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Roland UV flatbed at the show
Hi All
Did anyone else take a look at this?
I thought it looked very interesting and some good plus points:-
Uses Versaworks which we are familiar with.
Sub £50K which seems much cheaper than others
12 square metres an hour at fast speed (OK) and the quality is still good
6 at high quality (bit slow) but quality excellent
flat bed or roll to roll – designed as a single printer to meet both requirements
Will be be fine for printing wraps
CMYK + White ink or clear glossPitched as an all rounder rather than an out and out mass volume flat bed – serves both flat and roll requirements well.
So good so far, BUT
The inks are 220ml carts only and are about £85 each which just seems ridiculous !!
If the inks were at least the usual £75-£80 per 440ml we pay for Ecosol Max then I could immediately justify one of these printers, as 50% of what we print is roll to roll then I can’t justify doubling my ink costs (not to mention all other UV printers have larger ink carts/packs that are much cheaper than Ecosol Max inks). I know the other 50% of print will save me labour time and vinyl mounting prints onto boards but overall its cheaper for me to keep my current printer and pay for someone to mount prints.
If I financed it over 3-4 years, and weighed up total finance and ink costs, I’d be better buying a flatbed costing twice as much but with ‘normal’ priced cheap UV inks that come in larger 1 to 5 litre packs.
In summary I really like the look of the printer but the ink cost kills it dead.
Anyone else have any thoughts on the products?
Cheers
Macky -
5 Replies
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Perhaps the high ink cost is used to subsidise the initial printer cost?
John
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Hi John
Possibly and it won’t take long for 3rd party inks to appear if they keep ink prices at that level.
I do think its a good printer but isn’t £80+ for 220ml carts between 300% – 600% dearer than OEM inks for other UV flat bed printers?
May be I’m just having a little rant because everything was adding up nicely and was getting excited about potentially getting one and then I asked about ink costs and my calculations fell apart.
Cheers
Macky -
But would you run 3rd party ink before the warranty ended?..
John
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Well you really need to review your options before committing, i mean the machines are great to a certain extend. There is just as much Bad as their is Good.
For instance the ink prices for AGFA UV printer we have is around £120 per litre, still cheaper indeed but Lamp prices also come into it, our bulbs are rated at 500 hours and from the official source they are £500 each.
I would say that reviewing what you can do and how it adds up compared to latex/solvent is something you need to do before committing.
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Who has pictures of this bad boy?
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