Versacamm Vs Mimaki CJV

[Steve Morgan]

Shaun,
This is the kind of post that starts one of those 10 page debates – a bit like PC’s versus Macs 😀
I rather suspect that most of the Roland owners have little or no experience of the Mimaki and vise versa. However to start the ball rolling, my personal experience of 4 years with a Roland SP-300 is that the machine with minimal personal maintenance is quite reliable although print heads have been replaced on 3 occasions, which fully justified the outlay of the Roland Service Contract. The machine performs well as a cutter, perhaps a little disappointing as printer/cutter as I’ve experienced an inconsistency when printing and then cutting circular stickers, in particular, but it’s not difficult to resolve. Some colours are difficult to match, and that’s probably a problem with all printers. The print width of about 730mm is a limiting factor if you want to wrap a vehicle. More important I’ve not found a roll-up cassette that takes anything less than 800mm width – big nuisance!
It’s quiet doesn’t make much of a pong (Eco-Sol Max inks) and at about 75 metres of printing with full coverage to a set of carts makes it fairly competitive. I’ve printed, with success on Canvas Vinyl, Heat press material and different papers and PVC banner material, can’t really think of anything else worth mentionong at the moment.

I personally wouldn’t know a Mimaki machine if I saw one, but I’m sure the heavyweight posters will add much better comment than me on both machines, I hope the above is of some help.

Steve

[Shaun Harris]

Thanks Steve.

The Mimaki I am looking at is a CJV30-100 which is a meter wide so for pop ups it would be great although I’m finding that all the inquiries I make with reference to media say that I will have to have it cut down

[Jamie Wood]

Most brands do pop-up and roll up media at 914mm, which should be suitable for
a CJV30-100.

[Chris Wool]

nice post Steve.

inconsistency of cut is mostly down to the material.

roland fan here. if you can go up in size you will need it.

if you are going to have a maintenance contract then would consider the CVJ, just that the rolands are more open source .

[Peter Normington]

First thing to ask yourself
do you need combined print and cut?
I’m sure you already have, but like Steve has said, hard to compare in reality between the two, unless you own both.

Mimaki does it for me, reliable and a two year warranty is standard.
hard call if you havn’t had experience of either,
If possible, produce something typical of your day to day work, take the file to your reseller and get them to print and cut for you, as a demo.
some agents sell both machines so a good way to compare

Peter

[Gavin MacMillan]

Don’t know anything about Mimaki so in no position to compare, just want to mention we have been running sp540 for 4 years now with no new print heads, we have had other issues of course but heads are the biggy and ours are still going strong. We do look after our machine and always get comments from service engineers about how clean it is kept.

[Steve Morgan]

With regards to Chris and Gavin’s comments, firstly I agree with Chris, the inconsistencies I’ve had are also in part due to the fact that I only do a couple of jobs each year that need to be cut accurately and I simply forget what I had done previously so the first few examples are a bit naff. The temperature of the material, the room and the machine also make a difference.
With regard to Gavin’s comment;I think that maybe the failures I’ve had with print heads maybe in part due to lack of use, I doubt that I actually print much more than 130 metres a year, and despite everything being kept clean and well maintained it would probably be better if the machine ran more, so Gavin’s 4 years without trouble doesn’t suprise me at all.

Steve