New Roland XC540MT Printer

[Jason Xuereb]

I’ve got an XC540W and as soon as I can get my hands on this printer I am getting one.

[Kevin Flowers]

Jason
if they have upgraded the new xc white printers with the recycling pumps should be simple to upgrade. Is your a new printer? i know in another thread you where awaiting finance etc.

Kev

[Chris Wool]

quote Jason Xuereb:

I’ve got an XC540W and as soon as I can get my hands on this printer I am getting one.

just showing off now 😀

out of interest will it print white to black vinyl ?

i like the sound of this met one but i think they will price it out of reach for a while, and they haven’t said the price of the inks yet.

i am in the market for a new one before too long and this will fit the bill but i am not rushing at it.

chris

[Kevin Flowers]

Chris
i think Bret said the Metallic is around about 30% more per cart but it is so opaque that the profile tells it to only lay down 40% so is going to cost no more per square meter than normal, CMYK carts are standard white i think is on par with the metallic I personally think it works better as a spot colour on high lights etc so you would use even less.

Kev

[Peter Normington]

quote Kevin Flowers:

Chris
i think Bret said the Metallic is around about 30% more per cart but it is so opaque that the profile tells it to only lay down 40% so is going to cost no more per square meter than normal, CMYK carts are standard white i think is on par with the metallic I personally think it works better as a spot colour on high lights etc so you would use even less.

Kev

I thought the metalic carts were 3 times more than the standard ink
which works out "about" the same price based on your equation kev

Peter

[Kevin Flowers]

Pete
3 times more than the standard ink is going to make one very expensive cartridge. However you could be right i spent more time working out how it worked. I’ll check with Bret but he is on Holiday at the moment.

Kev

[David Rowland]

very interesting…. the good uv printers recirculate from head to tanks all the time, especially for the white, it needs to be always mixed.

Printing white onto black, well it will be grey 😉

i like the printer idea, and metalic carts being more expensive is no surpirse to be honest, in silk screen the metalics are more expensive and originate from fragments that need to be ground up.

[Chris Wool]

that’s the point.
roland were on the phone for me and many others to go and see the printer at there HQ.

i asked how much for the printer and carts and was told they haven’t made there mind up yet. also told i could have one for ages either.

so what a waist of time.
my other views of this tactic i will keep to myself.

chris

[Kevin Flowers]

Dave
the option you have with the metallic because it is so opaque you could lay that down first then the white expensive way to do it but it would probably work.

Kev

[Jason Xuereb]

quote Chris Wool:

quote Jason Xuereb:

I’ve got an XC540W and as soon as I can get my hands on this printer I am getting one.

just showing off now 😀

out of interest will it print white to black vinyl ?

i like the sound of this met one but i think they will price it out of reach for a while, and they haven’t said the price of the inks yet.

i am in the market for a new one before too long and this will fit the bill but i am not rushing at it.

chris

I’ve done it on small labels. It looks more opaque if you do an overprint so print the same thing twice. This was on Avery 700.

We run clear through our white machine so that’s what we use it for.

Moving to this new machine makes sense. We have high maintenance costs which these recirculating pumps will reduce significantly. The metallic ink is a bonus.

At the moment My white ink costs are approximately double that of CMYK. I get a 220ml white cartridges for the price of a 440ml CMYK cart. It may a tad cheaper then this.

[Simon.Johnson]

quote Chris Wool:

i asked how much for the printer and carts and was told they haven’t made there mind up yet. also told i could have one for ages either.

so what a waist of time.
my other views of this tactic i will keep to myself.

chris

Hi Chris, If you can make it to Clevedon for the open day on 6th or 7th I can guarantee you will have all the pricing information, delivery schedule and I will even show you the latest "Trace" option in Wasatch which might finally persuade you to upgrade your ColoRIP.

In my view, it will be worth the time spent visiting the open days to see this new technology. If you currently do the design as well as the print for your customers, the real benefit of the XC-540MT is that you can create and sell a design that can’t immediately be undercut by everyone else with a Wide Format Printer. Because of this, one thing this technology may do in the short term which has not been advertised anywhere is to help you to retain margins on your work!

[John Thomson]

quote Chris Wool:

i asked how much for the printer and carts and was told they haven’t made there mind up yet. also told i could have one for ages either.

chris

We were told these will be ready to deliver in the UK next month.

John

[Chris Wool]

no my point is

a Roland Representative rang me to invite me to see a machine that they couldn’t give a price for nor running costs nor delivery date.

he was told to ring me back when he (they) had sorted them self’s out.

i could be very interested but i am not waisting my time.
i am a big roland fan but they are now waring me a bit thin and have forgotten that i have been buying roland since about 1988.

chris

[Jason Xuereb]

quote Chris Wool:

no my point is

a Roland Representative rang me to invite me to see a machine that they couldn’t give a price for nor running costs nor delivery date.

he was told to ring me back when he (they) had sorted them self’s out.

i could be very interested but i am not waisting my time.
i am a big roland fan but they are now waring me a bit thin and have forgotten that i have been buying roland since about 1988.

chris

Price of the machine will be about 10-15% more then the current XC540. Guess depends on your market etc.

