versaCAMM or cadet – opinions please?

[Kevin Flowers]

Peter
you have to way up what the printer is going to be used for, if its going to run most days etc if you are going to use it for vehicle graphics then you will need to laminate what ever printer you go for. All of the manufacturers tell you the exterior life etc, but another consideration is trying to apply an heavily printed piece of vinyl, the solvents make the vinyl become stretchy with laminate applied this problem is greatly reduced if not totally eliminated.

Kevin

[Robert Lambie]

the new inks are NOT as agressive as the solvent, but fair bit better than eco as way of abrassion or chemical attack. the unlaminated gaurantees are nonsense on vehicles. always lam on anything on the road for more than 6 months.
ide pay the extra…

remember, if you buy a cadet and want to use eco inks you can… if you want to change back to solvent, you still can…
if you have an versacamm, your stuck with eco-ink or its a grand to upgrade/change.

[David Rowland]

the Mimaki JV3 range are about 3-4 years outside in the light and you don’t need to laminate, however for large vehicle graphics work I would laminate. Over 10years digital experience and never seen anything fade from a solvent, I know it does but you will never know.

Mimaki also do a cutter called the CG-FX range, these are good units and cut well and has optical eye for locating prints. One thing we didn’t want to do is ‘tie’ up the JV3 while cutting as you can’t print and cut at the same time and you can use the cutter for the regular vinyl jobs.

[Phill Fenton]

I agonised for ages about whether to get a Cadet or Versacam. I was offered a very good deal on a new Cadet so went with it (Very happy with the machine so far). I think I would probably have been just a happy with a Versacamm if I had been offered the same deal. On vehicles you need to laminate anyway (though I am tempted to do my own van unlaminated to see what sort of durability I get over time without laminating).

If you’re being offered a good deal for the Roland I suspect you may be able to negotiate a similar deal for the Cadet version. As Rob has said the Cadet gives you the option to run with ecosol if you wish – whereas the Roland needs to be upgraded to run with solvent ink.

[MARTY]

We Have a 54″ Cadet and have had problems…
In my opinion I can see no real advantage in solvent, inks except they stand up to other solvents like meths etc where as eco solvent will come clean of like water paint. But my main issue has been with scratch proof,
as I feel this is more important. Its more likely to be scratched than cleaned with solvents.
Any print needs laminating and I don’t care what the others say.. if you scratch it with your nail, it comes off.
Nothing really penetrates the vinyl and I’ve asked uniform to prove it does
but they say thats as good as it gets.
So why go with a converted machine and receive crap after market service when you can go to the manufacturer and buy the machine as its intended to be. I’ve seen examples of the new ink and it stands up to cleaning with meths etc much much more than the old eco solvent and its about as scratchproof as full solvent

[John Cornfield]

Marty, not getting you at all mate

Reason we went solvent was UV stability and water resistance.

As for not penetratring the vinyl it has to the media is uncoated and therfore has no carrier to hold the ink as in coated media with ecsolvent.

Print a suqare of vinyl reel it back printit again now compare the printed one to the unprinted media does it feel different? Yeah, Why ? because the solvent has attacked and penetrated the vinyl .

Scrath it you probably will tear through. Yes printed vinyl will scuff.

B&P for me are sound and i really like the grenadiers they wont print on every media nothing will so when yu find the media that works dont change metamark, vws, oracal all work fine what more do you need.

Its horses for courses just be happy with whatever choice you make and dont look back.

[drogers4]

The roland is a great machine, don’t know about the cadet but who cares about the scratchability of the print when you laminate all prints that would ever get scratched? Seems a pretty invalid issue to me. Besides, the versacamm prints are pretty tough anyway, unless you are vigorously rubbing or scratching the print it is just fine (seems to me the vinyl starts to tear before the print does). I have a versacamm and so far have been very impressed with the performance of the machine. Just plan on laminating all vehicle graphics no matter which machine you buy. Go with the printer that has the best support/warranty as this is as important as anything else. Roland offers a 1 year warranty, I am unsure about the cadet. Good luck!

Doyle

[Peter Cox]

Thanks for all your advice guys.
I think it appears that it is six of one and half a dozen of the other.

I would always laminate anything on a vehicle and probably even exterior signs etc. One other thing that I am not sure about, I only have a cold laminator which works great but will it be ok with versacamm prints.

By the way the Roland deal involves them taking my pc60 as part ex but as they stopping support for the pc60 next year, they allow me to keep it, I don’t quite understand why but it seems like a good deal to me (am I allowed to tell you the price?)
Peter

[Rodney Gold]

I would not sell the PC60 – we have both a sioljet and a PC60 and both are very useful. The PC 60 compliments the bigger inkjet in that its great for small spot colour jobs and metallics etc – unless they giving you a lot of money for it , hang on to it. We tried to retire ours but had to ressurect it.

As to the 2 machines , well thats your choice , tons of arguments here re the pros and cons and a little research on the boards will get you a ton of info on both.

One thing I must say , is that since the introduction of Max inks , the price of inks for the Roland machine has dropped dramatically on our side of the world.
The Max inks sit at about 30 quid a cart and stocks of Eco-sol inks have dropped to 25 quid a cart – at that price we arent even tempted to convert to solvents as the huge price differential tween aftermarket solvent inks and OEM’s are no longer an issue. 3rd party agressive solvent inks are about 100 quid a litre , the carts work out to about 150 or so (220ml) and the 440 ml carts will be a little cheaper – the ink usage on full coverage prints is about 18-21ml per sq meter , thus the savings to us of less than a quid per sq meter is not worth the increased maintence etc.
I have no idea what the Cadet carts cost these days – but it’s an issue you should investigate.
As to your Cold laminator , thats what you need for the prints so yours should do just fine.

