Martin Williams
Forum Replies Created
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You could do with finding the images fast as it will probably only be worth 50p by next week.
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Hi Peter,
I will dig my policy out next week as i’m sure it also covers loss of earnings and theft.
As for the bulk inks i learned the hard way.Martin
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The only mistake i have made this year is staying off with the kids whilst the wife works. They are driving me crackers, I can’t wait to go back to work for a rest and some peace.
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Hi John,
I’m pretty sure it’s with Norwich Union but i will check when i go back to work on the 5th. I will dig the brokers name and number out for you.
The only downfall i found was that i had to ring round companies for an engineer to repair the machine. All parts have to come through hybrid it seems and with a mainboard being £5500 and printheads £984 each(I have bought the identical printheads from Taiwan for £225 each).
I rang hybrid and their first question was where did i buy my inks from. When i told them i used bulk inks was told it’s not under warranty. After telling them it was insured the tone in the persons voice changed and they were only too happy to send somebody out. I used AIT instead an approved hybrid distributor.
I spoke to the insurance company whom paid AIT directly for me as it was a large sum of money and i didn’t want to pay then struggle to get the money from the insurers.
I had no problems with the insurers just told to get whoever i wanted in to repair it.Martin
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Hi Peter,
I don’t condone making false insurance claims but after being stood for a week whilst the mainboard was shipped from Japan when back up and working again i had either a nozzle blocked or deflection on each head so demanded all 4 be changed. I wasn’t going to take the chance of them clearing under intense cleaning or running. What would you have done if the insurance were paying.
I decided to swap to a bulk ink system when my machine was 11 months old i had a breakdown and it took hybrid 5 working days to get to me (that must have been the gold cover i had) i had to have a new pump,slider board,main board,4 new heads and 4 new dampers. It took 3 visits and 18 days for hybrid to repair the printer. I was running genuine mimaki carts but because i hadn’t bought them from one of their approved suppliers they said i wasn’t covered under their warranty. A nice solicitors letter and they backed down as the machine has to have a 12 month warranty.
I believe that you don’t get anything for nothing and paying roughly the same price for a 440ml cart as i pay for 1 litre, I think you are paying for the extended 1 year warranty. Also i use all the ink in my 1 litre bottle, do you use all the ink in a 440ml cart ?. I use 4-5 litres of ink every 2 weeks saving me over £4000 a year. The saving allows me to compete with others using bulk inks.
I don’t know if true or not but the engineer that repaired my printer last told me hybrid had given permission for one of their uk suppliers to use a bulk ink system for use with sublimation ink, that would make me think mimaki don’t produce a sublimation ink.
Martin
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Hi John,
I would never look back from using refillable cartridges. I use cartridges as found on the link-ink website, I tried their ink 1st and when bought the ink got the cartridges free + free chips everytime ink ordered. Had problems with scratching off had ink-tec blame the media and the media company blame the ink. Had link-ink ring me recently and said they had changed Tried allsorts to remedy it so changed to itlgb inks which were ok had no problems except with service they came and installed a bulkink system ontop of the printer with tubes to the cartridges and set up profiles. As soon as engineer left i opened printer cover (he hadn’t secured ink tanks) knocked them down the back of machine ripped all pipes out and covered walls,carpet and me in ink trying to stop it. The system that they installed had taps on to fill the cartridges up. If you forgot and left the taps on overnight the valve would sometimes stick and overflow with ink (happened a few times). The valve would sometimes stick and starve the print of a colour also. This bulk ink system lasted about 10 days and i cleaned the old cartridges out and used them. Itlgb supplied chips with ink. After a few service issues with supply and talking with Bill McMurty from this board tried jetbest from Taiwan very cheap at the time around £17 a litre + duty. Delivered within 3 days i also bought some parts that were very cheap from them. The ink was scratching and rubbing off and the smell was toxic (I would have put up with the smell for the price) i spoke with bill a few times but had no look i can only put it down to climate as Bill is from down under and after trying different medias,profiles and settings decided to try suninks as we had a visit from a representative called Gareth (Nice chap) a couple of months earlier. He wasn’t at all pushy and didn’t even try to sell us the sunink products he was clued up and gave us a few pointers and tips had a coffee and a chat left his card and told me to give him a ring if we encountered any problems and needed any advice.