I’d anticipate that consumales for metallic will be on par with the white. Slightly more. We’ll see what happens.

[Shane Drew]

quote Simon.Johnson:

I will even show you the latest “Trace” option in Wasatch which might finally persuade you to upgrade your ColoRIP.

I really like the new trace option, but an upgrade from 6.3 to 6.6 is $1100 here, and I can’t really justify the expense 🙁 . If Wasatch made the upgrade a more realistic price they may get more takers but this attitude of making the select few pay for R&D is stupid. 👿

[Peter Normington]

Signlab, illustrator or corel will trace, and from what I have seen on the Wasach site, why do you need to do it in a rip?
contour cut an image, for me, signlab rings the bell
(i have all the above mentioned programs)
Peter

[Peter Normington]

quote Jason Xuereb:

quote Chris Wool:

no my point is

a Roland Representative rang me to invite me to see a machine that they couldn’t give a price for nor running costs nor delivery date.

he was told to ring me back when he (they) had sorted them self’s out.

i could be very interested but i am not waisting my time.
i am a big roland fan but they are now waring me a bit thin and have forgotten that i have been buying roland since about 1988.

chris

Price of the machine will be about 10-15% more then the current XC540. Guess depends on your market etc.

I’d anticipate that consumales for metallic will be on par with the white. Slightly more. We’ll see what happens.

price was estimated by roland uk at £28k
they say they are pricing it high to give the first buyers an advantage over the competition ?

Peter

Peter

[Jason Xuereb]

That doesn’t seem high Peter based on the prices of the XC540.

[Shane Drew]

quote Peter Normington:

Signlab, illustrator or corel will trace, and from what I have seen on the Wasach site, why do you need to do it in a rip?
contour cut an image, for me, signlab rings the bell
(i have all the above mentioned programs)
Peter

Peter, I have CS4, and Corel too, but the trace in Wasatch will save time.

I get clients and other sign shops alike that will send me a photo and want it die cut.

For me to import the photo into my software, had draw a trace/cut line, then export to to my rip all takes time.

With wasatch’s new feature, it will do a cut line around a raster file or a vector file on the fly. Only thing I think it will fall down with is if the background is not a flat colour. Not sure, but can’t see it working if the baground is also multi colour.

[Simon.Johnson]

quote Peter Normington:

Signlab, illustrator or corel will trace, and from what I have seen on the Wasach site, why do you need to do it in a rip?
contour cut an image, for me, signlab rings the bell
(i have all the above mentioned programs)
Peter

Peter, I agree entirely with you that if you already have SignLAB and/or Illustrator or CorelDRAW and you don’t already have Wasatch SoftRIP the benefit of Tracer in V6.6 is limited and would not justify the cost.

Wasatch have added the Tracer option primarily to address new customers moving to a print and cut workflow for the first time. This customer may not already have tools to produce cut paths and this is where Tracer will come in very useful.

For any existing Wasatch SoftRIP user with the Contour Cutting Option who upgrades to V6.6, the Tracer option is included free of charge.

[Tom Davison]

Hi guys,

I’m new here just found this forum after Googling about the XC540. We have the six colour version here, the machine is about 4 months old.

Are the Silver inks interchangeable with the LC or LM inks or is the Silver actually runnable on a standard 6col XC540, or is the XC540MT an entirely different machine?

Many Thanks.

[Jason Xuereb]

quote bjb.Tom:

Hi guys,

I’m new here just found this forum after Googling about the XC540. We have the six colour version here, the machine is about 4 months old.

Are the Silver inks interchangeable with the LC or LM inks or is the Silver actually runnable on a standard 6col XC540, or is the XC540MT an entirely different machine?

Many Thanks.

In effec it is a different machine which is based on the XC540 platform. The new XC540MT has recirculating pumps. With your current XC540 you can run three modes.

CMYKLcLm
CMYKWW
CMYKMY I think it is

If you want to run the metallic in addition to the white you will need the new machine. It has recirculating pumps etc which cut down on the maintenance greatly.

[Tom Davison]

We don’t run white ink now,

Is it a requirement alongside the metallic? Also are the recirculating pumps purely a maintenance-saver or are they necessary.

Basically is it at all possible to run the metallics on our machine, even just for a short time/small run or test?

[Jason Xuereb]

quote bjb.Tom:

We don’t run white ink now,

Is it a requirement alongside the metallic? Also are the recirculating pumps purely a maintenance-saver or are they necessary.

Basically is it at all possible to run the metallics on our machine, even just for a short time/small run or test?

It’s not going to be possible.

The recirculating pumps are to ensure the heads dont get clogged from the metallic and white inks. At the moment with the normal XC540 using the white has high maintance costs because the ink is purged and not reused. This equates to very high maintenance costs.

Maybe one day they will start retro fitting older XC’s or maybe someone might but I doubt Roland are going to do this anytime soon.