Brand Spankin' New JV33

[TheSnowman]

I just ordered my JV33 today. I did find out that you can get an extended warranty right now for an extra year, as long as you sign an ink contract. I haven't gotten that yet, so I'm not real sure what all it entails...but, I do know that I ran Bordeaux inks for about four years, and loved them for the most part. Never had any issues, and cost me $52 less PER CARTRIDGE than OEM's do.

So I guess my question is, am I crazy for even considering this option? Has anyone done it? I know that Bordeaux and Solaris, and the other 3rd Party Inks have their own warranties too, but I haven't dug deep enough yet to discover what they actually cover. I hate to think that I'm throwing $400+ away each set of ink I run, which would be roughly $4,000 for the year, times the two years. I can have a tech come fix stuff a couple times AT THE LEAST for $8,000. If the manufacturer's cover the heads, etc, I don't see why I should run OEM's.

Thoughts? I don't want to screw up my machine right out of the gate, but my Mimaki I'm selling is 6 years old, had Bordeaux for 4 of those years, and the heads are still going strong. I've just had to replaced pumps and dampers, but I've been told that's supposed to happen every 2 years, and my dampers went 6. I just don't see anything bad about the 3rd party inks that I've ran thus far.

 

[Letterbox Mike]

I'd go with your aftermarket inks fro the get go and screw any extended warranties. JV33s are workhorses, you probably won't need the second year anyway. And even if you do, who cares if you'r saving more than 50% on ink, that savings will more than cover any work the machine may need.

FWIW we just switched our 3.5 year old JV33 over to Triangle and so far are very happy with it vs. OEM. It seems to bite better and hold up better to scuffing and scratching. It does smell noticeably more though. But Advantage has the 440 cartridges on sale right now for $45 ea so it might be worth looking into...

 

[SightLine]

Awesome! Coming from a JV3, the JV33 will be second nature and an easy transition. I ran OEM ink in ours until the cartridges were about empty. Switched to Triangle and have really not regretted the decision. Also, at least in the USA, per the Moss Mangusen Warranty Act, using 3rd party ink cannot void the factory warranty.

If you do go 3rd party (or not for that matter) I'd strongly suggest an eye-one and creating your own profiles. Regardless, if you liked your JV3, you will love you JV33.

 

[4R Graphics]

We have been using Triangle inks for years never had any problems that we could say was the inks fault.

 

[TheSnowman]

Glad to hear good things about the JV33. I did love the JV3. I did have to learn about replacing pumps and dampers and stuff like that since it was my first printer. I was apprehensive about digging into stuff on it at first, but now that I tore into it and understand the basics, it's all good. Looking forward to the new one.

I may just stick with my Bordeaux inks. I really liked them. I may explore the triangle inks if I don't have to do any profiling. That's one thing I haven't really gotten the hang of yet.

 

[SightLine]

Bordeaux does have JV33 specific ink which should also be just fine. Have not ever really heard anything bad about it. On the JV33, you will want to have a spare wiper which is different than a JV3 wiper and also easily lasts at least 4 times as long. Cleaning swabs are the same as what you have already used. The JV33 has a much easier to access cleaning hatch on the left side for detail cleaning around the head.

Do prepare for needing a long USB cable, the USB connector is on the opposite end of the printer than the JV3 firewire. Both the USB connector and power connector are on the far right end. Both the rear roll holder and front takeup are identical to a JV3, the menus are near the same. You will want to run a dot position correction pretty soon after you have it in place and printing. Dont need to run that a lot but you will once in a while. Overall it is a lot easier to maintain. Dampers are a bit trickier to replace as is the pump but they do seem to last considerably longer.

Oh - and your old mainstay 720x720 resolution on the JV3...... not quite as good on a JV33. We mostly run 540x1080 6 pass but also use 540x1080 12 pass a good bit and 540x720 4 pass as well for lower end stuff. I do hope you are setting it up as dual CMYK.

 

[TheSnowman]

I am running dual CMYK. Thanks for all the info. I'll check on the firewire info. The one I have now is just right and it's closest to me, so I'll probably need one.

I did go ahead and sign the purchase agreement on ink, because I found out that as long as I'm purchasing SOME INK from Advantage, I get the two year warranty. So, I'm just going to set it up with Triangle inks right out of the gate. It's pretty much a win/win.

 

[Letterbox Mike]

Kraig, what RIP did you get? More than likely you'll want to build your own profiles with the Triangle inks, they are not going to be a dead match to OEM.

I'm sure you've heard all this a thousand times, but even though profiling is time consuming and not inexpensive up front, the ROI is very quick, often times almost immediate depending on your volume. Aside from the obvious benefit of having much much better color, if you dial in your profile correctly you'll actually also be cutting your ink usage fairly significantly.

