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hp5500 or roland fj-500/600pro ?
Hello there 🙂
What would you prefer if you were to choose between HP 5500 and Roland FJ-500pro or 600pro? Both with uv inks and we need it for pop-ups and similar stuff ? We assume longterm cheap maintenance (inks, printheads, parts etc.) and easy printing is more important than speed or printer price.
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12 Replies
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Sorry to be a party pooper, but these are both quite old machines.
The FJ is a piezo head machine so the pigment inks are pretty bright and vibrant – but it is dog slow when compared to more modern machines. I believe that support for them from Roland (in terms of parts) is already offically finished (could be wrong though), however, there are a lot of parts out there as they Epson based, will be available for some time, However, if you need something proprietary, like a Roland board, you may get stuck.
HP5500 is much faster, with a lot of units out there there will be support for them for a long time to come. But the UV (their name for pigment) inks are as flat as the beer in London. (Dull colours)
I’d look at spending a bit bit more and getting a Canon/Epson/HP which is a little more up date using newer technology inks.
Mike
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Honestly, i think all non-solvent machines are a bit dated now when it comes to sign industry requirments. But this time we need something that doesn’t smell, and is cheap and simple. Maybe FJ-540 ? And you mentioned newer HP as a bettet option – which one exactly ?
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Antyhing that uses the the newer Vivera inks from HP would do. You should look for a a second user:
Epson 9800 or 9880
Any large format Canon
HP Z6100FJ540 is a good choice – but hard to find as they were the same price as the Eco-Sol Soljet SC540 so very few were sold.
If budget allows you could look at the new Roland SP540i – for a street price of about £ 11k you could have a new 54" print & cut eco-sol machine which would be generally useful in most signage situations.
If you’re limited to a second user machine then good luck trying to find an eco-solvent. I saw an SP540v (2 1/2 years old) go for £ 8200 on ebay yesterday. With the economy and exchange rate issues second hand kit is in great demeand and most of the suiff I have seen is, shall we say, well hammered (polite version).
Good luck.
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Seems like you claim that eco-solvent can beat HP in terms of color quality ?
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Have you looked at the costs involved with the manufacture of products as well as the cost of the machine itself ? Both the machines you have mentioned are pigment ink printers and shouldn’t be confused with UV ink printers. This means that any media used has to be coated and everything you print will need to be laminated. A lot of suppliers are reducing the amount and variety of Media available for dye and pigment printers so you may find yourself in a position where you can’t get hold of the media that you want.
Quite a lot of the members on here run eco solvent printers from their homes and I don’t think the smell is really a problem. I have an encad 850 which is basically a large doorstop because it is so limited in what it can do, can’t afford an eco or full solvent printer so I just buy in most of the digital print I need from a trade printer. -
I understand your point. By i need it only for indoor jobs. I could afford ecosolvent machine i think, however the smell of eco-solvent ink is so obnoxious for the jobs i usually do (like pop-ups). I currently know of none ecosolvent machine that can match dye or pigment in color gamut while producing flavourless print-outs. Your point about it being not very long term investment is correct, that’s why i prefer to buy second-hand.
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If i may ask why do you need a pigment printer if you are doing interior only?
I’ve got a couple of aging HP5500’s running on dye which have and continue to give (watch the buggers fall over tommorrow!!) untroubled service with superb image quality.
So they ain’t the fastest but they do us just fine for 99% of our display and interior print work.
Oo
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I prefer pigment because i don’t trust dye inks in terms of color longevity.
I heard about some dye inks being resistant to fading (dicojet) but i don’t think they are availabe for HP.
It would be interesing to see the same image printed by uv and dye hp 5500.
What i really don’t understand is why everybody want to print everything interior with solvents and eco-solvents.
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quote NickGrandf:I prefer pigment because i don’t trust dye inks in terms of color longevity.
I heard about some dye inks being resistant to fading (dicojet) but i don’t think they are availabe for HP.
It would be interesing to see the same image printed by uv and dye hp 5500.
What i really don’t understand is why everybody want to print everything interior with solvents and eco-solvents.
1 printer – thats about it. Why have 2 when one would do – for most people I guess that they don’t want multiple printers (and cost) when the percentage of interior display work is possibly quite low.
As for longevity of dye on the HP, got clients using 5 year old drops still – colour looks ok to me.
Oo
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5 years is an impressive result. I suppose you laminate it , right ?
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Yeah, been using DTec Matt on most of it.
Oo
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Hi Guys,
Has anyone seen the new HP Latex ink printer? am going for a demo in a couple of weeks in Nottingham, good for indoor and outdoor i believe, will be interesting to see.
Regards
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