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Roland Colorcamm
I bought a colorcamm in November last year – Since then I have had to have the head changed. What are your views on best practice with these machines? Also the use of replacement Ribbons v Cartridges 😀
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20 Replies
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me neither..never had one Phil – but if the SignChat tonight was anything to go by…this ‘thread’ should be worth watchin’ over the next few days… 😕
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I could think of one or two things to do with it……
….best leave that to Rob tho he is a fan.
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Got to agree with Mike on this one, we could see a lot of posts from Rob and Brian.
I was thinking about buying one but now I’m not sure what to do. -
Personally I think it depends what you want to do with it. In my opinion they are great for small labels & stuff. Some small stuff that you normally cut with your cutter you will be able to print saving on the dreaded weeding of small letters. We have done some big*ish* stuff, up to around 4 feet. It will do it but it will take ages & we used to keep our fingers crossed all the way through. There are some 2nd hand ones around but I would steer clear of them unless you get a very good price. Speak to Rob & he will tell you it’s the greatest invention since the wheel! I rekon he is getting a cut from Roland! 😉
Also If you do buy one keep your existing cutter.
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i could go on and on with this subject. but i wonte i have many times on these boards.
phil ! if you click search at the top of the screen and put in pc60 youll find alot of posts with it in it…
theres also some tipe in the tipes and tricks section… they are old pages due to be updated but helpful none the less…as for brain? hes just raging cause he couldnt get his to work… 😆 😆
sorry mate 8)
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as brian says it all depends what you want to do with it. the temptation is to go for vast expanses of colour. this is very hard on the head. ok for labels, window and car stickers. the best feature is of course that it cuts to shape as well. i would use it for small work and not to work it for long periods at a time. the heads are a problem so i am told. also they are rather slow to use it as a cutter alone. bit like my old houston i suppose. bit too pricy more me at the moment though. but i like the machine and the technology behind it. 😮
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Uses for Roland Colourcamms
Door Stop
To support ramps for doing skateboard tricks
Using as a weight to drown someone (preferably the idiot that sold it to you)
Holding down a pile of wood on a bonfire
New highland game tossing the colourcamm
Money Pit
Cutting Vinyl
and last and very least printing images on vinyl that show awful banding
and that fade in a coupla years.blimey Graham your up early!
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here we go again stevie boy… let it go mate 😆
i think brian hays and you must have spent a fortune investing in roland.. but when the delivery came it was roland rat.. toys. 😆
anyway enough of the cheesy jokes.
ive heard of problems with print heads phil. that is true. but im glad to say
ive only went thru 2 or 3 maybe in 4 years or so…hey brian! the resolve machine your selling. £20000+ for it mate.
you say its a great machine. but! you need a new print head at least once a year. fair enough. but the head is £5000 not £500, £5000. so how can you say the £5000 PC60 is a crap machine because it goes through print heads. when the resolve at £20000 does the same & they cost £5000 per head.
not to mention and the best part, roland supply the print head for the PC60 free when you return 200 spent catridges. pretty good if you ask me mate..
not trying to be funny, honest. just me in its defence mate… again! 😆surely
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😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀
This is the bit where I pretend I have just caught a fish and am reeling him in! LOL -
nah mate! this is the part were the fish grabs your line and hooks it onto and old bike frame. then sits back watching you strain and pull but nothing really happens… 😆 😆
but waite. hays brian replied yet…oohhh i think ive caught a big one. must be a shark… 😆
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I did say this would be fun! 😉
so far – Steve B’s post gets the most votes I think…hehehe
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quote robert:here we go again stevie boy… let it go mate 😆
i think brian hays and you must have spent a fortune investing in roland.. but when the delivery came it was roland rat.. toys. 😆
anyway enough of the cheesy jokes.
ive heard of problems with print heads phil. that is true. but im glad to say
ive only went thru 2 or 3 maybe in 4 years or so…hey brian! the resolve machine your selling. £20000+ for it mate.
you say its a great machine. but! you need a new print head at least once a year. fair enough. but the head is £5000 not £500, £5000. so how can you say the £5000 PC60 is a crap machine because it goes through print heads. when the resolve at £20000 does the same & they cost £5000 per head.
not to mention and the best part, roland supply the print head for the PC60 free when you return 200 spent catridges. pretty good if you ask me mate..
not trying to be funny, honest. just me in its defence mate… again! 😆surely
Arghhhhh. I am just offering my opinion. A coupla years ago when we sold the PC60 we had lots of problems. We sold 21 in the space of a few months. On the face of it they seemed great, exactly as you say Rob. In practice things were a different story. What money we made selling the machines we lost through losing customers who were far from happy. Although we sold the machines in good faith I guess that’s fair enough, I would probably be the same. Some of those 21 were happy maybe 50% (that’s 10 & half Rob!) Some were disapointed but have found uses for the machine other than those intended. One customer in Bournemouth was given a full refund by Roland. Some people we sold the machines to will probably never buy from us again.
