Mimaki CJV30-130 Owners / advice please

[Steve Lamb]

Dan

Mimaki all the way for us. Looked at others but the mimaki won us over at the time and has proved to be a greatwork horse. Never heard of head strikes on long runs (touch wood) we have done banners over 20m long and vinyl runs at over 40, no problem.

If you have the space get a separate cutter as opposed to all in one, you then cut while you print and print whilst you cut, much better.

Good luck

steve

[Daniel Evans]

Nice to meet you today Dan.

I spoke to quite a few people regarding the versacamm today, didn’t get round to speaking to anyone regarding the mimaki until i was leaving and one guy said check out that printer, can anyone tell me what makes this the better choice over the versacamm?

[Dan Piddington]

Thanks Steve,

Short on space and also have a graphtec fc7000-75 plotter / cutter which suits 90% of my single colour vinyl jobs.

I thought the 1370mm print and cut would be handy as a cutter for any larger single colour vinyl job that may come my way, but then also for printed vinyl, banner, canvas, etc, etc and labels stickers and decals which I’m outsourcing all the time.

Plus if I sell my graphtec (which I’d rather not do) I still need to find that extra few pounds for the printer and cutter bundle.

🙄

Could do with the change to upgrade the van to euro 4 before jan 2012

😮

[Dan Piddington]

Hi Dan, good to meet you too.

I’m not sure it’s a better choice. Previous threads have equal opinions with some siding Mimaki and others Roland. The suppliers I spoke to selling both machines today said the vs 540 and mimaki cjv 130 were pretty evenly matched. Also the sp 540i is (as I’m sure many will agree) a great machine and was the machine I was going to buy when I walked through the door!

Damn sign show, there goes my holiday……….

Personally, the company I currently outsource to run a mimaki and I think the print quality is great so therefore offering the same quality in house seems like a no-brainer, I’m sure the vs would do the same but it’s a little bit more pricey.

Choices, choices.

[Peter Normington]

I recently bought a jv33, which is the same thing as the cv but without the cutting facility,
I prefer the separate cutter, most of my stuff is laminated anyway, but if you are doing laminated or unlaminated decals, the mimaki is great for die cutting, I know the roland can do it, but the mimaki plottter has a separate cutting strip for die cutting, and if you have a second blade and holder, the kiss cut blade remains sharp for years.
worth a thought, a die cut decal saves hours of finishing time.

Peter

[Dan Piddington]

Thanks Peter,

So if I’ve got this right what your saying is that the
cjv is great for die cutting un-laminated and laminated
vinyl or are you referring to the separate plotter?

Apologies for the confusion.

If the cjv is going to give me the same quality print as the jv33
and be able to cut un-laminated or laminated stickers, decals with no
problem plus occasionally cut single colour vinyl @ 1230mm wide then
I’ll be happy

😀

[Robert Walker]

Hi Dan

at my previous place of work we had a Roland XC540 and a Versacam
as-well as a Mimake JV33

I can honestly say that you could not tell the difference between the print quality and we never had a head-strike on any of the printers unless the operator didn’t put the pinch rollers on when necessary,

we had the versacam for over 5 years and the xc540 for 3 years and the JV33 for over a year, i only ever met the Roland engineer once and i could tell you age of the kids of the mimake engineer, it got monthly visit at one point.

these are only my views but it did make a difference when i came to buy my own machine

Robert

[Peter Normington]

quote Dan Piddington:

Thanks Peter,

So if I’ve got this right what your saying is that the
cjv is great for die cutting un-laminated and laminated
vinyl or are you referring to the separate plotter?

Apologies for the confusion.

If the cjv is going to give me the same quality print as the jv33
and be able to cut un-laminated or laminated stickers, decals with no
problem plus occasionally cut single colour vinyl @ 1230mm wide then
I’ll be happy

😀

The mimaki plotter is what i use for die cutting, I dont know if the cjv has the same ability?
But separate printer and plotter works for me.

Peter

[Colin Crow]

We have had the cjv30-130 for about 18 months now and agree that with 99% of materials head strikes have not been a problem. very smooth banner which can cause static to build up has been the only issue and a slight modification by mimaki has sorted this problem although I had already ditched the tricky polypropylene medium.

I haven’t used a Roland as the demo I received came nowhere near the quality of our previous valuejet so wasn’t tempted. The main advantage for us is the durability of the full solvent prints which stand up to lot more treatment than the ecosolvent used in the mutoh (and also most rolands – I think?)

Print and cut is not as foolproof as you would expect from this machine but better than we ever got with a separate cutter. Bear in mind that the maximum length you can print and cut is only around 1.2m as the take up doesn’t work in reverse so it will drag all over the floor. Also don’t expect to cut through a printed area of vinyl for at least 12 hours without the vinyl curling up. We have just built our own dryer unit to help with this problem and found it shortens the delay a lot. There was a £700 option for something similar when bought the printer but was dissuaded from buying it by our supplier.

Print quality is usually spot on and profiles are not that fussy so easy to use. We run 6colours plus White inks and while I prefer the photo quality of the light inks the White inks are just too expensive to run.

We have had quite a few engineer calls over this period under our 2 year warranty mainly to deal with an ongoing motor current problem which ended up with a new main board swap which seems to have cured the fault. Otherwise just simple cleaning maintenance to keep print tip top.

Up at nec myself Thursday but any other questions just let m know.

Colin

[Elena kalispera]

Roland without doubt all the way!!! As with any machine some people may get a problem and some may not that’s life it’s like owning are car or being married ! 😉

What I would say is that Roland availability of parts/reliability/build quality and the shear fact that they are the worlds most used solvent printer should sell it alone.

