Question What Printer would you stake your business on?

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

Just curious, you made research so you might know:
1. What media can be printed with latex that colorado cant do?
2. Is the ink change to 460 just empty the old and fill the new or allso some firmware upgrade? Do the bottles have chips on them? If not you could easy swap..

1 is literally nothing, I believe the Colorado 1650 can print more than the latex. We will be testing wraps with Avery and Arlon on it when it arrives.
2. There is a 1.5L reservoir and you can change bottles on the fly when the reservoir gets to a certain level. The bottles don't appear to be chipped but they are tabbed. Canon has decided to not support the new inkset in the 1460 due to the different wavelength UV lamp that is used for proper curing. (this is what I was told).

 

[Bly]

We got our 1650 last week and ran 4 rolls through it the first day.
I haven't really tested what speeds it can be run at on various media yet so just used quality which is still way quicker than the 360s it replaced.
There are lots of good quality downloadable profiles online so no need to spend days profiling.
Ink and media changes are fast and easy.
Really liking it so far.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

We got our 1650 last week and ran 4 rolls through it the first day.
I haven't really tested what speeds it can be run at on various media yet so just used quality which is still way quicker than the 360s it replaced.
There are lots of good quality downloadable profiles online so no need to spend days profiling.
Ink and media changes are fast and easy.
Really liking it so far.

Canon keeps touting since there is no dot gain, it is a sealed system, and a cold process, color profiling is one and done. Do you think this will be true from your early testing?

 

[iPrintStuff]

On the 1640 it’s been one and done so far. Everything has been very consistent (4 months in anyway).

we had slight issues with feed correction, nothing that wasn’t fixed by onyx, but the 1640 only calibrates at the slowest speed, they changed that on the 1650 to calibrate at all the speeds I believe. Not sure how much more helpful that is!

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

On the 1640 it’s been one and done so far. Everything has been very consistent (4 months in anyway).

we had slight issues with feed correction, nothing that wasn’t fixed by onyx, but the 1640 only calibrates at the slowest speed, they changed that on the 1650 to calibrate at all the speeds I believe. Not sure how much more helpful that is!

That is awesome, I'm glad to hear that is the case for you! My brother will be happy that we don't have to constantly fight our machine like the latexes.

 

[iPrintStuff]

I am hoping they roll out a bunch of the firmware updates onto the 1640. Would be great to have control of media feed/trailing edge right from the printer.

calibrating at all speeds would likely help too.

then double sided probably won’t be a big seller for us but they did promise us they’d roll that out to the 1640 by the end of the year.. starting to think they might have lied though

 

[Bly]

Canon keeps touting since there is no dot gain, it is a sealed system, and a cold process, color profiling is one and done. Do you think this will be true from your early testing?

I certainly hope so but only time will tell.

 

[TomK]

After 10+ years of running HP Latex as our print tech... We have lost faith in HP as the best solution for our business.

We are heavily leaning towards bringing in a new machines for our primary tech and keep our Latex printers as secondary / project specific.

That said what do you stake your business on or what would you move too? Over 90% of our business is vehicle graphics and wraps, so speed and quality is most important. Huge color gamut is not necessary but color accuracy, repeatability, and predictability is paramount!

We have been evaluating Epson, Mimaki, and Canon Colorado. We have basically ruled out Roland for the most part due to lack of innovation and slow production speeds with low quality output, but we are not closed minded to it and are open to exploring options.

So I ask again expecting heated fan heavy debate what do you or would you stake your entire business on, print tech wise?

Hey 2CT Media can you post an update on how the new UV printer is working out for you guys, compare print quality to your 570's, etc? Thanks!

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

So far, it's awesome but quirky... It's quirky mainly because we have been latex focused for 10 years up to now.

The ink is incredibly durable and very very flexible. The speed and color is amazing. It is almost 3x faster than the latex for a comparable quality output and the gamut appears to be much wider due to the no dot gain.

We have printed 155 vehicles for spot graphics so far and the weeding and install seems significantly better. Lamination is straight forward and the beauty is the absolutely no change in dimensions after printing.

Cons so far is apparent increased ink usage and locked process to generate new material profiles and settings. Once Canon takes their claws out of that we can fix the ink consumption and generate more balanced color.

 

[thomlov]

Locked process? What RIP?
I made my own profiles and calibrated first day. Seeing 30-40% lower ink usage than the latex.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

Locked process? What RIP?
I made my own profiles and calibrated first day. Seeing 30-40% lower ink usage than the latex.

