Chinese UV Flatbed printers any good?

[Mark Johnston]

i am guessing you mean the ones on alibaba.com?
i mentioned in a previous post that i was looking on there at laminators, printers and so on. almost too good to be true normally means it isnt.

[Colin Crabb]

SO, a lot of these machines are in fact quite good / okay – Distributors will buy them rebranded (perhaps with a few upgrades / changes to suit there market / price point), I know a few companies in the UK that do this with laser cutters, laminators.

BUT:

Spare parts will be an issue.

Limited Warranty – Buyer will be responsible for repairs, and you will have difficulties with breakdowns.

Training – You buy it, You install it, You train yourself, very limited support.

Shipping – Little bit of a nightmare atm, Import duties, its slow, costs are rising, and again, you will be responsible once it leaves China.

Software – drivers might be limited for your RIP, or you might have to use there own software (see Training!)

• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by  Colin Crabb.

[John Thomson]

Hi,

I imported an A3 UV flatbed form China last year.

I have in the past imported 2 x 1600mm solvent printers, a hot laminator, flatbed laminator, 2 x 1600 plotters, 700mm x 500mm laser etc. so am reasonably comfortable importing.

From my experience importing yourself is well worthwhile…..Alibaba is one of the biggest businesses in the world.

I have never had any real problems with any of my machine but have always found the manufacturers to be very helpful and spare parts are easily sent if needed.

So to the UV specifically.

I have looked at them for years at Sign UK and always fancied one…..but they were really expensive.

There are really cheap machines based on converted Epson desktop printers but I decided to spend more and go with an industrial spec machine with a single Epson DX8 head, CMYK plus white ( white in is stirred when the machine is on to avoid clogging) I bought masses of spare parts inc. a mainboard, headboard , sensors etc…….all came discounted as a bundled, discounted package along with ink, cleaning fluid etc. Drivers for it are already in Flexisign so I figured that if that was the case the manufacturer must be reputable

Took 8 weeks to arrive in the UK, all insured for the voyage, paperwork and import tax etc. was sorted quickly along with transport to Scotland.

Delivered on in a large package on a pallet…over 100KG so the drive took it to where I wanted on a pallet truck.

Setup was easy enough apart from the capping station not being accurately aligned….sorted remotely from China via Teamviewer….I have my own Whatsapp connection to support which is unlimited.

Only thing I was not happy about was the head ribbons appearing to be too short and therefore very tight….I swapped with 20mm longer ones for peace of mind.

Other than it taking a while for me to figure how to figure out printing with white ink ( you have to set up a spot channel in Photoshop then export as a tif file before ripping) everything has been good.

John