What Roland would buy if you where opening a new shop.

[altereddezignz]

As stated in the title. What Roland would you buy if you where looking to open a new shop. A lot of banners, decals and wraps will be printed. There will be time that a long length would be printed. We will have a stand alone plotter as well so a print cut feature is not needed. Really want to stay eco solvent as I am used to solvent base. Thanks.

 

[HDvinyl]

How many threads are you going to ask what printer to buy????

 

[altereddezignz]

This site amazes me sometimes. People ask some of the most dumb question I have ever heard and get 500 replays. I ask about a new printer in one thread and I am asked how many threads I am going to open.

I opened one one asking about who could set up a new Roland in my service area BBC I was debating on 2 different Roland's. I then asked in another thread if you where going to buy a new Roland what would it be. I don't think I asked in another thread or at least started an other threads asking about It.

I would like like actual input from people using these machines as most of the times the sales reps are just filling you full of fluff to make a sale then your screwed and stuck with a 20-30k pile of crap you have issues with.

With that all being said I've searched and read threads here and even asked questions in others threads about buying new equipment but no replay so only other way I know to go about it is to ask even if it is more than once in a different area of the forum.

Sorry for the rant and long ended reply. It I guess that comment just aggravated me and yeah I guess I brought it on my self lol.

 

[altereddezignz]

Oh I had a thread asking about the vibrancy of printers so I guess I was Linda asking there too.

I have 2 threads comparing a couple Rolland printers but I think 1 reply total bit that was 7 months ago.

 

[Gino]

Don't fret it....... you just ran into the village monitor dog on a bad morning. She's harmless, just a big bark and no bite. She just had 5 pups, so she's miserable, lately.

 

[Gene@mpls]

I am sold on my RF-640 with a bulk ink system and GX500 cutter. I regularly print / lam / cut 20' logos. The printer is way cheaper without a onboard cutter and onboard cutters are not good for half that length. That said... Roland is going with a new printer head going forward (not Epson) but I am not concerned about availability on the old ones. Gene

 

[HDvinyl]

Don't fret it....... you just ran into the village monitor dog on a bad morning. She's harmless, just a big bark and no bite. She just had 5 pups, so she's miserable, lately.

Watch your mouth Gina, you may get bit at your party.

 

[BigfishDM]

As stated in the title. What Roland would you buy if you where looking to open a new shop. A lot of banners, decals and wraps will be printed. There will be time that a long length would be printed. We will have a stand alone plotter as well so a print cut feature is not needed. Really want to stay eco solvent as I am used to solvent base. Thanks.

I would buy the one that comes with a free latex printer lol. Why do you want eco-solvent? The applications you want to do are excellent in Latex, I'm just curious why you want to stay with solvent machines.

 

[Gino]

Watch your mouth Gina, you may get bit at your party.

Highly doubt it...... sorry, no dogs allowed.

 

[rjssigns]

I would buy the one that comes with a free latex printer lol. Why do you want eco-solvent? The applications you want to do are excellent in Latex, I'm just curious why you want to stay with solvent machines.

I'll answer that for the OP. Said they want to stay eco-sol because it's what they're used to. Up side of staying with Roland is near zero learning curve with RIP's profiles etc... Maybe they have a Roland dealer/tech 2 blocks away from their shop too. That would be a big deal to me. As I've said in other threads buy the brand that will have a tech on your doorstep in less than 24 hours. Big plus is lots of parts are available for Rolands, and Signs 101 has great tech support.

 

[altereddezignz]

Don't fret it....... you just ran into the village monitor dog on a bad morning. She's harmless, just a big bark and no bite. She just had 5 pups, so she's miserable, lately.

LOL.

I am sold on my RF-640 with a bulk ink system and GX500 cutter. I regularly print / lam / cut 20' logos. The printer is way cheaper without a onboard cutter and onboard cutters are not good for half that length. That said... Roland is going with a new printer head going forward (not Epson) but I am not concerned about availability on the old ones. Gene

We have been looking more at the XR-640 but simply b/c there are a lot of people using them and they seem to work well other than the take up. I often print a full trailers or wraps that exceed the 20-30 ft people say they are good for.

We started reading on the Epson S80600 yesterday. Offers a Orange and red ink along with cmyk, lc, lm, lk with the option of white and metallic that you can change out, but you dont hear of just a massive amount of people running the epson printers. Specs reads to be pretty fast as well with MSRP price being same as the XR-640 Pro4.

I really like the idea of the lc,lm,lk . I dont think we have a need for the metallics and white currently.

This is litterly one of the hardest decisions i think i have ever made.
I do not have a need for a print cut machine since there will be a stand alone plotter. We have looked at the roland xr-640, Talked to a guy who owns the new Truevis 64" and swears by it after buying it to replace his xr-640. Read and looked at specs on the Ej series and now the RF series was mentioned.
We where told to look at the epson s series the s80600 was preferred for us to look at.
We have a mutoh 1324 now but man is it slow and when your printing 40-50-60 ft at a time it really slows everything down bc that is the bottleneck. This has went from being excited about opening a new shop to a massive headache and stress on the printer to buy that would work out best for us.

