson and if you don't care for it after 30, 60, 90 days or so, sell it for what you can. From the work you may have sold from it, it's not impossible to still break even.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

We run an HP570 and installed the Colorado 1650 about a month ago. My operators say the Colorado is hands down the winner in terms of speed, time to start, maintenance and waste. A volume of 30k sf per month is about 2 rolls a day. I would definitely upgrade to something faster - keep the HP around for vehicle graphics until you're comfortable that the 1650 will work.

That is what we need is vehicle graphics, not always wraps though mostly fleet print/cut graphics.

 

[bannertime]

We're really struggling with HP's awful length calibration. The width is typically spot on, but the length can be way off. We run the calibration with the roll on the take up reel and even without the take up reel at all. We've run the test at 36in x 96in instead of the 12x12 it normally is. We are almost always within the 1/4" range on the finished product after calibration. Which is borderline awful, but eventually that gets off and it can be up to 2" off on an 8ft banner. We did some 40' banners the other day and the finished product ended up being about 6 inches short right after a calibration.

This by far, is my biggest issue with the HP latex line. I haven't seen anyone address this regarding the Colorado or Epson machines.

Can anyone chime in regarding accuracy of size on banner material? Specifically with the two machines mentioned. We've not the same issue on self adhesive vinyl. It's always been pretty accurate, minus the panel warping/color issues the latex has.

 

[iPrintStuff]

Even the 500 series latex, and the newer epsons, all appear to be higher level entry machines. Sounds a lot like 2CT needs an actual production machine that can steam through rolls.

They’re all the type of machines that you should get your ROI on fairly quickly then end up being relatively disposable. So it’s probably worth looking at a mid range printer i guess.

which I guess is exactly where canon tried to put the Colorado, right in the gap between the epsons, latex’s etc and the vutek/superwides.

Can anyone chime in regarding accuracy of size on banner material? Specifically with the two machines mentioned. We've not the same issue on self adhesive vinyl. It's always been pretty accurate, minus the panel warping/color issues the latex has.

I don’t tend to measure too many banners just due to their nature but our 8’ by 4’ are always spot on and we done a 26’ one recently that was pretty much bang on, give or take a few mm after hemming

 

[jfiscus]

Our Epson printers are workhorses here. We run about 3 rolls per day, every day, on ours. No major issues on the 60600 series. Had a few manifolds blow after a few years on the older 70 series and eventually one motherboard died on one of them also but otherwise they're still running great with high mileage.

 

[Bly]

Our 60600 is great. But the scratch resistance is poor and having to allow dry time is a pain when you do a lot of fast turnaround work.

 

[dypinc]

We're really struggling with HP's awful length calibration. The width is typically spot on, but the length can be way off. We run the calibration with the roll on the take up reel and even without the take up reel at all. We've run the test at 36in x 96in instead of the 12x12 it normally is. We are almost always within the 1/4" range on the finished product after calibration. Which is borderline awful, but eventually that gets off and it can be up to 2" off on an 8ft banner. We did some 40' banners the other day and the finished product ended up being about 6 inches short right after a calibration.

This by far, is my biggest issue with the HP latex line. I haven't seen anyone address this regarding the Colorado or Epson machines.

Can anyone chime in regarding accuracy of size on banner material? Specifically with the two machines mentioned. We've not the same issue on self adhesive vinyl. It's always been pretty accurate, minus the panel warping/color issues the latex has.

Which latex printer do you have? The newer HP ones have a sponge roller you can install to pull away plasticers.

Probably is just the curing heat that is making the difference, but have you tried printed with OMAS disabled?

 

[TomK]

Our 60600 is great. But the scratch resistance is poor and having to allow dry time is a pain when you do a lot of fast turnaround work.

Can you try one of the digi-dri units? Someone else on here said they are using them and laminating directly after they come off the machine. Units are fairly cheap if you can't wait a few hours to lam.

I have not tried it yet.

 

[jasonx]

Would stake my business on a Durst. (Con is the cost, only other machine we've had that would come close to reliability and consistency would be SwissQ).

I'm like you, I've had every smaller latex machine, 25500, 26500, 360, 570, 3000.

As for your situation, you might want to consider the HP Latex 1500 or 3000.

I run 200,000+sqft a month on my 3000. It has its pros and cons like most printers. You still have all the nuances or color consistency and tiling like other hp machines but you're going to have a lot more throughput and cheaper ink cost.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

Would stake my business on a Durst. (Con is the cost, only other machine we've had that would come close to reliability and consistency would be SwissQ).

I'm like you, I've had every smaller latex machine, 25500, 26500, 360, 570, 3000.

As for your situation, you might want to consider the HP Latex 1500 or 3000.

