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what to buy

john2k20

New Member
ok we looking to buy a printer like 1mtr wide maybe little more .
looked at the canon 4100s .
good option since its for in home and it has no uv inks that smell bad,
are there other options i can look at ? the canon is water based ink (lucia ink orso) and you can print on much media . but we also have a smaller 600 wide roland cutter and if possible also wanten to print decals for pressing on shirts orso. i know with solvent inks it works and also know water based inks are not that suited for that . or is it?
so what are options to look at that can do the thing without getting an anoying smell in your home ??

gr.
john
 

Christian @ 2CT Media

Active Member
ok we looking to buy a printer like 1mtr wide maybe little more .
looked at the canon 4100s .
good option since its for in home and it has no uv inks that smell bad,
are there other options i can look at ? the canon is water based ink (lucia ink orso) and you can print on much media . but we also have a smaller 600 wide roland cutter and if possible also wanten to print decals for pressing on shirts orso. i know with solvent inks it works and also know water based inks are not that suited for that . or is it?
so what are options to look at that can do the thing without getting an anoying smell in your home ??

gr.
john
If you want to do anything for exterior use this is not the machine for you. Plus your material costs will be significantly higher.
 

john2k20

New Member
If you want to do anything for exterior use this is not the machine for you. Plus your material costs will be significantly higher.
ok want an machine that has general use . i know that if you laminate these prints they can also used for outside so if we wanna do that we could.
thing is most wide printers are solvent and that is not that good for home use since it leaves bad smells.
so what are better options for that ? general use ?
 

Reveal1

New Member
If you are concerned about noxious fumes versus 'smell' you should consider a low-end HP latex. In theory no noxious fumes and doesn't require active ventilation. Although we get more 'smell' from the vinyl substrate as it heats which itself may be noxious, so I would still be leery of using in a home or anywhere without good ventilation.
 

karst41

New Member
ok we looking to buy a printer like 1mtr wide maybe little more .
looked at the canon 4100s .
good option since its for in home and it has no uv inks that smell bad,
are there other options i can look at ? the canon is water based ink (lucia ink orso) and you can print on much media . but we also have a smaller 600 wide roland cutter and if possible also wanten to print decals for pressing on shirts orso. i know with solvent inks it works and also know water based inks are not that suited for that . or is it?
so what are options to look at that can do the thing without getting an anoying smell in your home ??

gr.
john
Get the HP Latex I have a home studio (20'x20') and absolute no smell. Maintenance is very low cost Print heads are disposable and easy to replace. These are the best printers in this day and time. Next step up is UV and those are expensive.
 

john2k20

New Member
You need to learn more before you buy. About the business. About the market.
how is the power consumption etc . i see that it is 2.2 kw thats quit a bit . but thats theoreticly. what is your experiance with that and how much you print ?
 

ikarasu

Active Member
Be careful of those Promising you that latex does not smell. Latex is a big oven and when you heat up vinyl, the vinyl cooks and you smell the vinyl. Some vinyl is not as bad obviously, but if you end up using some of the cheaper stuff it can smell a lot worse than solvents can.And the cheap vinyl releases carcinogens. Which can be just as bad for you as a Solvent printer.

Latex is great and I recommend one. Just don't go buying one thinking you will have no smell in your small house. it's less noticeable in a huge Warehouse, but it is still noticeable in your house. It's not a strong smell, but some people who are very smell sensitive notice it alot
 
Hi thanks for the input on the latex. But, there are many other factors to consider, latex is the best solution by far. The inks, the printheads, the ease of working on the Hp's, the dry time, the list goes on and on...thx Wideimagesolutions
 

player

New Member
...The plastic parts, the horrible loading system, the trouble getting colours the same on 2 identical prints, the extra power consumption, not being able to use small pieces, the short life of the printer etc...
 

iPrintStuff

Prints stuff
...The plastic parts, the horrible loading system, the trouble getting colours the same on 2 identical prints, the extra power consumption, not being able to use small pieces, the short life of the printer etc...

