Printer Upgrade. Running Mutoh 1624 – do I need a printer that will print white?

[Robert Lambie]

Nothing wrong in going outside your comfort zone, but do it for the right reason.
1, Are you currently seeing a demand for white ink from your existing customers?
2, Is there a line of products you would like to start offering that require white ink?

I actually like UV machines, such as the one featured on our homepage just now. I remember seeing the very first one Roland did years ago. a bunch of uksignboards.com members were invited to Roland for the day/night and got a tour. the stuff these machines could do was amazing and gave me some really cool ideas. My problem was, I wanted one, I didn’t need one.
Even when I saw the featured promo video of it, I think the same. That said, I am going to look a bit more into them.

https://youtu.be/Pfg0uutPWFs

[Martyn]

Hi pane, like you said it really comes down to “demand”. If you find you need one for your jobs and certain work then its a good move. If its something you can live without but you fancy it, well its an expensive toy.

Like most things tho, if you did purchase it you would use the features more and more.

[Pane Talev]

White ink printer – does it have to be UV? (Just seen the price of the UV 🤑)

[Kevin Mahoney]

Hi Pane. I recently bought the Epson Surecolour after a lot of deliberation & couldn’t be more pleased with it. Although I’ve never used it to print white, its able to without too much messing around I’m lead to believe. Also very well priced, great quality print & exceptionally fast. Will definitely buy another when the need arises. As said by Rob & Martyn, it was more of a want than a need but was definitely worth the money, workflow has improved significantly. Haven’t rejected a print since it’s been installed, Onyx is brilliant (now I understand it a little better) & the days of sitting patiently waiting for Versaworks to rip a file are happily over. Not a bad word to say about Roland as I built the business on them but the Epson has taken it to another level

[Pane Talev]

Thank you Kevin

[Jamie Wood]

We’ve got the Epson 80600 as well, and have one of them set up for white ink. Whilst it’s not as good as UV white, for a solvent, it’s pretty good. We always double hit, and up the white density in Onyx. I’ll see if I can post some photos of some jobs later.

[Jamie Wood]

[Pane Talev]

Thank you Jamie.

[John Thomson]

I have ran cmyk solvents for years and have recently added a small cmyk ww flatbed UV.

It prints perfectly….in cmyk on white materials, however I have not yet worked out how to create spot colours for printing white or underbase….I’ve looked for tutorials online without success.

White ink for me has added a learning curve and I am still well down the curve. As this printer was very much a “want” rather than a “need” I have not spent that much time learning how to use the software for white ink.

John

[Jamie Wood]

On the Epson, white is called Spot1. You set this up as a spot colour in Illustrator, setting to overprint if required. Then in printer settings in Onyx, you can set it to print colour / white / colour, white / white / colour, colour / white / white etc, as required. There is also a facility in Onyx to use pixel data to generate the white, in case your artwork isn’t vector. It’s pretty easy once you get your head around it. It may be different if you use another RIP.

[Robert Lambie]

Hi Jamie

Thanks for the pictures!

Do you print to optically clear and which brand do you use?

[Jamie Wood]

The snowflake was printed on self cling, and the other 2 on clear self adhesive. For optically clear, we use Metamark MD-CR.

[Pane Talev]

Thank you all. Lovely thread. Will have it as reference.