Suninks use a company called photologic to distribute the ink to myself we had absolute nightmares with them on service at the start Gareth tried sorting it out and everything was blamed on a new computer system . We were quoted £70 a litre and being charged £82 which took an eternity to sort out. I would have told them to stick their ink where the sun doesn’t shine but was that happy with the printing results put up with them. The service is still only ok so we keep a litre of each colour on the shelf as it can take them 3-4 days to deliver on the odd occasion. The chips have to be purchased seperately although the 1st order we did recieve some with the inks. I found somebody selling permanent chips and cartridges on fleabay from Canada from memory i think i paid £240 for the 8 chips and bought a spare cartridge also ontop. The supplier was kind enough to mark the goods as samples to avoid any extra charges. The chips just reset back to 9 when the printer is turned off and back on. I just topup the cartridges(hold approx half a litre each) I had one of the magenta chips stop working after 2-3 months so i emailed the supplier in Canada who sent me a replacement with me paying the postage. I should be able to dig his email address out if you want to get a price from him. I also took an insurance policy out on the printer i would have to check but from memory around £30 a month which covers any breakdown accidental or malicious + loss of earnings upto £16k i have to pay the first £500 plus the vat content. I had a claim for £12,500 paid out in march when i was changing a damper caught a ribbon cable and blew the mainboard + got the tech to put 4 new heads on also under the insurance.
Hope this helps.Martin
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Hi John,
I have been running on a bulk ink system over a year now and after trying 4 different ink suppliers and having problems with rubbing and scratching off have been running with sun ink and have had no problems for the last 6 months paying £70 a litre. The ink seems more aggresive than others available and seems to key to everything.Martin
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Hi John,
I haven’t had chance to have another play yet. I don’t think the squeege is fantastic so i think i will replace it. Could you recommend a supplier to get a squeege from and what sort would you suggest. The squeege i have in is 810mm wide, 35mm long and 8mm thick, it doesn’t seem to have any sharp edges and at each end around 30mm inwards to the end it banana’s out.
The air bed is masked out. All the screens came with the machines and have been used previously. I kept getting glue coming through the screen onto the underside but i think i had far too much pressure on the squeege. It was a nightmare to keep cleaning the screen and the bed.
Thankyou for your help and advice.
Martin -
HI JOHN,
WE KEEP GETTING THE ODD ONE PRINTING OK BUT ARE HAVING TROUBLE WITH THE CARD STICKING TO THE UNDERSIDE OF THE SCREEN IS THERE SUCH A THING OF PRESSING TO HARD WITH THE SQUEEGE -
HI, THE MACHINE WAS USED PREVIOUSLY FOR THE SAME JOB SO SQUEEGE SHOULD BE OK. HOW MUCH PRESSURE SHOULD BE ON THE SQUEEGE AND SHOULD THE FLOOD BAR BE TOUCHING THE SCREEN OR HOW FAR OFF. I CAN SLOW THE MACHINE DOWN. WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY SNAP.I HAVE CLEANED ALL AIR HOLES AND WILL GIVE IT ANOTHER TRY
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I’M NOW ON A LEARNING CURVE, DOES ANYBODY KNOW HOW TO GET GLUE OUT OF JEANS,JUMPERS AND HAIR?
HOW MUCH PRESSURE SHOULD I HAVE ON THE FLOOD AND SQUEEGE ALSO IF I AM GETTING BUBBLES DO I NEED MORE OR LESS PRESSURE -
hi, I’ve not used the machine yet as been installing it and building a room for it to go into. I have got the screens which are just outlines of pictures which should when printed drop onto a conveyor belt then pass under an electrostatic flocker to apply flock to creating velvet art pictures.
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Hi, You could try Shenu Fashions at Leicester 0116 2543440 or G&J Cash and Carry have an online catalogue 0151- 207 3143 depends what items you are looking for.