No, no, no, no NO! It’s the best solution by far because he sells them, silly. No other reason.

Doesn’t matter if it’s not the solution that’s right for this particular customer, it gets a blanket “best solution by far” if they can subtly sell them without a merchant membership :rolleyes:
 

ikarasu

Active Member
The 560 has the best loading system in a printer I've ever seen. The new enclosed heating system which makes me waste 10" of media everytime I load on the other hand...

I used to not mind the plastic parts... But twice now my printer has had an issue where I've had to replace 3-4 different parts until it finally got fixed. 3 different techs, working for different companies... even 2 HP engineers guessing what could be wrong. The error system on this thing is ridiculous... It throws an error about the heating fan not working... replace the petri (Petrea? whatever it is) doesnt fix it... HP engineer says replace the second one since even though the first is throwing an error, it could be the second... replace it... nothing. Must be the heater fan... replace it... nope. Replace the hard drive... yep... the hard drive was somehow corrupt throwing random errors.

If you buy an HP, always pay for the extended service. Thats my only gripe... the colors, panel aligment issues people seem to have... never been a problem. We just printed a full house / shed type wrap... 3 rolls of media, not one alignment or color issue.
 

player

New Member
The 560 has the best loading system in a printer I've ever seen. The new enclosed heating system which makes me waste 10" of media everytime I load on the other hand...

I used to not mind the plastic parts... But twice now my printer has had an issue where I've had to replace 3-4 different parts until it finally got fixed. 3 different techs, working for different companies... even 2 HP engineers guessing what could be wrong. The error system on this thing is ridiculous... It throws an error about the heating fan not working... replace the petri (Petrea? whatever it is) doesnt fix it... HP engineer says replace the second one since even though the first is throwing an error, it could be the second... replace it... nothing. Must be the heater fan... replace it... nope. Replace the hard drive... yep... the hard drive was somehow corrupt throwing random errors.

If you buy an HP, always pay for the extended service. Thats my only gripe... the colors, panel aligment issues people seem to have... never been a problem. We just printed a full house / shed type wrap... 3 rolls of media, not one alignment or color issue.
Could you tape a piece of material to your roll to prevent the 10" waste?
 

karst41

New Member
how is the power consumption etc . i see that it is 2.2 kw thats quit a bit . but thats theoreticly. what is your experiance with that and how much you print ?
Power consumption is a non factor. The 300 560 570 (dont buy 26000 no longer supported) These machines require Two dedicated 240v outlets. and the printers are very efficient. I figure the electrical cost to rip a 54"x150 roll is maybe $4 roll. It is a non factor.
 

Reveal1

New Member
The 560 has the best loading system in a printer I've ever seen. The new enclosed heating system which makes me waste 10" of media everytime I load on the other hand...

I used to not mind the plastic parts... But twice now my printer has had an issue where I've had to replace 3-4 different parts until it finally got fixed. 3 different techs, working for different companies... even 2 HP engineers guessing what could be wrong. The error system on this thing is ridiculous... It throws an error about the heating fan not working... replace the petri (Petrea? whatever it is) doesnt fix it... HP engineer says replace the second one since even though the first is throwing an error, it could be the second... replace it... nothing. Must be the heater fan... replace it... nope. Replace the hard drive... yep... the hard drive was somehow corrupt throwing random errors.

If you buy an HP, always pay for the extended service. Thats my only gripe... the colors, panel aligment issues people seem to have... never been a problem. We just printed a full house / shed type wrap... 3 rolls of media, not one alignment or color issue.
Probably wise, but HP kills you on the cost of the extended service so I nervously ignore their occasional offers to 're certify' for the extended warranty..
Maybe we've been lucky, no service at all in 3 years through daily continuous use. Ikarsu - I agree that the plastic parts cause concern, but I wonder if you have gorillas working in your shop. My office door is always open to the shop and I have a trained ear (amazing how I can hear the a slight change related to a misfeed/ink out etc. and the operator cannot) ; when they start hammering on the equipment I let them know about it. So far no broken plastic parts - fingers crossed.
 

ikarasu

Active Member
I'm the onlyone operating the printers

So far nothing physically broken.

