flatbed with roll to roll printer

[waterloo2008]

hi

i'm researching the flatbed with roll to roll printer in one body as the attached photo


What is the pro and con , compared to separate flatbed and roll to roll printers?

Any good or bad experiences, worthy to consider ?

thanks

 

[Pauly]

We’ll there’s 2 types of flatbed with R2R modules.
One has the stock going over the bed.
The other doesn’t / has a seperate module on the front or rear. (Canon / oce)

Pros and cons?
Pro:
You have a spare R2R printer.

Con:
You don’t have the extra R2R capabilities

Canons flatbed with r2r allows you do do nozzle checks etc with out needing to layout the bed with paper. Most others can’t do that

 

[Aaron Hunter]

Add hybrid to your search and will get more options. Our current (FluidColor 98H) and our previous (HP FC7000) were both hybrids.

 

[AlsEU]

Con: it's just one printer, when it's broken, you have no machine running.
Con (of the machines with RMO, i.e. Oce Arizona): printing on the roll has usually lower quality than the standard R2R printer.

 

[RabidOne]

It's true that the quality might not be up to snuff of your roll to roll printer so it comes down to what kind of work you do and which printer you get?
We had an Oce 480 and a 2260, both 96" so if you want a banner bigger than your 64" roll to roll, no problem.
At that shop we didn't do car wraps so our roll to roll was solvent (no white).
We printed a huge amount of ClingZ with white (30 rolls at at a time) so the last guy out of the shop loaded up a roll on the back of each flatbed at the end of the night.
Current shop has an HP 550 and the roll to roll is only used when our 800W is broken. The quality is a serious step down.
As a back up or addition to your roll to roll its a good idea, but you can't run both at the same time!

 

[growler]

I have a 460GT with RMO, hardly ever use it, you'd be better buying aUV, latex or solvent printer for your roll needs.
My previous machine was a hybrid, but again I would go flatbed + separate R2R.

The cost of the RMO on the Océ was way way over the price of standalone, by a very large margin.

 

[Pauly]

Just going to add my 2c

Con: it's just one printer, when it's broken, you have no machine running.
Con (of the machines with RMO, i.e. Oce Arizona): printing on the roll has usually lower quality than the standard R2R printer.

Lower quality to a standard R2R ? well if you're going to compare solvent to UV, then yeah probably. but that's not apples to apples. We've compared our prints to a competitor with UV R2R, and our canon blew the competitions quality away with what ever they where using.
Canons R2R is also 2.2m in width. you're not going to get that with a standard R2R.
Other flatbeds will get you a similar or wider width for R2R.

I have a 460GT with RMO, hardly ever use it, you'd be better buying aUV, latex or solvent printer for your roll needs.
My previous machine was a hybrid, but again I would go flatbed + separate R2R.

The cost of the RMO on the Océ was way way over the price of standalone, by a very large margin.

I don't remember the additional cost of the R2R but it's actually very handy.
When we do nozzle checks, we have a cheap paper stock loaded and print on that.
We'll do a quick check while loading boards on the printer just to make sure everything is good.

 

[AlsEU]

Lower quality to a standard R2R ? well if you're going to compare solvent to UV, then yeah probably. but that's not apples to apples. We've compared our prints to a competitor with UV R2R, and our canon blew the competitions quality away with what ever they where using.
Canons R2R is also 2.2m in width. you're not going to get that with a standard R2R.
Other flatbeds will get you a similar or wider width for R2R.

An opinion about the lower printing quality than standard R2R machine is not mine - it comes from many RMO module users, which could compare this product with various types of the R2R UV machines. Printing width is another case - I agree that it's more than "standard R2R" (which means small R2R machines), but what about the 3.2, 3.5 or 5 m machines? The construction of the RMO module assumes some compromises in terms of the media advance precision, configuration and flexibility of the usage. Again - it's not my opinion, but users owning such machines for years. They don't claim it's a bad product - according to them, the R2R is slightly different, so RMO cannot be a 100% substitute of the R2R printer.

 

[Pauly]

An opinion about the lower printing quality than standard R2R machine is not mine - it comes from many RMO module users, which could compare this product with various types of the R2R UV machines. Printing width is another case - I agree that it's more than "standard R2R" (which means small R2R machines), but what about the 3.2, 3.5 or 5 m machines? The construction of the RMO module assumes some compromises in terms of the media advance precision, configuration and flexibility of the usage. Again - it's not my opinion, but users owning such machines for years. They don't claim it's a bad product - according to them, the R2R is slightly different, so RMO cannot be a 100% substitute of the R2R printer.

I don’t know what other users have.
But on our canon, the quality from the RMO and flatbed are indistinguishable.
The alignments are done seperately from the flatbed and RMO platen.

As for comparing the RMO to 3.2m and larger machines.
If you can afford to have those size R2R machines.
You wouldn’t complain about having the RMO option on a flatbed.

The point of the RMO is for flexibility.
Ours is 2.2m
Our Colorado is 1.6m

We just recently did a job for 10x 4m x 2m banners.
With out that RMO option, I couldn’t do it.
For the extra, what 20k? (I can’t remember what it’s worth)
I wouldn’t turn it down, especially when you’re already paying 6 figures for the flatbed.

Almost forgot. White ink…
If it’s equiped with white ink like ours,
You’re not going to find a compatible r2r printer that can do white ink the same speed and quality as the canon.
Yeah you can get a mimaki at a slower speed and lower quality.
Or a larger 3.2m machine for that… but unless you’re doing huge volume, it’s not worth it.

We’ll use a roll of clear vinyl once a week on the RMO for white ink.

The pros out weigh the cons for having an RMO.

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

RMO option for the Arizona range was approx. AUD$30k in 2013 which is a bargain in comparison to any other 96" wide R2R printer.
White channel was AUD$10k. We got both on our machine and haven't regretted either. We print more white than CMYK these days.