Canon Colorado M Series.

[MarkSnelling]

Anyone know if the ink prices for the M are coming down anytime soon? At $160/L, that's a LOT more expensive than ANY other press we have (Durst, Vutek, HP Latex).
I know the "cost per hour" in relation to the price of the press is going to be a fair amount cheaper than our other presses but the ink cost seems to be way up there.
(Not bashing on the press or Canon, I just saw it in action at their demo center in Chicago not too long ago and I'm impressed!)

The gas mileage is very different with UV gel tech. You get a lot more usage out of a liter than you do many other technologies.

 

[tudouqiezi]

Hi 2CT, I would like to ask how the colorado m5w performs when printing fire red? I am curious to know the difference with Epson S80 in red color.

Did you guys ever discover the root cause of the head failures?

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

Hi 2CT, I would like to ask how the colorado m5w performs when printing fire red? I am curious to know the difference with Epson S80 in red color.

The Epson will have a better red gamut overall. The Smaller Dot size allows for a Wider gamut and smoother Quarter and Half tones. But that's not to say that the Colorado doesn't have good reds, its much better than HP Latex.

 

[Brian Tickenoff]

Have you looked at the ink consumption comparisons? I ran a test on our 800W, Colorado, and Vanguard (all profiled by us) and the Colorado was over 50% less ink use per sqft then the HP.

I did an ink consumption/cost comparison to our other presses for the same file and found that the Colorado M comes in 3rd as far as “cost per print” goes.

1) Durst P5-350 uv ($0.98)
2) vutek 5r+ uv ($1.44)
3) Colorado M ($1.73)
4) HP 3600 latex ($2.16)
5) HP r2000 latex ($3.74)

Of course, there are plenty of other factors to consider, like print time, initial cost of press, maintenance, reliability, etc but this was just about ink consumption and cost.

 

[parrott]

Colorado is great and it does use less ink but their ink is SO expensive. Have tried negotiating better ink price and they do not seem interested at all. They quoted me $.08-$.10 per square foot and we are double that. Ken the rep that sold it to me is about as worthless as they come. Haven’t gotten a call back in almost a year about discounting ink (after many attempts). Can’t say I blame him as discounting is not a high priority but at least call a customer back. Gonna be an awkward situation when I go to see him at Print United.

Overall, very happy with the machine other than ink prices are not what quoted.

 

[Pauly]

Colorado is great and it does use less ink but their ink is SO expensive. Have tried negotiating better ink price and they do not seem interested at all. They quoted me $.08-$.10 per square foot and we are double that. Ken the rep that sold it to me is about as worthless as they come. Haven’t gotten a call back in almost a year about discounting ink (after many attempts). Can’t say I blame him as discounting is not a high priority but at least call a customer back. Gonna be an awkward situation when I go to see him at Print United.

Overall, very happy with the machine other than ink prices are not what quoted.

You can use custom profiles and tweak the GCR to use less ink.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

Colorado is great and it does use less ink but their ink is SO expensive. Have tried negotiating better ink price and they do not seem interested at all. They quoted me $.08-$.10 per square foot and we are double that. Ken the rep that sold it to me is about as worthless as they come. Haven’t gotten a call back in almost a year about discounting ink (after many attempts). Can’t say I blame him as discounting is not a high priority but at least call a customer back. Gonna be an awkward situation when I go to see him at Print United.

Overall, very happy with the machine other than ink prices are not what quoted.

I just ran a test for someone, and their image was 115% ink coverage (Had alpha channels), which was $0.17/sqft on our profiles. According to Onyx and the Internal Logs, our common prints have 65-80% ink coverage and are around $0.06/per sqft.

I did an ink consumption/cost comparison to our other presses for the same file and found that the Colorado M comes in 3rd as far as “cost per print” goes.

1) Durst P5-350 uv ($0.98)
2) vutek 5r+ uv ($1.44)
3) Colorado M ($1.73)
4) HP 3600 latex ($2.16)
5) HP r2000 latex ($3.74)

Of course, there are plenty of other factors to consider, like print time, initial cost of press, maintenance, reliability, etc but this was just about ink consumption and cost.

I'd love your test file to see what our profiles would show for ink consumption.

 

[parrott]

Shoot me your email address and I can send you a couple of our files. Would love to see if there is a difference.

 

[TSC1985]

I just ran a test for someone, and their image was 115% ink coverage (Had alpha channels), which was $0.17/sqft on our profiles. According to Onyx and the Internal Logs, our common prints have 65-80% ink coverage and are around $0.06/per sqft.


I'd love your test file to see what our profiles would show for ink consumption.

Hi Christian,

Thanks for all the great information on this unit. We signed up for one and are just waiting to receive but I have a bit of worry. We are not a large production house, we maybe go thru 3 boxes of media in a busy week. The ability to print white and more substrates than eco-solvent (plus speed) was our main factors to purchase. We do a lot of vehicle wraps and so far the samples they provided have been good for stretch on mirrors and bumpers.

You think this is too much machine for the price, does it feel better to scale back to EPSON resin or eco-solvent?

 

[victor bogdanov]

Hi Christian,

Thanks for all the great information on this unit. We signed up for one and are just waiting to receive but I have a bit of worry. We are not a large production house, we maybe go thru 3 boxes of media in a busy week. The ability to print white and more substrates than eco-solvent (plus speed) was our main factors to purchase. We do a lot of vehicle wraps and so far the samples they provided have been good for stretch on mirrors and bumpers.