We've had a hard drive die, and we've had the print head pcb board die... Both things had nothing to do with the operator. We believe it's due to all the power outages we get.... So we just invested in a $2000 ups for the machine.

Stuff breaks, it's the cost of doing business. What I don't like is their obscure error codes that could be 1 out of 5 different things... So they try the most likely... And whether it gets fixed or not, you need to pay for the part. We've got half a dozen parts we paid for that didn't need changing, I guess soon well have every part as a spare that it won't be an issue... But still.

This is the second time our printers been down for 3 weeks because of all the back and fourth with hp techs and shipping time for new parts. If we didn't have a second printer (and i have a 560 at home to help pick up the slack...because who doesn't love bringing 10 rolls of material home!) Wed be screwed from all the downtime.

I still think it's a great machine and would buy it again if I had to make the choice. We print rolls on the thing everyday, it's paid for itself 100x over in the 1.5 years we've had it. And we're confident it's our buildings electrical, not the machine itself... But I guess we'll find out once the ups arrives! If it keeps costing 2k to repair... Might be time mine to look at something else.
 

Reveal1

New Member
Yes - 560 seems to be sensitive to power variations although we haven't had issues with the occasional outages. We purchased two of these https://www.amazon.com/ESP-Digital-Protector-E524ZNT-Receptacle/dp/B074XFQTFB which solved a weird screen readability issue we were having and some random errors. These are actually just power conditioners, not UPS. Just wish they could compensate for low voltage which can also cause issues. Your UPS should hopefully cover all that, but wouldn't you need one for each 220 circuit?

A 560 'spare' at home?! Talk about dedication!
 

ikarasu

Active Member
Our shop is weird... which is why I cant fault HP for it. I hate their obscure codes that could mean anything is broken... but I dont blame their machines for actually breaking down.

Last year we had 16 power outages in the span of 2 months. The year before that the same. They did a bunch of upgrades in our area... and this year so far it's been 2 in summer. Our FB500 had a PSU die and motherboard die because of it, our graphtec also had the main board die after an outage... So it's hard to blame the machine when every machine we have started to have issues.

We were told its not the surges that kill these machines, it's the sudden drop in electricity that does, so surge protectors wont help in our case...had to get a huge UPS. It'll work all of 3 minutes while the machine is running before it ends out of juice... but thats enough to cancel a job and turn the power off ourselves. Our flatbed hasn't had issues since we got it a UPS... The latex is more power hungry and we paid around 2K per latex machine to get a UPS... so we just bought it last week, we'll see if it helps with our latex's phantom errors!


And yes. I started with a 110 at home because our old owner wouldnt touch latex printers... I wanted one to play with. They loved the quality of it and bought a 560 a month after I got my latex... then a second one... then a 360 for traffic. Then I saw a forclosure auction selling a 560 for $7000... jumped on it, sold my 110 for $5000 and never looked back. I love the 560s loading mechanism and the machine itself... I know having one in my home is overkill, I do sell a few things online and it's paid for the machine 5x over... not bad as a second income! It's great to have when our work machine is down as well. Right now we're down to 1 560 and 1 360 (We traded one 560 for a 360 so we can do traffic) I hate using the 360 because of the loading mechanism... and the 560's heating fans throw an error after every print. So I have to reboot the machine every single print... It's not too bad, but currently we have 15 different medias to print on (I saved all the small misc material jobs for last). I tried... and just couldnt do it. Loaded the truck up with all the rolls...went home and printed it all at home. So it may be overkill, but it's saved our butts a few times!

Of course having a 560 / laminator /graphtec at home kind of sucks when we have a rush job, and get asked to bring a bunch of stuff home to print for next day delivery... but worth it since I get a 560, great machine.
 
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