I'm in the market for a wide format printer. I'm feeling kinda lost as to what to get. Anything I should look for or avoid?
Posted by John Byrd (Member # 825) on :
have a Roland vs540i here. Heard the new vs640 is a vast improvement
Posted by Jean Shimp (Member # 198) on :
Glenn, I can't help with the answer but you might want to try asking at Signs101 since those people are mostly printer people and there is lots of discussion on that topic. I am curious why you decided to buy a printer as I recall at one time you preferred to outsource your printing. I outsource all my vinyl printing but have been thinking about flat bed printers. Some of my competitors are printing directly to substrate. I'm not able to compete with that if I have to outsource flat bed printing. It's cheap enough to pay for shipping vinyl prints, but rigid substrates are too costly to ship.
Posted by John Moritz (Member # 34341) on :
We bought our first wide format printer 5 months ago and went with the Mimaki CJV150-130. It prints and cuts up to 54" media. We rarely outsource anything now and we run 4 different adhesive medias, scrim banner, poster paper, heat transfer film, and now most recently static cling material.
Four years ago, when attending the NBM convention in Indianapolis, we got to see the HP latex, Roland, Mutoh, and Mimaki all running more or less side by side and we were by far most impressed with the print quality of the Mimaki and Roland printers. Now that we have our own printer, I'm glad we made the purchase and these machines are priced low enough that they will pay themselves off within the first few months if you're running a busy enough shop. Besides it's so much nicer to be able to control the quality and offer a wider range of products than one could when relying on a wholesale printer.
The only drawback to running a solvent printer is that it takes at minimum of 24 hours for prints to dry before I can laminate them, whereas with latex there is no need to wait. UV inks may be a game changer in this regard. I just feel like the print quality of our solvent is better than a comparable latex machine, and I think the prints are every bit as durable, although that is just my opinion. I think if latex was as good as they say there would be little to no market for solvent printers. Latex fills a void in the market for wrap shops that do high volume work and it's also nice for those 'fast' sign shops that market themselves on their quick turnarounds. If you don't fit either of those markets, then I wouldn't rush to be sold on the latex.
The cutting feature of this machine is really nice. It will contour cut and also do full cuts through the backing paper similar to die cuts, which is really nice if you do a lot of labels and stickers. We have had a few issues with cut accuracy on larger items, for example decals over 3' in length, but we were recently told about using additional registration marks halfway between the corner marks so that might help matters, I just haven't had a job to test that on yet.
The fine cut plugin works great with the latest updated version of CorelDraw and the Rasterlink rip software is pretty easy to get the hang of. The printer allows to run up to 8 colors (orange+light cyan+light magenta+light grey+CMYK) for an incredibly rich color gamut, although we're quite content with running CMYK alone, even for photographic type prints. You can also run white and metallics as an option, although our service tech didn't recommend it unless you do a large volume of that kind of work.
All in all, we're pretty happy with our purchase, we're just not happy with the customer service from our vendor so when we upgrade to a newer printer in several years I doubt we will be buying from them again. I would strongly recommend the Mimaki line of printers, though.
[ October 12, 2016, 12:48 PM: Message edited by: John Moritz ]
Posted by stein Saether (Member # 430) on :
Neil Butler just bouggt a printer, ask him.
Posted by Kevin Gaffney (Member # 4240) on :
Bought a Roland rf640 18 months ago. Cant praise it enough. Had a seiko 64 for 9 years previous. At the money, you cant go wrong. Parts are cheap if needed
Posted by Gene Uselman (Member # 2508) on :
I agree on the RF640- altho it needs a separate cutter. With a matching GX500 cutter I regularly cut 25 foot logos. Gene
Posted by Felix Marcano (Member # 1833) on :
Happy with my Mimaki CJV 30-160 (Printer / Cutter). Local service sucks though. Beware of who you buy inks from. Got some not too long ago and the expiration date is real close, which suggests to me they're going to end up in the trash.
Posted by Michael Clanton (Member # 2419) on :
We have the new Roland TrueVIS VG Series 64” Printer/Cutter. Had it about a year, replaced a 540. It is pretty sweet- we bought it from GSG. Amazing print quality. It cuts as well.