Case in point, we just hired a consultant to come in and do some pretty in depth intensive profile training. He helped us build profiles that cut our ink usage back by an estimated 35-40% per profile from the canned profiles, and we saw significantly better output at the same time. Add that 40% savings to the money you're already saving on aftermarket inks and in literally almost no time you will have paid for the profiling software and equipment. Between the software and hardware (which we already had) and the consulting, we spent about $7500 to learn how to build really good profiles. I'm expecting to break even on that investment in about 3-6 months, so for us it was a good decision.

And you don't have to hire a consultant either, we did because we're working on becoming G7 certified so we had to be trained on that process. With a good RIP and software you'll be able to write you own easily. Onyx X10.2 has a killer profiling process built in, you literally can not screw it up and even if you have absolutely no idea what you're doing you will get great profiles from it the first time you try.

 

[TheSnowman]

I am upgrading to the newest version of Onyx. I haven't done an upgrade since my original purchase 6 years ago. I was told that I wouldn't need to re-profile with purchasing Triangle from Advantage. Advantage has a ton of their own profiles, and that may be why...but I will investigate. I assume they have profiles already built for running Triangle. We'll see I guess...but yes, I agree either way.

Advantage says it'll be fine, and Fellers says it won't. I'm buying ink now from Fellers, but will be buying from Advantage...so I'll dig a little deeper on the subject.

 

[SightLine]

Triangle JVV inks will work "ok" with OEM SS21 profiles but it's not going to be nearly as good as it could be..... Custom profiles will expand your color range a nice bit, reduce ink useage, and provide much more accurate color overall. Since you are going with Onyx, maybe, just maybe.... Mike might let you borrow one if his shiny new profiles.

 

[TheSnowman]

I wanna borrow a shiny profile! Seriously though, who do I call for something like that? i have no clue what that'd even begin to cost me.

 

[mtygabriel]

I bought my JV33 and from the start used third party inks with no problems. That was about three or four years ago. You'll be alright. Save the money and don't look back!!

 

[Letterbox Mike]

PM sent Kraig.

Not sure exactly where you are in Indiana, but you can't be too terribly far from me. If you ever wanted to run over for a day on a Saturday or Sunday with some media I'd be glad to run you through the profiling process and help you write a profile or two. I'm far from an expert on it but if it's something you thought you'd want to start doing I could help you get your feet wet if nothing else...

 

[ProWraps]

its not the second year warranty you will need. its the year 4 or 5 warranty you will want. those second year warranties are a cash grab and they know it.

save the money and apply it to any fixes 4-5 years down the road. chances are you wont even have it that long as you will probably upgrade before then.

 

[Robert M]

One way to look at it

Here is a quick way of looking at it
Right now Mimaki rewards you with an extra set of inks if you agree to the warranty
8 x 124.00 = 992.00
Second year warranty value = 2000.00

So your value is 2992.00 which you divide by the 52.00 you save on Bordeaux inks = 57 cartridges. So you look at your previous ink purchases with the JV3 and you have your answer.

 

[TheSnowman]

Well, like I said my sales rep told me, since really Advantage is the one that's going to be doing the warranty work, he said as long as I'm ordering ink from them, they'll stand behind it...so hopefully that means, I get two sets of OEM inks to run at the start, then I can run triangle through it.

And Mike, I may take you up on that weekend profile deal sometime when I see we both have a week that would work out. I don't want to waste a ton of your time, but even a couple hours would give me a ton of knowledge. You are about 3 hours from me. We'll see if anything would ever happen to work out.

 

[Rooster]

I haven't so much as changed a wiper blade on my JV33 in 3+ years.

Not because I'm lazy or don't maintain the machine. It's because it simply hasn't needed it. It's cleaned daily.

The only thing that's ever gone wrong is one jet in the black channel is clogged and has been for about 2 years. I've only ever used Mimaki's ES3 inks in it.

The warranty they're offering is worthless.

 

[TheSnowman]

Yea, it's more a peace of mind thing I suppose. That'd have looked really enticing to me on my first printer purchase...but now that I see how much of a tank my current Mimaki has been...I basically have zero worries till I have to mess with replacing pumps in a few years.

 

[k.a.s.]

Good things to say about the JV-33 here as well. Mine is 4 years old and I've never done anything to it. I did use OEM ink till about 6 months ago when Pioneer came out with their own ink. So far the aftermarket ink works great!

Kevin

 

[petesign]

I love my Mimaki, it's a workhorse. I currently run OEM ES3 inks, i love/hate them and will eventually swap to a ss21 or equivalent third party ink. Only good thing I hear is, the ES3 is a lot better for our print heads.