Switching from Roland SP540V – VS640, views please?

[Matt Boyd]

a friend of mine is a roland tech and the company he works for has sold several of these over the past several months and he was saying that they are having some issues with the printers. i know the metallics are an issue to and hes having alot of complaints about this, but as your not going to be using them then that won’t be an issue for you. i says the printers are having "teething" problems as its a new system.

[Neil Fox]

Matt,

Thanks for the comments. Its good to hear what techs are says and they are on the ground all the time.

Yes I have seen there appears to be some issues with the metallic & white configuration.

Does anyone actually have one running in their shop? It would be great to hear from people that are running the machine on a daily basis as well.

Neil

[Kevin Flowers]

Right OK
i have a VS640 metallic & white on evaluation from Roland to see how it behaves. Yes there have been a few issues but firmware updates do seem to be coming & eliminating these. Most have been small minor issues & a restart normally cured the problem.
Cons against it, media loading very tight gap to feed media through which you have to do blind but the more you use it the easier it gets unless you get a very curled media. Loading heavy rolls on to the rear feed rollers can be a game too. As you load the roll the media spool pushes back, which means as well as being fiddly you have to re align your media. However i have spoken to Brett at Roland, he feels that something as been assembled incorrectly & is looking in to it.
Pros the machine prints excellent not as fast as a Pro series but gets the job done unmanned when needed too. Take up roller works without fault & this adds to unattended printing. The monitoring software again is a real bonus for leaving prints to run when out of the workshop and even over night. It works like a burglar alarm if something goes wrong it lets you know – head crash, out of ink etc and you get an email to go and sort it. If all goes well you get a email when it finishes allowing you to go to bed reassured that you aren’t going to return to a crashed machine with a dried up head. Was always skeptical of the white printers, it never looked solid enough but first production job i was convinced 100%. You can see through the white & you are tempted to double up on the passes but you do not need to, colours are very vibrant and my customers where delighted with the results to the point of doubling the order. I could have mentioned the speed of the White and metallic ink but this is counter acted by the unattended printing which in my mind puts it evenly between between the pros & cons argument. You do have to pick your media correctly for use of the White & Met inks as the media can become very stretchy.
Anyway first month i was very disappointed with it mainly because i was comparing it against the Pro 2 which i run along side it, but as soon as i started to accept that the printer was not a Roland Pro Series and would be slightly slower it began to grow on me but the verdict is still out as to whether i would have VS or another Pro Series but think anyone new to printing or upgrading will be blown away with it.
One last point one big Pro is the 1600mm width allowing you to get 2 700mm banners across & still have enough material to hem both.
Hope this shed some light on the printer even though not in the set up that you are thinking of and i’m sure that as time goes on i will find more Pros & Cons for it

Kev

[Ralph Mignano]

Hi guys. I too have a Vs 640 but have had a few issues with it now been sorted but had to get it converted back to a cmyk machine.

Problems I had was

1. White was getting contaminated with the other colours in the capping station
2. Pain fully slow if you need to do a metallic job. Had to do a 8×4 job and it took 6 hrs.
3. Losing it’s network connection with verserworks while printing. Resolved by having a new complete board system installed

After having it converted back to a cmyk machine I think it’s a good little machine.
My advice is to have the machine as a 2nd machine if you are having it as a metallic

Hope I didn’t come over to negative about it

[Russell Huffer]

We have the Mimaki JV33 which is running CMYK X2 if Roland run the same as Mimaki it is easy for reordering new inks as you do not need to hold any stock because the mimaki uses one cartridge only at a time so when first empty it switch to second and you have a full cartridge to use while ordering a replacement for the first.

Nice on long runs if a ink is low because it auto switches over without stopping printing.

Regards

Russell.

[Neil Fox]

Thanks guys for your comments, always helpful to hear how a machine is working in the real world rather than in a demo suite.

Kevin,

Thanks for the in depth comment, very helpful. This machine will be replacing the VersaCamm as I don’t have the room in my workshop to accommodate both machines I would love to keep the old machine because it has been and continues to be such a reliable machine. I am looking at another Roland because my old machine has been so reliable.

Thanks again everyone.

Neil

[Neil Fox]

Thanks for all the info, just to let everyone know, I have gone ahead with the VS-540. I ordered the machine yesterday. I will be using the 4 colour configuration.

Neil

[David Rowland]

i did a comparison of the VS in CMYK vs the CMYKlclm models only a few weeks ago at Roland, very little difference at all between the prints, it was a fleshtone print and they were indeed very close.

Where colours are out of range for the CMYK you get more of a dot pattern.

The VS compared to other models, it is very slow in cmyklclm but it has the latest print head inside, so that will help with the reliability of the machine. The dual cmyk model does indeed have better speed.

Our demo didn’t go very well, the MD5-100 was blotching, the quality was not there on standard and faster modes, alternative machines out there were looking and printing much faster than this machine.

Hi quality mode does look fantastic, but you might have to wait a while.

Machine is gearered for Small Signmaker imo

[Chris Wool]

would this print metalic type gold and silver – white etc. on to black vinyl please

[Chris Wool]

Kevin if you have not tried could you please.

chris

[Shane Drew]

I’ve got two of the vs640’s. Great machine, fantastic quality print. But yes, the white metalic option only prints about 1/2 m2 per hour. It is literally only for small run decals.

I’ve got the silver/gold version and the ccmmyklclm version too. I have had no complaints after my initial teething problems. Get them serviced at the 6 monthly interval and you shouldn’t have any issues.

Chris, I can try printing on black if you like, but the white is fairly opaque when printed on a darker base.