Epson Sure Color Printer S70670

[Tyler Durden]

Hello,
I am just wanting to hear from anyone who has one of these new Surecolor printers. I am interested in buying one due to the extra ink colors and the larger color gamut. I have some test prints and they look great.
I like my Roland but I think all the other solvent printers are missing the mark by not having light black, orange, green, etc. I mean I can't count the times I have spent or read about guys not able to print black, red, skin tone or some other gradient problem and spending hours on it or just not printing certain things. I think it is unacceptable, but I guess the sign market dictates what is needed from these printers and a high color gamut print is not as high on the list as production speed. I do have a smaller epson photo printer with the extra colors and the stuff that it spits out is just crazy perfect every time.

I have read a few complaints about a feed rate or internal software problem causing banding, but then it goes away after a restart.
I am wondering if this has been resolved. I have seen the video and it did look to be an internal software or firmware bug.
Also some about banner head strikes but that seems to come from bad banner rolls.

Other than that the printer looks like a very nice and well constructed. Please advise.

 

[Dogvan]

It makes very pretty prints on slow setting, and all settings including the slow one are faster than the GS6000. Some tones are improved with the new ink set but the GS6000 was pretty good already. So those prints are beautiful, but running 8 pass you need to keep an eye on it. It's significantly faster, but that means a nozzle clog gives you immediate banding, and depending on the tone its laying down it may or may not be acceptable.

The material feed system is super picky. SUPER PICKY. You just can't trust it overnight. On the GS6000 the material was lying on rollers behind the machine, so if it tracked off a little the roll could scoot over a bit. Not so with this positive feed system. As the film tracks off just a little a large buckle forms behind one side of the roller set. This is always the fault of the alignment on the takeup reel, drawing it to one side or the other. On the feed side you take the time once to get it adjusted to where you can simply pull film through by hand, no rollers, and it tracks straight over several yards. Then you know the feed side is square and you can trust it. But the takeup side is where you tape it off every job and that's the picky part. I use 3" PVC pipe rather than old cardboard cores to increase the accuracy of the takeup side. I bump up the vacuum on the platen so I can print without takeup tension and when it gets close to the floor I pause the machine and tape it off very accurately, using the weighted bar to keep even tension. I also put a piece of tape next to the film so I can see if (when) it starts to walk on me. Then I pause it, straighten the takeup material and resume.

That rigmarole works. Usually I have to pause between jobs and straighten the takeup material. After it gets going straight it can stay straight for a while, maybe 30-50 feet. But it's a gamble. I run exclusively IJ-180Cv3 so it's not some crappy film that isn't converted properly. I really pine for the GS6000 that I could throw a roll into and it would run all night. And if it got off track it would just not print the next job. This sucker gets a kink in the MIDDLE of a job, so best case you get head strikes all over and ruin the panel, but that's only if you're within earshot for that two minute window. Usually the head wads up the film which is why I don't dare run it overnight. The GS6000 wadded the film probably 5 times the whole 4 years I worked on it, and that was from shipping damage making the film edge flare way up.

The increased speed means (for me) I can get my jobs done during the day. I also got the metallic silver and white printing, which is nice for internal stuff we do on tradeshow materials and some labels we put on our vehicles. If I could have bought just the white without the silver I would have done that. It's something I use once a month, and the machine is constantly sucking on it for cleaning purposes. So it's a modest increase on the structural money drain endemic to self cleaning.

 

[Tyler Durden]

Thanks for reply

Thanks for the reply!!
The stuff I print does not fall below the 720 range so I am not use to too much speed but quality and gamut is the normal issue with my Roland 6color. Try printing a black and white photo with a splash of color on it and I can't. So I guess the biggest issue is the takeup system and or tracking. That makes sense if the core is fixed front to back it needs to go really straight. I did have a look at a gs6000 and from the back it looked like it had two clamps that went into the core. I don't recall seeing any roller bars like on a roland, but anyhow a gs6000 is hard to come by in good shape.

 

[Dogvan]

The other thing I found disappointing is the white prime feature. If you're printing full color on clear and you need a white prime there are two ways you can go about it. You either babysit or you don't. On a small run you use the two green "high tension" rollers which are placed near the edges of the film. That allows the machine to retract the substrate after printing the white pass without mucking up the fresh ink. Sounds good in theory except the machine turns off the takeup system!

Are you kidding me? Then when I call to complain they say yeah it's not possible for it to work in reverse, which is ridiculous. If you perform an automatic feed adjustment it will print forward and reverse and the takeup system, while in reverse, just unrolls a bit of film then immediately takes it back up like normal. So it does a little head bobble, but it works. There's no reason for it not to work on a white prime. But if you go that route you'll babysit a print longer than 3 feet or so, taking it up by hand. This gives you plenty of time to curse the firmware engineers.

The other route is to do a multi strike type of print. You can set up the profile so that it lays down white ink, then stays still and makes a second pass laying down the process color. That's what I end up doing. But you have to watch how much solvent you put down, based on the substrate. It will do the wrinkle up trick on you, which is annoying. You can increase the drying time between passes to combat this. But that drastically slows the printing on the entirety of the job. So pick your poison.