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UV Flatbed printers
Hi all
The last few years we have started seeing UV Flatbed printers dropping in price and also a vast array of printers in the far east being manufactured.I am currently researching these machines, I am looking for people Without naming your supplier to answer a few questions for me, you can do this by clicking the ’email’ button and keep your responses private or posting below.
I would appreciate your help.
1: How long have you had your UV Printer?
2: Have you found the UV printer a good business decision, can you see a ROI?
3: How have you found getting support within your service contracts?
4: What materials are good or does a UV Printer struggle with?
5: How long did it take to get familiar with using your printer?
6: If anything, what are the plus point or the negative points about your purchase?Thank you
Dave -
22 Replies
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Hi Dave did you manage to see the New Mutoh Zephyr UV printer at FESPA? I have just red reports and it sounds impressive.
Andre
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no i never did see this one… must have walked past it. Although I don’t think we would deal with Mutoh again, past history sadly.
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This one promises to be a better printer than the Gerber ION.
Check those siteshttp://www.geoconnexion.com/geo_news_ar … UROPE/3347
http://www.large-format-printers.org/UV … prices.php
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but the Gerber ION is a different beast… if it did White ink the ION would be on my list.
This Mutoh does not have white, sound promising that they entered the UV market but I am just worried that the ‘users’ would become the ‘beta-testers’ as this is what happened with us with our first solvent printer and after reading comments about roll feds from some users here, I could not give them any money at this stage until they can prove that they have improved the way they operate. -
According to some comments, Gerber ION is using Cationic ink which was never successful in the past.
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yep thats right…. you got to do your research very carefully on that one
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Actually Dave, I like the Gerber Solara UV2. There are some 2nd user units on sale in the UK. But I a bit concern about the speed and the 230ml cartridge which is a bit limited
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Sorry Dave, never got around to getting back to you.
1: How long have you had your UV Printer? 8 months
2: Have you found the UV printer a good business decision, can you see a ROI? most definitely, but it was acquired for a specific contract so it has paid for itself already.
3: How have you found getting support within your service contracts? 1 yr contract with supplier so no problems there. held with L&M Imaging who are excellent.
4: What materials are good or does a UV Printer struggle with? Copes well with everything although Correx is a bit temperamental as it ‘curls’.
5: How long did it take to get familiar with using your printer? Not too long, they are really not a machine to switch on occasionally and fire the odd print out.
They work better the harder they work, ours is constant from 8 through to 6pm. You cannot afford to cut corners in the morning set up as it will bite you all day either.
6: If anything, what are the plus point or the negative points about your purchase?
Less labour required to produce.
Mass quantity capability.
Expensive to buy and maintain.
Slightly agricultural in operation.Thank you
Dave[/quote] -
Dave, Any resent development on your research?
What do you think of the Océ Arizona 2xx GT -
Ryan, many thanks for the update on that, most helpful
Andre, I shall send you a PM in a moment
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I’m very interested in this topic and would welcome feedback from others who have researched it.
The company I work for prints a large amount of block colour. ie: Large area of solid colour with no fades / images. We’re currently using an EDGE 1 for the most part and have been looking at an alternative in the form of a UV flat bed printer to print straight to substrate.Ive seen the Gerber Solara Ion a few times and have to say that what Ive seen Ive been mostly happy with. Remember we do lots of solid colour, and very little in the way of photographs / images etc.
Is there a particular machine that anyone would suggest we take a look at? Im not fussed about roll to roll, if the printer has it then fine, but Im more concerned about flat bed straight to substrate printing.
UV printers not being cheap by any means, any help or advice or feedback greatly appreciated.
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Mike….is screen printing not the way to go…..or are you just doing short runs??
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Glenn,
Thank you for your reply. We do use screen printing at the moment as well as the EDGE 1. However, most of the work we do is print runs of 5 No. or less, hence the thought of a UV Flat Bed coming in and removing the need for laminating / trimming / printing to vinyl and replacing it with a ‘straight to substrate’ machine.
In my mind I can see a lot of processes being removed by the introduction of a UV flat printer. ie: At present we print to vinyl, weed it, laminate to substrate, trim, clean and then pack. Whereas the alternative (I hope) is simply to print to substrate and pack.Feedback / advice / help more than welcome. 🙂
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Mike,
What do you mean by weeding?
You print sheets and mount them and out they go.
Trimming down boards is the same with either direct to substrate or mounting.
