Canon Colorado 1650 FEEDBACK

[FireSprint.com]

I've never seen a profile actually fix true hardware limitations. I feel like those become apparent fairly quickly.

The way I see it is this. The printer manufacturers have a hell of an incentive to provide profiles that utilize maximum saturation without affecting quality. This makes their colors more vibrant, and consumes more ink. If reds wash out right out of the box, then the machine probably can't handle printing vibrant reds at that speed - nomatter what profile is used.

I'd love to be wrong. I have been wrong before. If I am, we'll get about 30% more output from our current equipment.

This isn't about hitting a pantone color. It's about saturation. All colors "wash out," but I feel like reds show it first.

 

[Johan Backman]

Here is one of the Full Wraps

Hi Christian, would love to hear what material you are using for your wraps. MPI1105? Are you building your own media profiles or just color profiles? We have a 1650 and are very happy with it except for wrapping.

Also, does anyone else have problem with poor adhesion of overlaminate on 1650-printed stuff?

 

[balstestrat]

Also, does anyone else have problem with poor adhesion of overlaminate on 1650-printed stuff?

I've heard that as well but apparently after a week or two it's better?

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

Hi Christian, would love to hear what material you are using for your wraps. MPI1105? Are you building your own media profiles or just color profiles? We have a 1650 and are very happy with it except for wrapping.

Also, does anyone else have problem with poor adhesion of overlaminate on 1650-printed stuff?

We use 1105 and 1060z, and have never had laminate issues, on our latex... That's another story!

We used to use canned profiles, but we have switch to building our own profiles for media and color. It has reduced the ink load almost 60% and has much higher color accuracy. The vibrancy is still amazing and best off the material has a lot more stretch ability with less ink.

There are also a few advantages to building the media profile, you can maximize the throughput with less automatic adjusting. We run our wraps on superior which is still twice as fast as similar output to the 800.

 

[White Haus]

So because we are primarily focused on vehicle graphics for Commercial use, we spend a lot of time explaining the ROI and return-generating aspects of the wraps/graphics. During this conversation, we explain what affects and what does not affect the return; we also evaluate if the exposed channels/recesses would hurt their message, logo, or image. Then we decide to either Cut and Drop or inlay. We prefer not to redo projects for avoidable reasons, so a paint-like finish in certain aspects is not our top priority or the clients when it's all said and done.

We ultimately ask three questions to ourselves and the client:
1.) Will this reduce your exposure / prevent sales?
2.) Will this alter your brand impression?
3.) Will this change your client experience?

If the answers are NO, we avoid doing the riskier work and stick with tried and true methods.

This is great, thanks Christian. We're in the same boat as you but doing a lot less full wraps. Most of clients are more old school and prefer having just spot graphics on their fleets but the full wraps do come up every so often.
This gives me some good ideas on how to handle those conversations going forward. Appreciate you sharing your process with us!

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

This is great, thanks Christian. We're in the same boat as you but doing a lot less full wraps. Most of clients are more old school and prefer having just spot graphics on their fleets but the full wraps do come up every so often.
This gives me some good ideas on how to handle those conversations going forward. Appreciate you sharing your process with us!

No problem, we don't have secrets and fully believe that through sharing, this industry improves.

The Colorado is a rockstar for print/cut spot graphics. Last year alone we did over 3,000 vehicles with the Colorado.

 

[White Haus]

No problem, we don't have secrets and fully believe that through sharing, this industry improves.

The Colorado is a rockstar for print/cut spot graphics. Last year alone we did over 3,000 vehicles with the Colorado.

Wow, that's crazy!! Well it's really good to know that you guys are having good success with it. I wish I would've held out for a Colorado instead of jumping into a Mimaki UCJV but oh well. It'll be paid off soon and we can look at replacing it with a Colorado.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

Wow, that's crazy!! Well it's really good to know that you guys are having good success with it. I wish I would've held out for a Colorado instead of jumping into a Mimaki UCJV but oh well. It'll be paid off soon and we can look at replacing it with a Colorado.

To be honest, Canon crash and burned with us on the 1640. We were reluctant on the 1650, but it won us over and now we have 2 and it runs all of our roll stock jobs. We kept the latex for wraps and then after profiling we decided to try again and our install team couldn't tell the difference.

It's a minimum of 2x faster than latex but a quarter the consumables after profiling. We are averaging $0.08/sqft for ink and maintenance items.

 

[White Haus]

To be honest, Canon crash and burned with us on the 1640. We were reluctant on the 1650, but it won us over and now we have 2 and it runs all of our roll stock jobs. We kept the latex for wraps and then after profiling we decided to try again and our install team couldn't tell the difference.