Reality is print and cut is awesome you just let it do it own thing If you like a separate cutter then buy am old one for £300 seriously then your covered with both machine. Cutters are so cheap these days I feel if you need the extra then just get it if space allows so…

Also just from my own experience I found Roland tech support very good although i would never buy off them or get them to fix my machine as they can be expensive

These days companies like tech8 take the headache out of issues that may arise although most can be eliminated if run properly. Plus most repairs can be self taught as I have been doing until recently when I sold up

Regards
A

[Dan Piddington]

Thanks Robert, I appreciate your opinion.

Peter, I think the cjv can die cut as well but i’ll be talking to suppliers
again this morning so will check.

Colin, thanks very much for the in depth feedback, seems longer than 18 months ago that I picked up that risograph from you! sadly it doesn’t get used much so will probably be back on the boards soon.

I couldn’t remember whether you had the jv33 or cjv, I just remember your advice to go 1370 wide if my budget could stretch that far – which it now can

😀

Thanks Elena / A

[Neil Riley]

Hi Dan, thought I’d chime in with my 2c.
I have the CJV-130 and also the same FC7000-75 as you.

Firstly, you’ll definately want to keep the Graphtec for all your regular vinyl cutting, and a lot of your print/cut too.
I stock rolls of 760mm vinyl and lam for smaller decals. Print them on the CJV, laminate them then cut them on the Graphtec.

Even though the Mimaki is usually just as accurate for contour cutting, the Graphtec is just so much faster and easier to load up and simpler to use.

Speed wise for cutting it’s no comparison. I ran the same job file through the Mimaki at it’s max speed (30cm/s) and slowed the Graphtec down to the same speed, and the Graphtec still finished in 1/4 the time.

Plus the CJV puts all the heaters on even when in cut mode for no reason, and has a habit of sometimes getting alignment wrong also for no apparent reason.

So I use it like you have in mind: as a printer and for cutting and contour cutting things larger than 760 wide.

Having said that, it is a workhorse. You get used to waiting for it to set each pinch roller pressure, you can set a lot of defaults. It’s very reliable and I’ve never had head strikes with banners (keep the head height set to high).

I’m not sure what program you’re going to use for design/printing & cutting, but the Mimaki software integrates with CorelDraw and Illustrator for print & cut so you’ll have to be ready to use either of those unless your sign program can drive it. (I use Signlab)

So it works for me, having the CJV-130 and FC7000-75 is a good combo.

(Even better though would be a separate printer (JV33, Roland, Mutoh, Epson etc) and a Graphtec FC8000 cutter…)

[Colin Crow]

A quick update to my previous post after gleaning some info from the Mimaki/Art Systems stand at the NEC.

It IS possible to to print and cut while using the take up device. Since the take disengages during cutting the the CJV will pull off the printed material, cut it and then roll it back onto take up when the next print job commences. Using this method, albeit limiting the each job to no more than around 1-1.2M, its possible to run a series of jobs unattended. I can vouch for this as it works perfectly, yet this was never explained during installation. You will need to build in a drying delay using the cut options in rasterlink and I usually choose to turn off the heaters here too after printing to save electricity.

Colin

[Dan Piddington]

Thanks Neil,

Glad to hear the FC7000-75 works well for print and cut.

I’ve just ordered a jv33-130 so all the cutting work will be down to the graphtec.

Thanks for the update Colin.

What inks do you guys use? ss21 or es3?

The printer is going to be pretty close to me so wondering if extraction will be required?

Thanks

Dan

[Colin Crow]

SS21 for me – and yes some extraction would be advised for these inks. I can just about put up with it but others here complain without the fans on.

Colin

[Neil Riley]

Good choice Dan.
Give it a year or so and then you could upgrade the cutter to larger size.

The inks over here are different – I use what they call Eco-HS1 inks – probably more similar to ss21 than Eco. I’d go with the stronger option (SS21) and add a good extraction fan alongside the printer.
I also use a pedestal fan to blow across the print as it gets taken up to help drying and move the solvents towards the extraction fan in the wall.

[Dan Piddington]

Hi Neil,

I’m going with ss21 inks and an extractor fan (DIY)

That’s pretty much my plan with the plotter, most of the
print and cut jobs I currently outsource can be cut on the
fc 7000 so that will suffice for now and then I’ll upgrade
to a larger machine if required.

Thanks

Dan

[KevinAG]

Hi.

I had a roland Versacam for 6 years. Very reliable. Only had 2 engineer call outs. It died 2 days before Xmas so I rushed out a bought a CJV. I have had 8 call outs now and the thing is a pain in the neck to be honest. It’s very temperamental on the days it works you can’t fault it, but when it plays up forget getting anything out of it. The engineers can’t find the fault. I have a crew of engineers coming out next week to try to solve the issue. Everyone says these are good machines, maybe I have a lemon. i want to believe it’s good, but I wouldn’t trust it as far as I could throw it.

Would be interested to hear any stories about engineer call outs. Seems like there is a lot of faffing with these machines instead of fixing.

I would go for the Roland mate.

[Fabrice Menard]

If only you could tell us what’s wrong instead of only saying that something gets wrong… 😉 What kind of problems do you have?

Looks the same as a Roland salesman speech.

[Colin Crow]

It also begs the question- if you had a versacam for six years and it was so reliable, why did you rush out and buy a Mimaki?

[Karl Tipping]

Sorry to hijack but as there are a few of you here thought it would be quicker to ask
Is any one running the ES3 Eco inks with the CJV-130.
I’m looking in getting one but trying to find the Inks & a price I’m getting nowhere,
I only have a small office & don’t want to go with the Solvent ink.
On paper the printer looks really good.
Any advise would be welcome
cheers