John , the Roland and Cadet print on the same media – you do NOT need coated for the eco-sol and Max inks , you did however need coated of the very much older and now discontinued Solinks
One can print on coated media with all the Roland inks , the only reason to do that however is the fact that the resolution one can get on coated is exceptional in 1440×1440 mode , its also exceptionally slow to print in this mode , however there are applications like high detail photographic prints that are served by this. We still do coated for this trade at sticker shock prices (something like 100+ quid per sq meter)

[Frog Man]

I notice no one has mentioned the fumes, I haven’t seen/smelt a Cadet machine working so maybe they’re not as bad as some of the hard solvent machines I have seen. I have an EcoSol machine and work from home, when I was looking for a machine last year I had some samples from a hard solvent printer in the house that were printed 5 hours earlier, when the kids came home from school the first thing they said was “what’s that stink” (No it wasn’t me) :lol1: The slight fumes from the Roland are not an issue. To me if fumes from a printer give you a sore throat and headache they really can’t be that good for you, again I must say that I have never even seen a Cadet let alone smelt the fumes so it might not be an issue. With regards to scratching and laminating I agree with what other Roland users have said, if it is going in an abrasive environment, laminate.

[Frog Man]

Oh yeah, one more thing. It sounds like they are letting you keep the PC60, if that is the case it sounds like a GREAT deal. Like Rodney says there are things the PC60 can do that Inkjets will never be able to. (Best of both worlds)

[David Rowland]

Just mentioning the Mimaki JV3 (seems to be only two of us on here who have JV3s and the rest seem to have B&P or roland products) again, the machine has a set of fans internally and allows you to connect a standard exhaust pipe to the outside, it comes with a fairly reasonable curtain to control airflow. There is an option of a air-filtration system which does work very well, the air smell is hardly noticable. Solvent ink should be filtered or removed to the outside, it is not good to breath it in for long periods. I think John’s UV (i think it is a Zund), these don’t give off fumes if i recal.

Can someone remind me, does an Eco Solvent print banners?

[Rodney Gold]

Dave , the eco-sol/Roland/cadets/JV3 etc all print the same stuff , the roland/cadet/grenadier can print rigids up to 1mm thick if you can support them and if there is ink adherence. We print .9mm Styrene and ABS and board , the styrene and ABS print sort of ok , cos you cant use the heaters with them as they buckle. So you have to print cold and thats somewhat of a problem in terms of dot gain and ultimate smootheness.
As far as I know , the cadet/grenadier doesnt have the same oudour and fume problem as the full on serious solvent machines , but I don’t beleive the fumes from the Eco-sol are that good either , we print in a closed room and there is still a smell and sitting in that room for any length of time makes you somewhat high.
We have installed vent fans etc to stop it.

[David Rowland]

Well, I must look into the difference between the machines, see what they are all upto with the Epson heads, a project for one day. However the Mimaki Ink was improved a beginning of the year for scratch resistance and smell, also came in 440ml carts.

There is a head-height switch on the front of the JV3, it allows your to toggle 1-2mm difference, however if you take the screwdriver out you can raise the head up to about 5mm i think. AIT also sell the machine with a front heater (3 heaters total) that allow some types of board to be printed. UV printers are now best for board printing.

I just visited B&P website and looked at the Cadet/Gren/Fusiler, does the Cadet and Grenadier come with a Roll TakeUp as they are pictured without it. Also the JV3 has a 1600mm print width to take into consideration.

[Rebecca]

Dave

Have you used your JV3 to print rigid board??

We have a 2.5m JV3 with the additional heater added but have never run any rigid board through.

We print mainly banners and self adhesive and do not have any problems with fumes but are used to screen printing smells!!

Rebecca

[David Rowland]

i am from Silk Screen background so I screwed my nose up years ago with sericol screen re-claiming in the 90s. It’s a lot nicer these days.

Anyway, we haven’t printed rigid board but rodneys comments are very true. However AIT showed us a sample and we took their word. We would prefer to mount prints on board anyway.

So you bought the big printer, its a nice beast that… are you out of waranty yet? we are and out black head is starting to deflect now but we had a pretty solid operation for about year with a JV3-160S in HiFi colour

[Rebecca]

We have had the printer for two years come this November, we renewed contract with AIT last year.

We have had the black head replaced under the warranty agreement already and have always found them to be helpful and quick to come out if you get any problems.

We have been very pleased with the printer and are beginning to explore new media to use.

We find mounting prints much better as well and have a customer who had prints done direct to correx elsewhere but has now changed back to self adhesive prints mounted to correx due to better quality.

[Stephen Morriss]

Just a note on solvent inks penetrating the vinyl, try using the cleaning fluid to rub off some of the print, you’ll find that the print comes off completely so it hasn’t penetrated the vinyl at all.

I’m using the Uniform 5 year vinyl and the Actisol inks.

Steve

[autosign]

I’ve seen the solvent wipes take Versacamm print straight off but not making any impression on Cadet prints. This was on prints several days old. Don’t know about these new inks though.

[Stephen Morriss]

quote autosign:

I’ve seen the solvent wipes take Versacamm print straight off but not making any impression on Cadet prints. This was on prints several days old. Don’t know about these new inks though.

I don’t mean the solvent wipes I meant the cleaning fluid for the heads.

Steve