It's a minimum of 2x faster than latex but a quarter the consumables after profiling. We are averaging $0.08/sqft for ink and maintenance items.

^That's amazing, and a huge savings over what we're currently paying for our Mimaki UCJV or Roland XR-640 (even with using Nazdar inks). I think that one printer (1650) could easily replace both of our printers and free up some space in the shop.

 

[Shred_signs]

^That's amazing, and a huge savings over what we're currently paying for our Mimaki UCJV or Roland XR-640 (even with using Nazdar inks). I think that one printer (1650) could easily replace both of our printers and free up some space in the shop.

I ran a 1650 and an HP 3200 (10' wide Dual roll capable). If we were running anything less than two FULL rolls it was faster to run them on the 1650, than the much larger 3200. I think the 1650 ran two rolls back to back in about 3:40, while our 3200 would complete a dual roll run in 3:30. the 3200 however came with a nearly additional hour of load and unload.

Pros: Feeding the 1650 was considerably easier on the staff, the gel based inks are incredibly efficient, the dual roll/multi-media loading was incredibly useful.

Cons: with the 1650 is because it is on a micron scale, any small deviations, can look REALLY bad. There were some colors we had to give up on getting great full coverage.

 

[White Haus]

Cons: with the 1650 is because it is on a micron scale, any small deviations, can look REALLY bad. There were some colors we had to give up on getting great full coverage.

Can you elaborate on this? Curious to know what issues you ran into with the 1650. Thanks.

 

[Pauly]

I ran a 1650 and an HP 3200 (10' wide Dual roll capable). If we were running anything less than two FULL rolls it was faster to run them on the 1650, than the much larger 3200. I think the 1650 ran two rolls back to back in about 3:40, while our 3200 would complete a dual roll run in 3:30. the 3200 however came with a nearly additional hour of load and unload.

Pros: Feeding the 1650 was considerably easier on the staff, the gel based inks are incredibly efficient, the dual roll/multi-media loading was incredibly useful.

Cons: with the 1650 is because it is on a micron scale, any small deviations, can look REALLY bad. There were some colors we had to give up on getting great full coverage.

Which costs more to run?
Electricity usage
consumables
maintenance. etc

 

[victor bogdanov]

We are averaging $0.08/sqft for ink and maintenance items.

That's right at where I'm at and most of the stuff I print is on matte high speed and production so it's flying

 

[victor bogdanov]

Which costs more to run?
Electricity usage
consumables
maintenance. etc

I just looked up what an HP3200 costs, looks like at least twice the cost of the 1650.

 

[parrott]

I’m curious to know what settings (strategy) most people are running. On banner we have to run strategy 2 or else we get random banding even with enhanced marks. Don’t know if it’s our material or profile.

 

[Pauly]

I just looked up what an HP3200 costs, looks like at least twice the cost of the 1650.

from what i've been told, it costs a lot more to run, and a lot more consumables. But curious what he says.

 

[Shred_signs]

Can you elaborate on this? Curious to know what issues you ran into with the 1650. Thanks.

We had to make sure our calibrations were recent and accurate. We had on going issues with solid blues feed banding.

 

[Shred_signs]

Which costs more to run?
Electricity usage
consumables
maintenance. etc

I can't speak to ALL of these numbers, but as far as an operator/OPERATOR MANAGER. I have plenty of experience in the consumables and maintenance time.

I would say it was 98/2 uptime/down time on the 1650.
where it was probably closer to 75/25 on the HP3200. The 3200 needs a lot of attention for but the capability of printing up to 10 feet wide on the 3200 or the dual roll capability are definitely worth when you can use them.

However, these machines are not competing in the same categories, at all.

 

[Johan Backman]

To be honest, Canon crash and burned with us on the 1640. We were reluctant on the 1650, but it won us over and now we have 2 and it runs all of our roll stock jobs. We kept the latex for wraps and then after profiling we decided to try again and our install team couldn't tell the difference.

It's a minimum of 2x faster than latex but a quarter the consumables after profiling. We are averaging $0.08/sqft for ink and maintenance items.

What was your strategy for minmising ink usage in profile creation? I.e what specific steps did you take during profiling to reduce ink usage?

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

Total ink load on the Canon profiles are so over-saturated, it's clearly designed to waste ink with no perceptible increase in gamut. We were able to dial back all four inks between 20 and 40%. Also playing with ink strategies can allow for even greater speed increases by tricking the eye in to seeing more resolution.