The only thing your saving is the mounting. I can mount an 8×4 sheet rather quickly on my own.
I guess you’d need the quantity to make it worthwhile to go the flatbed route.
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Yep, we do a large amount of this work.
To help clarify what we do, and help you folks give some advice on what you see as the better UV Flat bed printers Ive given a summarised breakdown of the processes below.
The current process:
Print large area of solid colours + text onto vinyl via Gerber EDGE
Send it to plotter to cut out the shape (for this example lets say a rectangle, 1001 x 281mm)
Remove the excess, unneeded, vinyl.
Laminate to 1000 x 280mm foamex
Trim off the excess vinyl. We cut the print 1mm bigger than the substrate to ensure we have vinyl from edge to edge of the substrate & no substrate showing.
Clean sign.Imagined process via UV Flatbed.
Clean Foamex
Print onto it via UV Flat Bed printer.Hope this helps clarify and give a bit more info. Im really looking for information from people who have bought / have considered a UV flat bed and can recommend one which is capable of doing large areas of solid colour.
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We’ve been running the Solara UV2 for about 7 months without any major problems – just 1 engineer call out last week after I had over cleaned it!
We primarily run Foam PVC and Correx in 3 or 6 pass. Quality has been great for what is essentially a cheap machine, speed is slow but we are building our market at the moment so it’s not an issue. It copes with flat colour very well with no visible banding in 6 pass. We also run and Oce solvent printer for roll to roll work or if we need really quick turn around.
The benefit for us is that I can load an 8×4 and set it off, then just keep sending them through whilst I get on with other jobs. 8-10 board in good quality mode is normal. These are then trimmed to various sizes – we’ve had a few edge cracking issues but no worse than many other more expensive machines. When the work grows we’ll trade up to an ION or Oce 250GT, but given the current economic uncertainty we’re glad we didn’t take on a £100k + lease on!
We have been surprised by the economy on ink – we only hold 1 spare cartridge of each colour because they would go out of date before we used them. Look after the lamps and they should also last well – we should get 2 years out of 1 set at the current throughput (we batch print so the machine isn’t continually stopping and starting and wasting lamp life)
Hope some of this info helps.
Matt -
Matt,
It helps a lot. Thank you for taking the time to give some info 🙂
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We have had the Solara for over a year now and its been a right royal pain !!
Love the end results when its working but it has now had 2 lamp boards and countless compliance chambers replaced. At last count we have had 6 or 7 engineer call outs which knock you off line for 2/3 days at a time !!
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Well Frodo sounds like either you got a dud or we got an unusually good machine. Have you been given any reasons for the problems? We got a memo from Gerber/Spandex that out of date ink was causing problems with compliance chambers (and that now they would not be covered by the warranty if the ink was out of date) I have to agree that the 2-3 days wait for service is bit slow compared to our Oce service which is nearly always next if not same day. Have you got the opportunity to trade-up to the ION and get you cash back on the Solara? I’ve yet to see the Ion – the only demo I’ve been offered is in Bristol but for me that’s at least a 5 hour drive each way so i’m waiting for a machine closer to home. Has anyone seen one running / got one yet?
Hope it improves – you soon loose faith in machines when they don’t perform as expected!Matt
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Seen one running twice now. Once at a demo in Alpha Signs and once at a demo in Spandex. I have to be honest and say that from what Ive seen it looks very good. Nothing fancy or technical, just a soild build. A bit like an Edge 1 if you like. No frills, no gimmicks.. just does what it says on the tin.
1st demo I saw there was occasional banding, but apparently the heads were not aligned properly and it wasnt fully set up. When I saw the ION again at Spandex I couldnt fault the print. All areas of concern I had noticed on the ION at Alpha had been removed. Spot on.
We did look at getting a Solara UV2, but decided it wasnt for us. The ION is an interesting machine though for sure. 😉 Though at, i think, £72k its not a cheap option for us.
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My colleague is off to spandex tomorrow to see the ION, but taken them a while to get it setup at Bristol… should be at Sign Show so I look forward to seeing it then
dave
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No explaination given about the ever growing list of faults. Maybe it is just a duff machine !..(hot)
I am aware of the use by dates on the inks and i am very careful not to over order in case of going past the given dates.
I am going to the sign show on the wednesday to hopefully see a fully working ION..(fingers crossed).
Lets hope its as good as they would have us believe !!
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