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Hi Bill, I tried the full solvent had it in for about 10 days i tried a few different profiles colours were ok. I left the print in a heated room for 3 days before scratching it. I also printed a 68′ x 4′ sign and left it for around 2 weeks before attempting to mount it as it was a favour to a friend the 1st 8′ i came to mount scratched quite badly. The smell of the ink was very strong too only last week i threw a bit of print out from the ink and it still had its smell and scratched. I spoke to vivi just before she left and had this email back.
Thank you for the kind ink testing condition.
I have asked your inquiry with our RD leader that if you are particularly focuses on the function of scratch resistance.We may suggest you to try our Eco Top ink as USD32/per Liter or the newest one called Eco sky as USD35/per Liter
Because, customers have different ink preference, normally for JV3 machine we provide SP+ ink solution what you ordered as same as Bill. But so far, all the feedbacks are positive.
Therefore, if you don’t like to quality, I may suggest you to try different one for seeking your favorite ink performance, please let me know if you need any supports, thanks a lot!
I did speak to you at the time to see what temperatures you ran at. I don’t know if it was the difference in climates but it was worth trying it at the price.
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I have a mimaki and run on a bulk system. I have tried 4 different 3rd party inks 1 from jetbest at $25 us a litre,1 from a uk supplier at £50 a litre both of which i thought were poor quality and scratched off very easily. I have also tried a uk supplier at £85 per litre that i had no problems with except the service. I am now using a uk supplier paying £70 per litre which runs on the same profiles as mimaki ink and is as good if not better as it is a little more aggressive. I use 3-5 litres of ink every 7-10 days so the saving for me against original mimaki inks are immense. I took an insurance policy out on my machine when i changed to bulk inks at £52 per month which covers the normal plus accidental & malicious damage and loss of earnings which also covers printheads but has a £500 policy excess. I had a breakdown recently and ended up with an insurance claim of just under £12,000 which was paid out straight away on. I seemed to get a faster service because i was paying for it and not covered under warranty. With the savings from the 3rd party ink and peace of mind from the insurance i would never swap back to mimaki inks and having now bought identical printheads that hybrid fitted at £215 each from taiwan i wouldn’t care if i had to change all 4 heads every 6 months.
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Hi Bill,
Had a nightmare few weeks but discovered the insurance policy we thought had ended was still running so we are insured.
New board has sorted it out tech had come across it once before and said was something gone on mainboard. Just got 3 heads with a few jets out on each which will hopefully clear with a bit of running.
Are you still happy with the jetbest inks you are using. I emailed Vivi last night mentioned your name (you must be on free ink for life by now from them) i was very impressed with prices of ink and parts and thinking of giving them a go when up and running properly again. -
Hi Bill,
We have been running for a good few months on bulk inks with no problems. The problem must have started before we changed the printhead as we were only doing the test print on the 1st 30cm and that was showing nozzles out and didn’t change very much when the new printhead was installed. It wasn’t till much later we moved the test print over to the left to save on vinyl and discovered it printed perfectly.
We had the heads on and off that many times we ended up changing the dampers, o rings, print head ribbon cables, 1 head and even tried a new printhead adaptor. We swapped the printhead positions around and back again and nothing worked. In the end we got to complacent when putting the head carriage back on and blew the mainboard.
We have an engineer coming tomorrow with a new main board so will be very interesting to see if we still have the same problem. -
hi,
i’ve been down a week now waiting for a print head to arrive and used nearly a roll of vinyl in test prints and today decided to move the test print over to the left in not to waste more vinyl and every test print i do between 300mm-1370mm is perfect then i do one in 1st 30cm and i might get left black not fire on next the right black and perhaps half of the magenta,the next could be a chunk out of the black some out of the magenta and a block of yellow out,i move over to the left again and perfect. its like something is telling it not to print properly on the first 30cm -
hi,
i’m now using bulk inks as i had a big fallout with hybrid when they left me down for 3 weeks with the engineer leaving the machine a week without power that resulted in new print heads
martin -
hi,
machine is 14 months old had new pump 4 new heads new mainboard & slider board about 4 months ago installed by hybrid.
i have double checked ribbon cables and tried 8 new ones with same effect Not sure what the encoder strip is. put all new dampers on too. if it was an o ring wouldn’t all the test prints be the same.
martin