We have Onyx Thrive. We can make color profiles no problem... Canon does not allow you to make presets for new media's without going through them, which limits what color profiling you can do for new medias. It is also compounded by all color building nearly needs to be next day as the color settles over time.

We have files we have now run over 500 times between latex 570s and the Colorado 1650. Our latex average for the file is 19mls of Ink vs the Canon profiled media in production gloss speed at 27mls.

 

[iPrintStuff]

I take it that’s going by the ml on the machine and not the rip? Always found the Rip to be miles out. I take it the cost of the ink per ml is similar compared to the hp’s? Found any different in less ink lost through maintenance/purging heads etc?

we’re in the beginning stages of looking at a flatbed, we get our digital machines etc from canon so it’s likely we’ll end up with an Arizona if anything. I’ll finally be able to print white lol.

I sortve just head the wide format section so picking the actual machine is out of my control (I do get to give advice etc) but from what I can gather the Arizona entry level is 20-30k dearer than comparable flat bed’s for no obvious reason?

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

I take it that’s going by the ml on the machine and not the rip? Always found the Rip to be miles out. I take it the cost of the ink per ml is similar compared to the hp’s? Found any different in less ink lost through maintenance/purging heads etc?

we’re in the beginning stages of looking at a flatbed, we get our digital machines etc from canon so it’s likely we’ll end up with an Arizona if anything. I’ll finally be able to print white lol.

I sortve just head the wide format section so picking the actual machine is out of my control (I do get to give advice etc) but from what I can gather the Arizona entry level is 20-30k dearer than comparable flat bed’s for no obvious reason?

For our measurements we are taking numbers from the latex ews and averaging all the prints. The Colorado we use Thrive Hub for the numbers as the machine doesn't report properly at all.

We were leaning towards an Arizona LED, but ultimately went with the Vanguard VK300D-HS for 30% less and 3x the speed.

 

[thomlov]

What numbers are you seeing then?

For me it averages about 0,96 ml/sqft on the latex 560 and 0,66 ml/sqft on the colorado (if i calculated correctly from metric)
The latex number i got from the web accounting interface, and the colorado number from actual litres put into the machinhe divided by square meters reported by the machine.

Be glad you decided on the vanguard, looks like an awesome machine. I just got rid of my two last Arizona 660xt's .. never again... They are now out of date machines that canon is struggling to put new features on just to extend it's life.

 

[Bly]

What numbers are you seeing then?

For me it averages about 0,96 ml/sqft on the latex 560 and 0,66 ml/sqft on the colorado (if i calculated correctly from metric)
The latex number i got from the web accounting interface, and the colorado number from actual litres put into the machinhe divided by square meters reported by the machine.

Be glad you decided on the vanguard, looks like an awesome machine. I just got rid of my two last Arizona 660xt's .. never again... They are now out of date machines that canon is struggling to put new features on just to extend it's life.

What flatbed are you replacing the 660s with?

Using the Colorado's system ink counter and the 360's web interface I'm seeing ink/consumables cost for the 2650 of about 50% of the HP360.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

What numbers are you seeing then?

For me it averages about 0,96 ml/sqft on the latex 560 and 0,66 ml/sqft on the colorado (if i calculated correctly from metric)
The latex number i got from the web accounting interface, and the colorado number from actual litres put into the machinhe divided by square meters reported by the machine.

Be glad you decided on the vanguard, looks like an awesome machine. I just got rid of my two last Arizona 660xt's .. never again... They are now out of date machines that canon is struggling to put new features on just to extend it's life.

The image we are using as a reference is 42" x 76" with 50% coverage. So 11sqft, roughly 1.07ml/sqft to 2.04ml/sqft. This is comparing our fully built preset/profile of 6pass Latex to the Canon settings of production gloss.

 

[thomlov]

What flatbed are you replacing the 660s with?

Using the Colorado's system ink counter and the 360's web interface I'm seeing ink/consumables cost for the 2650 of about 50% of the HP360.

Both replaced with one Swissq nyala 3 with double km1024i heads + white. Awesome machine for printer geeks

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

So we just had a great experience with the 1650 today. My brother built a profile to test for our vehicle camo wraps we print. He built a Max Speed profile with 80% density. Normally on latex we print these at 2 pass 50%... This equates to about 650sqft/hr... Max Speed was over 1700sqft/hr and the printed image was significantly better than the HP.

 

[ColorCrest]

the printed image was significantly better than the HP.

Is this printed image of the Onyx Quality Evaluation file you're judging, previous HP print against the new 1650 print?

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

Is this printed image of the Onyx Quality Evaluation file you're judging, previous HP print against the new 1650 print?

I'm judging the print for print, not any quality check files or calibration images.