I was just wondering how the ColorPainter 64 compares to other Solvent printers. For those of you that have use the ColorPainter 64 along with other solvent printers, I would be very interested to know if you like it or dislike it and some reasons why.
This is my first experience with a Solvent printer and I must say I am not impressed. With it dropping print nozzles during the middle of a print to the machine malfunctioning only a year after it's purchase and all the ink that has been wasted trying to recover the print heads.
Please let me know your experiences as we are looking to possibly replace the Seiko for another brand but only if it makes sense.
Greg, the CS64 is a great printer, a revolutionary one, i must say. It has a few problems, but all in all it's great.
First of all - that was the first real solvent printer to provide users with such an amazing quality at real production speeds. The design is already a few years old, unfortunately.
If you are complaining about this printer versus others, try Rolands or Mimakis or Encads... The quality and speed of the Seiko and the lack of problems is just amazing in comparison with those solvent or dye printers.
Plus, most of the problems associated with this printer are caused by improper usage, not by the printer itself. We run our two machines (one Oce and one Seiko) practically 24/7, usually 24/5. That's the only way to run it and not experience trouble IMHO. The more often you make stops, the more often you leave it by itself or, god forbid, turn it off, the more trouble you're going to have. And that's normal in case of all solvent printers i think. We have four other printers, two 64" and two 126".
The ink usage and problems with heads... Well, from my experience i can tell you that the amount of wasted ink as a percentage of all ink used in case of our Seikos is lower or even much lower than in case of our other machines. Heads? We only have replaced one black head so far, and i believe we could have as well just take it out, clean it properly and put it back, but since it was on warranty, we had it replaced.
Surely, the fact that Seiko runs best when it runs constantly and in stable humidity and temperature (do not let it run in environments with 20 deg C or less) is actually contradicted by its design - it's not a heavy duty printer. After running it so hard for less than a year, the mechanical parts need to be replaced soon, otherwise it will all just collapse. But of course that's also the problem of the dealers who don't tell you when certain parts need to be replaced. I have an Encad NovaJet 1000i. It's clearly written in the manual after how many printing hours do some parts need to be replaced. Not in this case.
If the Seiko is your first solvent printer, i recommend you look for something bigger. Maybe a Jeti 3318 from Gandi (hey, that's made in Canada) which prints beautifully and it's a really great machine. Or a Scitex (now HP Scitex) XLjet Premium. Those machines print in six colours easily (i believe XLjet Premium can do 8 colours) and they are built to last. THey can run five years easily, if properly cared for.
If you don't mind could I ask a few questions then, since you seem to have allot of experience with solvent printers.
1. How much ink waste do you have in a percentage? I have about 33% of my ink purchased is wasted from cleanings.
2. What kind of printing do you do (high quality museum or big outdoor banner)? We do a mixture.
3. If you run your printer 24/5 how long before you required new print heads or major service?
4. What is your tolerance for dropped nozzles during a print run?
5. What humidity and temperature do you keep the room at the holds your Seiko?
6. What are your platen temperatures at and what kind of media do you run.
I would greatly appreciate any or all questions answered. We are in the market for another machine and would like to know if we got a lemon or if this is normal for solvent printers.
1. How much ink waste do you have in a percentage? [i would say about 5-10%]
2. What kind of printing do you do (high quality museum or big outdoor banner)? We do a mixture. [same here, but geting mroe higher quality now]
3. If you run your printer 24/5 how long before you required new print heads or major service? [heads should last 8ish months but you need t do the cleans to extend that]
4. What is your tolerance for dropped nozzles during a print run? [some nozzles can drop and you get away with it, because you can't see them in the final output. if you can see them then sometimes 1 can causes this]
5. What humidity and temperature do you keep the room at the holds your Seiko? [pretty normal working environment really. if it's comfortable for you then the printer should be ok. one thing we have found it's more the variation of going cold to hot and hot to cold that's the worst.]
6. What are your platen temperatures at and what kind of media do you run. [quite varied. sav runs @ 45/40/45, banner @ 45/45/50, paper @ nothing, but it really depends on the type and quality of substrate you have]
1. How much ink waste do you have in a percentage? I have about 33% of my ink purchased is wasted from cleanings.
Less then 10% for sure.
2. What kind of printing do you do (high quality museum or big outdoor banner)? We do a mixture.
There are only a few regular orders that need to be run in 8 pass, normally everything goes in 4 pass and this is 95% on vinyl. Once a month maybe something that can we can get away with at 2 pass and this is on banner or blueback.
3. If you run your printer 24/5 how long before you required new print heads or major service?
One machine was purchased last summer and the other last fall. Only one head has been replaced, i think it went dead electronically, but i might be wrong. Solvent heads are very expensive but they're built to last. Especially Spectras.
4. What is your tolerance for dropped nozzles during a print run?
A few... Depending on the print.
5. What humidity and temperature do you keep the room at the holds your Seiko?
Seikos are much more sensitive to humidity and temperature changes than our other machines. We have run bigger machines at 15 deg C and they still performed ok. Seiko at 15 degrees is just in a state that you would be if you had to run thru the city wearing nothing in 15 degrees ;) So we keep it at roughly 20-25. Humidity? I have no idea. I believe we have a climate similar to something like Toronto, probably. We rarely need to put more moisture in the air.
6. What are your platen temperatures at and what kind of media do you run.
Depending on the speed, but in 4 pass it's usually 45-40-50 for vinyl, 50-45-55 for banner. In 8 pass you should go lower and in 2 pass you must go higher, even unblock the 60 degree option in the service menu and go for it. Make sure you buy or build your own additional heaters. Some vinyls and banners are a pain in the butt to dry out. Don't ever believe anyone who tells you to run vinyl on 35-30-45 or something. That's BS! The higher the temperature, the less banding you will get (i mean here the banding caused by subsequent passes flowing into each other). Then if the temperature is right you can easily set the correct feed stepping on the fly and write it down!
I would greatly appreciate any or all questions answered. We are in the market for another machine and would like to know if we got a lemon or if this is normal for solvent printers.
Solvent printers are much better and stronger than all dye/pigment printers. They're usually also much faster. If you wanna buy a great solvent printer and you're in Canada - get yourself a Gandi. Especially that now in the 3m wide machines you can either go with solvent or UV inks and you can also order it with 600dpi heads instead of 300dpi, so you will get Seiko quality at 2 to 4 times the speed and twice the width.