Fair enough some problems people had were probably because they didn’t clean the vinyl properly etc, but many problems they were experiencing were definitely 100% down to problems with the machine. Ribbons DID break for no reason. The machine DID stop half way through jobs. Some jobs DID show terrible banding. Roland DID NOT seem to care.
I personally do not like Roland as a company. I don’t like the people there, I don’t like the way they treat customers. I don’t like the way they treat end users. I don’t like the way they try to fix their prices.
When we sold the PC60 we were told we WOULD be struck off if we sold the machine at less than full retail price. Roland tried with a certain amount of success to fix their prices. That is fact & as far as I am aware to some extent illegal. I know that is not the kinda company you for one Rob like to deal with.
Anyway enough of all that. The PC60 is a good machine if you have the right work for it & can make money. I am not advising against anybody buying one, I am just saying think very carefully before you do.
As far as the Resolve is concerned that is a whole separate issue. The heads are replaced under warranty for the 1st year. Renewing the service agreement is something I would say you had to do after the year. I am not sure how much the heads cost but I will find out. Dunno where you got that 5k figure from? To compare the 2 machines is kinda silly. The resolve is 54" wide, I would have more faith in the durability than I would with the PC60. Output is a fraction of the cost of the PC60.
I won’t go on because as I said it is silly to compare the 2 machines. I will post some work a customer has done on his resolve soon & I think even Rob will agree you would have no chance of producing the same stuff on a PC60.
Anyway it’s Friday & the weekend, tonight I shall be very drunk & the last thing on my mind will be Roland’s PC60!
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no worries brain. i wasnt comparing the machines just the sinario.
but hey… i bet at 4.30 am you wake suddenly in a cold sweat sreaming PC-60 PC-60 PC-60. 😆
have a good weekend brian mate…
p.s. im sure you said to me when the warranty has expired you can look at paying 5k for a print head yearly… maybe me mate… its friday so lets get drunk down the pub. 😀
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Thanks for all the feedback.
My own limited experience of the machine is that it’s good for labels and small colour prints – but struggles with bigger jobs. I crap myself when doing a 3 or 4 colour process job on a large print. Running costs are high making bigger jobs difficult to sell anyway.
It’s a great machine to learn about colour. I wouldn’t like to have spent a fortune going into colour which is a whole new learning exercise (and a new customer base). The way I see it, the colorcamm is a good learning tool that can make money under the right circumstances and complements what I do most of (i.e. vinyl). I’ll probably eventually buy a solvent inkject once I have some reasonable knowledge about colour printing signs and a customer base looking for it.
Phill 🙂
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It’s the warranty that is gonna be expensive after the 1st year Rob. They were talkin like 4k, I think maybe it has come down a bit since then.
I think Phil has hit on a good point. The PC60 is a good cheap way of getting into colour. You will learn a lot by having one. And if you want to go for one of the solvent machines at a later date the experience is obviously gonna help.
Have a good weekend everybody.
…oh and Rob does the Mrs get the hump when you take your PC60 to bed with ya? 😆
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I can’t comment tomuch on this, having only had mine for around 6weeks. My head replacement was down to negligence on behalf of the seller, long drawn out story would take days to relate and still leaves a very bitter taste.
I got this machine to reproduce classic/vintage car stickers and cut graphics, before getting this I used a Citizen Printiva 700 (same basic technology ie thermal printing) but their ribbons were not suitable for normal vinyl, had to resort to Inkjet vinyl which worked, plus it does not cut!!! What I think it boils down to is "horses for courses" I don’t do many large jobs in colour printing. But for the sticker side it’s great. Yes, it cuts fairly slow, but at the moment it’s quicker than scissors, and able to do the intricate sections which otherwise would be impossible.
I had considered Rolands new PC12 but varying reports on problems made me look further, and this one came along.
Bear in mind also the Metallic print capability of this machine, is there an inkjet/solvent out there capable of this?
Roland UK are now their own company having split from the mother USA in Jan this year, maybe their whole attitude now could change.
Just my 2pence worth.
Have a nice break everyone.
Sharon
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some good 2pence worth comments sharon. didnt know about the split!
yeh phil, spot on mate. no point jumping in head first in large amounts of debt when your just getting into somthing.
one of the reasons i didnt choose the edge… 😀
you can get a great wide format printer for this kind of money… 12" wide printing is frowned upon. 😥as for me and my sleeping companion brian… hhmmm
i only do this to keep the machine warm. 🙂
dont you know thermal printers print better when the heads are warm..
that and the fact it doesnt snore. 😆 -
I own an old PNC5000 its used rarely. When I do use it its mostly for printing a few lables and stickers, I would not replace the head if it went, I would just keep it as a spare plotter. Its capable of printing good small work when using spot colours but slow at cutting. The banding that everyone talks about to me isn`t banding its were the head has made each pass and over lapped a little, the easy to hide it is to give the work a quick blast of any clear coat and that levels up the surface. As has been said the way forward is with inkets as these come down in price, but that stil leaves the cost of consumables. To me leaver the printing to the printers and let the signmakers make signs . Brian 🙂
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