I'm kind of torn on it. At my previous job I ran a Jeti3150 flatbed, Jeti3324 RTR and a Durst 160 so it is kind of small in comparison!
I apologize if this is a little discombobulated...
The LED lights are a plus, not having to wait for the lamps to warm up or cool down.
The white and clear ink having their own dedicated heads is the best feature I think. Not loosing time and color gamut to switching over white or clear. The only consistent problem I've had is changing the ink packs on white and not being able to so on the fly so to speak like I can the other colors.
You can't over print (without trickery) and you loose 6-7 inches on the tail end of rigid substrates due to only have that grit roller in the back.
The muffin fans used to crate vacuum work okay on light weight substrates. We got a used HP-Scitex FB700 back in December or so and I've used the Acuity almost exclusively as a roll to roll printer and it does work better like that. The feed tables are a little flimsy.
I did use it to print rigid goods on for over a year with pretty good success. Mostly it was 1mm PVC, .040 styrene, 4mm coro, and 3mm PVC. I was able to rig stand to feed off 18pt C2S that came on 6inch core and larger than it would hold in, but had to be on top of it to make sure there was enough slack. I'll have to find the photo I took, even watching it to pre feed slack was preferable to sheeting off, hoping it was square and then feeding it. It wasn't a perfect system, but use able.
I wish it had an interface more like the Jeti's I ran did. Being able to see lowvac, reservoir levels, ink temperatures at reservoir and head, head voltages, pulse width and all that fun fun stuff. They finally changed so that you can adjust headheight during a job, but you can't do left/right alignment. It's almost all locked away and you have to be in Service Mode to access it.
They say you can print three layers like <Image> <White> <Image> but I've yet to get he white opaque enough to really work well like this.
There's no jetout either! Being able to map out bad nozzles is a feature I miss sorely.
To access the heads, for instance checking to see if there is ink in the lowvac line, you have to take off 2 or 3 covers and is time consuming. Adjusting the lowvac involves turning a screw in the back, and then listening for a steady beep from the control panel, which is almost impossible for me being very hard of hearing or for someone who is deaf, or are in a loud shop.
Their Techs that we've had come in are very knowledge and will actually explain what they are doing and how everything interacts with each other.
I wasn't involved in the decision to purchase this printer, and I think they made a good call when they bought it as they weren't sure what they were getting into, or how much work was coming in for it etc.
Once again I apologize if this is a little discombobulated, it's been a crazy could of days, I'd be happy to clarify anything or answer specific questions.
