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Advice need on Roland SC540 purchse please?
Hi,
I’ve been offered a secondhand Roland SC540, and being new to these printers hopefully someone here can give me a bit of advice with the following questions.
Whats the general opinion of this machine?
Where would this fit into Roland’s current product range, what is the current equivalent?
It’s 4 years old and apparently has been upgraded, what would have been the new price roughly, and what would be a good secondhand price?
Does anyone know where to find a product specification for it.
Thanks in advance for any help.
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5 Replies
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Hi Olly,
First thing to check is the model – SC540 – or – SC545EX, the latter being the later model with a different head configuration and better heaters.
These Machines are good solid reliable machines if they have been treated well, so it might be worth an independent inspection.
Main thing to check is the Nozzle Test Print, to make sure this is good. Also, ask what ink has been run through the machine…Roland Original is great and some 3rd party inks are great, but not so good if they have been trying all sorts of inks in the printer!
The replacement for this printer would be the XC540 – same setup, heads etc but a little quicker and a bit more reliable.
Speed – Roland claim about 26m2 p/hr – BUT a true production speed would be around 10/12.
Photo quality would be around 4m2 p/hr and you can get banner up to about 18 with a good profile and ink.
Price guide – £4/5k
I hope this helps.
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Can’t help with the question as I don’t print myself sorry but couple of things that might help. If you introduce yourself in the say hello forum you will get more help.
Secondly as I have no idea who you are, if you have been working for years or just starting out it’s difficult to know how best to reply but if you don’t know much about these printers then you need to know that they have to be kept busy. It’s not like a desktop printer where you can leave it for weeks at a time between jobs and everything is fine.
You need a reasonable volume of work for the printer to do before you think about buying one. One of the reasons I don’t have one is because I don’t have the volume of work required for it and would be worried that the heads would keep clogging up.
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Thanks, I’ve introduced myself as suggested, this is what i wrote in the say hello forum:
quote OllyBowman:Hi,I’ve just signed up, so i’m introducing myself as suggested.
I run a small company in Aviemore, Scotland doing PR, events, web and print design. We are a franchise of printing.com and sometimes get requests for large format print and signs, banners etc that we can’t do through printing.com. So far we’ve been outsourcing these jobs, so hope to make good contacts on here to continue this.
I’m also considering purchasing a Roland print and cut machine and am just trying to decide whether it’s worth it to us at the moment, so any advice or tips gratefully received.
Thanks,
Olly.
The other machine i’ve been considering is the Versacamm SP or VS models. Am i right in thinking that these are for lower volume use?
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Olly, the problem with any printer like that is the inks. Solvent or eco solvent inks will dry out and clog up heads in a reasonably short space of time from what I have read and researched.
Newer machines have automatic cleaning cycles so can be left for longer periods of time without printing but this uses ink so increases running costs.
I know some people who will just run a small print to make sure the inks are turning over but again to me it just seems like another expense.I guess it comes down to how often are you asked to do this sort of stuff and is there a market where you are that you could tap into to grow that side of the business.
I am very rarely asked for digital print and often the price puts people off once you tell them so I just buy from a trade printer on the rare occasion I need something.
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welcome oly.
i have a sc540 which i had new about 7 years ago. it had the heaters fitted and runs ecosol max inks.
its used every day varies between small job to 8mt. in its life its had 3 new black heads 1 just fitted and several new pumps and lots of pump reconditioning. (clean up and new piping). i do all my own maintenance and tend to pamper it a bit.As far as i am concerned it has been rock solid and next to faultless, it prints as well as a new one, print and cut is superbly accurate.
thing to remember is they have 6 heads and 12 carts unlike the sp which has 2 heads 4 carts, so you can see potential costs of repairs, but the extra speed has real benefits when printing say a 8×4 at quality settings.
if you offered me £6k for it i would say no thanks.
down side is you can’t run versa works on it but the old roland colourrip is still my rip of choice. it just works.
if it is a EX it may be-able to run versa works not sure on that.
as justin said if its been well looked after you may get a bargain
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