I run 200,000+sqft a month on my 3000. It has its pros and cons like most printers. You still have all the nuances or color consistency and tiling like other hp machines but you're going to have a lot more throughput and cheaper ink cost.

Aren't Durst machines UV? That would eliminate wraps or am I wrong?

As for the industrial HP printers, we just have no faith in their Support to justify a 150k+ purchase from them.

 

[Bly]

Don't those big latex printers do a full width pass even if you're only printing on a 36" roll and waste a couple of metres at each end of the print job?
Along with the colour and length variations I'd have to say no thanks.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

Don't those big latex printers do a full width pass even if you're only printing on a 36" roll and waste a couple of metres at each end of the print job?
Along with the colour and length variations I'd have to say no thanks.

From what we have researched and seen first hand, the answer is yes and yes.

 

[jasonx]

Aren't Durst machines UV? That would eliminate wraps or am I wrong?

As for the industrial HP printers, we just have no faith in their Support to justify a 150k+ purchase from them.

Yes they wouldn't be suitable for wraps. But if they actually made a machine that was suitable it would be a no brainier. Not one tech visit in over two years. Low running costs and it just works and work and works non stop.

 

[ikarasu]

We got rid of one of our 560s and gota 360 just to get the stupid traffic certification. It's annoying that 3M Hasn't approved the 560, even though its the exact same print wise... but before I go on an off topic rant.

I HATE the old machines. Having to use a loading bar, the take up reel is a pain in the ass... The 560 has the easiest loading, easiest take up I've ever seen in a machine. You do waste a foot or two of media when you start printing... But the ease of use is great. I wish we got a 365, but we were in a time crunch... I used to run both machines 8 hours a day, now I've ran the 360 maybe twice for an hour today. I hate loading, I hate the flexi software I'm forced to use, I hate pausing mid print to attach to take up...then printing another ft or two, sliding the load bar in... printing another foot, then turning it on... its just so inconvenient.

My point is... Buy a machine that not only prints good, but try it out... see if its something you'd like to work with for 8 hours a day.

I just watched a video on the S80600 for loading media, its similar to the 560... but it feels like it's 10x more complicated than it needs to be.

We print on 8-10 different materials everyday, sometimes various sizes... so we tend to load at least 10 times a day between 2 machines. When you're doing 100 lb rolls of diamond grade... Not having a bar, or having 10 steps makes a huge difference. Maybe the S80600 video makes it look more complicated than it actually is, but that video turned me against wanting to buy one!

 

[jasonx]

Don't those big latex printers do a full width pass even if you're only printing on a 36" roll and waste a couple of metres at each end of the print job?
Along with the colour and length variations I'd have to say no thanks.

Thats correct Brian. If you load a roll thats half the width you loose half the throughput. If you load a 25% width roll you'd loose 75% through put. But you'd dual roll narrow rolls. You also do loose 5m per roll if you print a full roll and probably 1.5m for each additional load to get the media onto the take up.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

So I got word from Canon. They are retracting the ability to put 1650 inkset in the 1640 due to slightly different curing modules. They are offering us a 1650 with some special deals.

The Epson's seem to be extremely popular and well liked and the sc60 production mode is about 2x faster (500sqft/hr) than our 570s 6 pass (298sqft/hr). Ink cost will be slightly higher but it appears on the surface mind you that ink consumption will be lower.

The Oki ColorPainter looks to be a great industrial option for us too. More of a traditional solvent machine but the durability and color fidelity will most likely be on par with the Latex.

The Ricoh latex is an option but we have some serious questions on ink adhesion, it scratches off the surface far to easy.

 

[Reveal1]

My 'add' to this conversation would be that the key to consistent print quality on the HP is frequent, scheduled PH changes. Like any business person, I am naturally inclined to eke out as much life as I can out of the disposable printheads. But that's just a recipe for frustration as these printheads are good for 3800-4200 ml before seeing color issues. Using the HP requires a shift in mindset. They are $138 each and designed to be a consumable. Solution? Just replace the darned things. We figure the cost of that and the extra material feed (very small in the grand scheme of things) in our run charges which given the reasonable ink charges is a tiny amount in the job cost assuming you are paying attention to all the other costs that go into properly pricing a product.

Watching this thread with interest as I've been considering adding a complement to my 560 to replace our obsolete HP L25500. For our core work, I would really struggle giving up the HUGE workflow advantage of immediate lamination and great non-laminated print durability. However, the Epson might be that complement for applications needing higher print quality.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

Our problem is not a print quality one, it is a machine and service quality issue.

When we need these machines most they are down and service drags their feet to get us back and running.

Their recommendations are to buy more machines or get an industrial class machine.