Flatbed UV Printers

[jakewill]

I am in the market for a flatbed UV printer that will print on rigid substrates as well as flexible materials. Quality is the most important consideration, and the ability to print on a wide variety of substrates would be the second most important consideration.

We are currently printing all signage on an Epson 9900 and would like input about which machine would be the best fit for our business now and in the near future.

We are relatively new to the large-format printing world, but have excellent access to work along with a significant amount of existing work.

I am interested in any information and/or comparisons that anyone might be able to offer for the following machines or any other high quality machines that I am missing:

EFI Rastek 700
Agfa Anapurna
Screen Truepress Jet2500UV
Screen Truepress Jet1600UV-F

Thank You, in advance for your help.

[M@CK]

Hi jakewill, first question that comes to mind is what's your budget. In the flatbed's you just named you go from 80,000$ for the rastek to about 250,000$ for the Screen Jet2500UV.

Second you need to consider what it is you will print on and at what volume. Somme UV inks are flexible and somme are not, so somme machine wont do banner material very well and some inks you will need to prep the surface for it to adhere on, like say coroplast. Have you considered solvent or latex ?

In the quality machines you are missing:
Fuji Acuity / Oce Arizona
Agfa 1224 NanoJet 2 UV Flatbed with *FTR option
Gerber Solara
Swissqprint oryx (was the Zund printer)
Mimaki JF-1631

This forum has lots of information you might want to check it out
Flatbed Printers - Signs101.com

[jakewill]

Thanks, M@CK...

I am open to Solvent and Latex but don't know much about either.

Here's a little more info:

I am looking to move my large format poster work from printing on Hahnemuhle Fine Art Pearl paper on am Epson 9900 to printing on 100# Cougar Smooth Cover and am looking for a machine that will give me similar quality as that which I am getting on the Hahnemuhle paper. We print signage in a lot of different size formats, but to make things simple, let's say we print roughly (30) 22" X 28" posters each day. As far as banners go, I am sending out roughly (10) 12' X 3' banners every week, however there are times that I may have orders for 50+ banners or 50+ posters/signs that need to be produced in a couple of days.

I hope this helps... I look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts and really appreciate the help.

[M@CK]

You didn't talk about your budget ...

[jakewill]

Budget is negotiable... I mentioned the machines that I did because of the fact that the capabilities of the equipment are the most important factor. Obviously, I would want to spend $250k much less than $100k. Sometimes you pay for what you get, and sometimes you get more than what you pay for.

[MalcolmBliss]

We have an Anapurna M4F and we have had positive and negative results from it. Right now, from what I am reading if you are running work off the roll, tracking seems to be an issue with them. It has been our experience as well. The work rides on a conveyor that pulls the substrate down taught by means of a vacuum pump. It is great for flatwork and MOST banner material if you center your roll. Sometimes, when you run rolls, depending on how that roll is wound from the supplier you can have problems keeping the tracking straight.
Before this we had a Mutoh, I won't even get into how much of a disappointment that machine was for us. The other issue we have is banding sometimes, but if you play with the parameters before you run a job you can get around this most of the time.

[jakewill]

MalcolmBliss,

Thank You for your feedback. I will talk to the Agfa folks about these issues.

[salyerb]

Hi Jakewill,

I am an Account Manager for Oce. I have a counter-part who covers Pittsburgh, PA and glad to have him get in touch with details on the Oce Arizona Flatbed if you are interested. We will also have a large booth at the Graph Expo and SGIA shows coming up in October.

If you would like me to get you in touch with Dan MacEachern the Pittsburgh area Account Manager for Oce let me know and he will be happy to provide details on our products and services.

FYI - Oce is the manufacturer of the Fuji Aquity, they OEM our machine.

Brad Salyer
Account Manager
Oce North America
ODGS Division
brad.salyer@oce.com

[surfite]

As far as my Mimaki Machine I will get together a few things for you even though now the paperwork is as thick as "War and Peace"
Regarding this Mimaki Machine, so much has gone wrong I suppose I will just start from the beginning
I will send photos soon, as It is all at the factory, and I"m sending this mail from home

PROBLEMS WITH MIMAKI UJF605c
1/ First 4 months after installation " INK DRIPPING FROM HEADS AND HEAD CARRIAGE ONTO JOB"
2/ At the same time this was happening there was substaintial "NOZZLE DROP OUT 30%" This was the major problem
after 3 years of this happening they sent there Top Tech Guy "Mr Terashima" after 2 days of pulling the machine apart it worked for 11 months
All 7 heads were replaced at this time , previous to this there would have been another 7 replaced , Funnnily enough all colours were replaced except for the white which I thought was where the problem would have been before I bought the machine, Even though they didn't tell me there was whispers amongst themselves ,(that I had deducted ) that the heads on the machine had not had a small rectangular copper grounding plate installed at anytime, it went from the head to the head carriage, the reason i know this is that Mr Terashima had asked to see the older heads that had been replaced ( Which I had paid $30,000.00 for and that they had taken back to japan and promised a report on them of which i never recieved , you see I believe those heads were good its just that the copper plate had never been installed as the copper plate was still in the bag)
3/ Ghosting or over spraying of nozzles
4/ The sensors on the side of the table would not work properly and stop a job half way through regularly
5/ Constant errors on the LCD ( that didn't apply to the above problems)
6/ At the moment the machine has broken down again and they don't know what it is ! ( more money to spend)
7/ I had asked for the machine to be replaced (In writing) after the first 2 months( Plus in the interim there is about 200 emails) and they agreed , but then just sent a tech guy
I used to ring japan every couple of days as I believe it is the maufacturers problem not the distributor( as I wasn't getting anywhere with them anyway)
The furtherest up the ladder I got by phone was Mr Fujita , I explained my problem , but here we are, nothing happened, so after now into my sixth year with this machine
I originally paid $150,000.00 plus $7,000.00 for airconditioning that they said was the problem (within the first couple of months), About $40,000.00 in heads plus
I've nearly died of stress and heartache over this machine, the machine has worked for about 18 months intermittintly over the period of ownership , and how about this the distributor won't take it as a trade-in, so it will make a good ships anchor

[Cliff]

Hi Jakewill,

I am an Account Manager for Oce. I have a counter-part who covers Pittsburgh, PA and glad to have him get in touch with details on the Oce Arizona Flatbed if you are interested. We will also have a large booth at the Graph Expo and SGIA shows coming up in October.

If you would like me to get you in touch with Dan MacEachern the Pittsburgh area Account Manager for Oce let me know and he will be happy to provide details on our products and services.

FYI - Oce is the manufacturer of the Fuji Aquity, they OEM our machine.

Brad Salyer
Account Manager
Oce North America
ODGS Division
brad.salyer@oce.com

And you OEM their ink ( Fuji Sericol ), We have this machine the Advance for 2 years, good and bad thing just like any printer,