Would be doing a lot of decals, wrap jobs and full signage so what we do is really anything we could print haha.

The bad part is we only have a couple larger shops that print but they wont talk to you or even give you any info since they look at you as a major competitor and i understand to a degree but some of them are just plain a**holes. We only have a couple dealers that are within an hour driving but nothing for epson only mutoh and roland. Not sure if i can tell names of dealers or not so i wont.

 

[altereddezignz]

I'll answer that for the OP. Said they want to stay eco-sol because it's what they're used to. Up side of staying with Roland is near zero learning curve with RIP's profiles etc... Maybe they have a Roland dealer/tech 2 blocks away from their shop too. That would be a big deal to me. As I've said in other threads buy the brand that will have a tech on your doorstep in less than 24 hours. Big plus is lots of parts are available for Rolands, and Signs 101 has great tech support.

In regards to both of your comments im not necessarily dead set on having to run a eco solvent machine but thats all i have ever ran. I would have to even see if there are any dealers even remotely close that offer latex.
I have only ever used a mutoh 1324 printer and its not correct as it has a nozzle that misfires or is missing but i compensate for it in designing. It was a used printer that was purchased that set for a year without being cleaned before it was stored so ink in the head, maint system, lines all that. MASSIVE NIGHTMARE but cheap and i did not have any control over buying it.

I have always heard that the latex machines didnt quite have the brightness of colors as an eco solvent machine? The laminating right out of the machine would be great but is it worth the change.
We offer posters, wraps, signs, canvas prints, some small format picture printing, banners, things along those lines.

 

[altereddezignz]

I will say this on the latex tho. If you read any post this year there are a lot of people having issues with icc profiles. Something about the firmware issues and not coloring correctly. Since the profiles are created by the printer itself i can see where this would be an issue. Look as if all color management is handles in the printer and not really from the rip.

I really do like the fact i could print and install within 30 minutes lets say. The Epson S series states that they can print and laminate in 6 hours so for an eco-solvent ink. Join that with the added red and orange inks the color gamut is huge. I just wish i could find more people than use them.

Roland is by far true and tested in the print market but they still have some serious flaws.

 

[sbuchli92]

We have been running an xr-640 for a couple of years now and I absolutely love it! The prints are always of the highest quality, and the machine is very easy to clean and perform your regular maintenance on. My favorite feature is the take up system. I see quite a few people having issues with it, but I will say ours usually runs flawlessly IF IT IS SETUP PROPERLY. I have actually printed many full rolls of 3M IJ-180 on the same take up roll with zero issues. If i were to purchase another Roland this year it would be another XR for sure. And for a print/cut machine, the plotting capabilities are wonderful. We saw alot of tracking issues with our older SC-540, but it seems that this new machine stays straighter longer so to speak. I would like to see more than just 4 registration marks for the cut plot feature to help with longer prints; but once again IF IT IS SETUP PROPERLY we see very little problems with it.

 

[BigfishDM]

I will say this on the latex tho. If you read any post this year there are a lot of people having issues with icc profiles. Something about the firmware issues and not coloring correctly. Since the profiles are created by the printer itself i can see where this would be an issue. Look as if all color management is handles in the printer and not really from the rip.

I really do like the fact i could print and install within 30 minutes lets say. The Epson S series states that they can print and laminate in 6 hours so for an eco-solvent ink. Join that with the added red and orange inks the color gamut is huge. I just wish i could find more people than use them.

Roland is by far true and tested in the print market but they still have some serious flaws.

Many posts about issues with latex, but 1000x more posts about issues with Solvent/Eco-Solvents. That's no joke.

 

[peavey123]

Have you looked at Rolands new VG series? It has a new ink called TrueVIS. 1 hour dry time, the stuff is basically scratch proof and the colours are super vibrant. I printed an orange the other day and I couldn't believe how bright it was and orange has always been a difficult colour to hit for large format printers. Blows ecosolMAX out of the water IMHO.

 

[player]

This site amazes me sometimes. People ask some of the most dumb question I have ever heard and get 500 replays. I ask about a new printer in one thread and I am asked how many threads I am going to open.

I opened one one asking about who could set up a new Roland in my service area BBC I was debating on 2 different Roland's. I then asked in another thread if you where going to buy a new Roland what would it be. I don't think I asked in another thread or at least started an other threads asking about It.

I would like like actual input from people using these machines as most of the times the sales reps are just filling you full of fluff to make a sale then your screwed and stuck with a 20-30k pile of crap you have issues with.

With that all being said I've searched and read threads here and even asked questions in others threads about buying new equipment but no replay so only other way I know to go about it is to ask even if it is more than once in a different area of the forum.

Sorry for the rant and long ended reply. It I guess that comment just aggravated me and yeah I guess I brought it on my self lol.

I put that one on ignore and it is so much better around here now...

 

[altereddezignz]

Not it sure what this comment was even about but ok? Is ok a good reply to the comment?

I put that one on ignore and it is so much better around here now...

 

[ams]

Sol-Jet all the way.

 

[HDvinyl]

I put that one on ignore and it is so much better around here now...

Eh? Did your mom tell you at dinner to just ignore me?