You think this is too much machine for the price, does it feel better to scale back to EPSON resin or eco-solvent?

You probably need to print more than 3 rolls per week for the Colorado to make sense over epson

 

[Pauly]

Hi Christian,

Thanks for all the great information on this unit. We signed up for one and are just waiting to receive but I have a bit of worry. We are not a large production house, we maybe go thru 3 boxes of media in a busy week. The ability to print white and more substrates than eco-solvent (plus speed) was our main factors to purchase. We do a lot of vehicle wraps and so far the samples they provided have been good for stretch on mirrors and bumpers.

You think this is too much machine for the price, does it feel better to scale back to EPSON resin or eco-solvent?

what did you get the M3 or M5?
that is low volume for the colorado though, you can do the 3 boxes in 4 hours...

The M3 is probably the one you want, but the colorado inks go into a tank, you dont want them expiring on you. you'll need a tech to drain the tanks.

 

[victor bogdanov]

you dont want them expiring on you. you'll need a tech to drain the tanks.

and most of the time when you get the inks they're 6 months away from expiring, pretty short life. Not a problem if the printer is busy but full tanks of ink go a long way. 3 rolls of vinyl per week you'll need to waste some ink to keep it from expiring

 

[MarkSnelling]

I did an ink consumption/cost comparison to our other presses for the same file and found that the Colorado M comes in 3rd as far as “cost per print” goes.

1) Durst P5-350 uv ($0.98)
2) vutek 5r+ uv ($1.44)
3) Colorado M ($1.73)
4) HP 3600 latex ($2.16)
5) HP r2000 latex ($3.74)

Of course, there are plenty of other factors to consider, like print time, initial cost of press, maintenance, reliability, etc but this was just about ink consumption and cost.

Do you have those other devices or are you just ripping in Onyx to see what the anticipated ink costs are? I get push back all the time from people with Vutek and Durst about the fact their inks are $.04/ft2 cheaper....but the printer is $400,000 cheaper or more. Most of my Colorado customers are Vutek and Durst houses....they already have high production 10' units....and seeing most of the media is still under 63", this is a great compliment to the big boys.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

Hi Christian,

Thanks for all the great information on this unit. We signed up for one and are just waiting to receive but I have a bit of worry. We are not a large production house, we maybe go thru 3 boxes of media in a busy week. The ability to print white and more substrates than eco-solvent (plus speed) was our main factors to purchase. We do a lot of vehicle wraps and so far the samples they provided have been good for stretch on mirrors and bumpers.

You think this is too much machine for the price, does it feel better to scale back to EPSON resin or eco-solvent?

You got a lot of great answers from others on here, but my suggestion would be to skip white, and go with an M3. Later you can pay to upgrade to an M5 speed.

If you don't have an immediate need for white, that is a channel that is difficult to sell profitably.

 

[TSC1985]

You got a lot of great answers from others on here, but my suggestion would be to skip white, and go with an M3. Later you can pay to upgrade to an M5 speed.

If you don't have an immediate need for white, that is a channel that is difficult to sell profitably.

That is exactly what I got, an M3. We have been doing more and more ad my current 1 eco solvent printer couldnt keep up so I think in busy weeks we are between 3-5 boxes a week now but we have picked up a lot of contracts recently that should see that number double next 1-2 years is my estimate.

 

[parrott]

You will be very happy with the Colorado. It just works. The latex machines take forever to get going, cool off and just throw errors any chance they get. Colorado you just hit print and let it go. Solid build and reliable b

 

[Brian Tickenoff]

Do you have those other devices or are you just ripping in Onyx to see what the anticipated ink costs are? I get push back all the time from people with Vutek and Durst about the fact their inks are $.04/ft2 cheaper....but the printer is $400,000 cheaper or more. Most of my Colorado customers are Vutek and Durst houses....they already have high production 10' units....and seeing most of the media is still under 63", this is a great compliment to the big boys.

I didn't use the rip to calculate the ink consumption. I used the data straight from the press. I can download it all into an Excel file and then parse it out from there. I don't trust the rip to give me accurate numbers unless it's polling the press directly and pulling those numbers back after it prints.

And yeah, it PAINS me when we run 64" matierial or smaller on a 3 meter press. Makes no sense why we got a 5 meter vutek when we run maybe 1-2 jobs a year that require anything over 3 meters.

 

[Brian Tickenoff]

I just ran a test for someone, and their image was 115% ink coverage (Had alpha channels), which was $0.17/sqft on our profiles. According to Onyx and the Internal Logs, our common prints have 65-80% ink coverage and are around $0.06/per sqft.


I'd love your test file to see what our profiles would show for ink consumption.

Sorry, I am not able to share the file that I used. NDA stuff.

 

[kanluk]

Hi guys. What is the price for the new Colorado M3 in the basic version?

 

[Brian Tickenoff]

You will be very happy with the Colorado. It just works. The latex machines take forever to get going, cool off and just throw errors any chance they get. Colorado you just hit print and let it go. Solid build and reliable b

Do happen to know about how much you spent in the last year on consumables? (Not ink. Filters, cleaning solutions, etc)