Vutek UV Ink purchasing restrictions

[stonecutter]

I was recently informed that I can only purchase ink for my Vutek QS2000 from the dealer who sold the printer. The printer we purchased is a used printer originally manufactured in 2007. Has anyone else experienced a situation like this???

[M@CK]

I can understand what your saying if and only IF the printer is under warranty or a service contract. Except from that, your free to put any thing you what in your machine... 3rd party ink for Vutek are widely available.

[stonecutter]

The printer is a used printer (2007) NOT under warranty. Vutek only warranties their printer for one year. Don't need a pricey service contract as the machines are built for 24/7 operation. I've worked with Vutek Printers for the last three years and only had to call in for a service tech once. And that was when my operator got some banner material jammed under the carriage so bad that the carriage had to be removed to get the banner out.

With proper maintenance and a skilled printer operator these machines can and will do amazing things and keep going like the energizer bunny for years to come.

Changing inks on these machines is not as simple as changing an ink cartridge in a HP inkjet printer. So, I am not interested in third party inks. We spent a lot of time and effort to get this machine dialed in to use the Vutek Series-2 inks and I am not looking forward to having to go through the trials of getting the machine dialed in for a different ink.

[VladCanada]

khmmm... little bit confused.
Do you mean: when you applied to Vutek Sales to purchase some brand ink, they sent you to the dealer and only the dealer who sold that machine?

[stonecutter]

That's right.
I am stuck with one and only one dealer for ink purchases.
Even though there are several dealers in the US that sell Vutek Ink.
I have to buy ink at the price set by one dealer and be held hostage to that dealers delivery terms. If they don't have the ink in stock, we run the risk of not making a delivery on time.

[VladCanada]

Really bad...
That looks like one big family keeps that business, and they try to support each other with your money and they do not give you any option, keeping you in dead corner!
So, that's another reason to switch the inks and stop feeding rats.

[Mike LaForest]

We have 2 Vutek's a GS and a QS as long as you buy ink that is designed for the machine it should not matter. We run series 2 ink on the QS and have recently switched to Pitman as the supplier from EFI .
I let Pitman do the work on smoothing over any issue with who should sell us ink. You might try that with you supplier of choice.

[Greenleeves]

We have a fairly used third party Vutek flatbed 180/600EC. The problem is that we cannot use any other UV ink except that from vutek dealer. The Vutek UV inks for this machine is very expensive and it comes with chips that send information to the CPU about the ink status, date of manufacturing and expiring date.What can we do to bypass these vutek ink chips method so that we can use any other cheaper UV inks? Please help!!!!

[phyne]

They tried to pull that crap on us. We switched our QS 2000 to Triangle ink and we have had no regrets. We saved about $40K the first year. Triangle was easy to work with and very helpful and knowledgeable about our printer. Vuteks are great printers but they certainly try to bend you over and lock you down with the ink.

[Greenleeves]

Very interesting that you got solution out of it. Please tell me how we can make this ink convert to the triangle ink without problems We have a vutek UV Vu 180/600 flatbed, we cannot afford spending so much money on the vutek ink purchase. please help!!! what is details of making this conversion?