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I Received my Wit-Color Ultra 9000 dual dx5 printer

J

jhanson

New Member
Oh look, they knocked off the JV5. I wonder if it'll have the same head alignment woes that the JV5 had in the beginning...

paulbaguio: In the OP, he says that it's a dual-head DX5 machine. Aligning two DX5 heads together is difficult, but compared to aligning four, it's a cakewalk.
 
artbot

artbot

New Member
actually i think wit-color is ripping of themselves!

exhibit A!


(the four head tech is something they've been working toward for a while now. earlier ultra9000 brochures discussed carriage/capping upgrades so that current ultra9000 owners would have the ability to retrofit older models to 3 or 4 head printers. i spoke with a guy at witcolor a little over a year ago and he said they weren't ready yet to guarantee stability across all the heads. ...that the amount of data being processed at high resolutions was daunting at that speed. maybe the chips on the main boards are now fast enough to push that many dots per second? i think the real winner with the extra heads, regardless of dry time is pushing hyper resolution at usual printing speeds. i hate scrimping on resolution because of the quantity of square feet needed by the end of the day. this would allow the user to crank up the res' and really impress his client.
 

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artbot

artbot

New Member
busted!

look at the likeness! they clearly went to their engineers and stole design ideas from previous builds! not to mention all these printer look to be overbuilt industrial machines. they need to take a look at roland and add some pizazz.
 

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J

jhanson

New Member
Well of course they're going to re-use their own case designs. I'm specifically referring to the four-head DX5 setup, which (from what little I can see in the tiny pictures shown) is almost an identical ripoff of the JV5's head carriage. I also remember working on the Micolor SJ-1545, which had a head carriage that you could practically interchange parts with from a Mutoh VJ-1204.

I'm reminded of a story I heard from an automotive machinist about Toyota. When they started selling the first Land Cruisers, Toyota's engineers copied an engine design (the 235) from GM so completely, it even included all the flaws of the original.

Granted, Toyota was doing license builds of Chevy vehicles (basically crate assembly) before that, so it's not entirely surprising that they ripped a few apart to copy.

I've also heard many stories about the Chinese trade shows (and even shows in Latin America) where if they find any unguarded new equipment at an exhibitor's booth, they will often tear it down and put it back together overnight.
 
artbot

artbot

New Member
it's cultural. i'm not a historian or anthropologist, or a chinese apologist. but, i believe that from what i've studied, the chinese have a national/business identity. business is war, and all is fair in love and war. if in war, a missile lands but does not explode. any government would take the weapon in for reverse engineering. it's considered the obvious thing to do. a piece of industrial equipment is weaponry in the world of business.
 
rjssigns

rjssigns

Active Member
they need to take a look at roland and add some pizazz.
Click to expand...

Please artbot no Roland pizazz. That would mean all the easily accessible controls would be ditched in favor of having 3 pretty buttons to endlessly click to change one parameter.:frustrated:

No no noooooo.......................
 
paulbaguio

paulbaguio

New Member
jhanson said:
Oh look, they knocked off the JV5. I wonder if it'll have the same head alignment woes that the JV5 had in the beginning...

paulbaguio: In the OP, he says that it's a dual-head DX5 machine. Aligning two DX5 heads together is difficult, but compared to aligning four, it's a cakewalk.
Click to expand...

My assumption is that they are probably selling 4 four heads for really large format prints for billboards that resolutions and some head alignment may not matter and quantity is primary concern for proposed clients. More of like a workhorse machine for bulk large format production rather than detailed prints (e.i. stickers, van wraps, etc.). Just thinking off my head. :)

Thanks to Jhanson for point out the difference. :)
 
J

jhanson

New Member
I think that was Mimaki's line of thinking as well when they introduced the JV5. I mean, who cares about quality when you can spit out banner at a thousand sq.ft/hour? However, the market situation here in the US is different than Asia. Mimaki found out the hard way that print shops here value quality above all else, so they were forced to spend the next three years figuring out how to properly align the four heads.

The Chinese are basically designing machines for their home market. Any sales they make outside China are pretty much gravy for them, so it's less of a concern to meet American QC standards unless someone OEMs a machine from them.
 
A

artaddict

New Member
Hay Chris,
Have been following this tread because i am interested to find out about this machine. What is the latest.
 
L

lourenco

New Member
Hello my friends!
I live in Brazil and I work with Witcolor in the last 12 years.
My service it's only technical support of the customers. I don't sell machines.
I will go to receive this machine in next month.
About the ultra 9000: it's a very good machine, fast and low cost of the repair.
The only problem it's the maintop. The color and the quality more best when i use the SAi software, Photoprint.
 
paulbaguio

paulbaguio

New Member
I suspect Chris is all tied up in his shop (that is always a good thing).
Patience is a virtue, but I'm excited about the next chapters of this printer. :)
 
C

chris190

New Member
Alright .... first of all my apology to the once that have been waiting updates from me..... I have been involved in a relationship with a crazy pretty girl that went down the drain ...but now I'm back on track :) ... ..... I haven't done much since my last posts and this week I resumed work on this prokect.

Where I left off was I received the replacement printhead board from Wit-Color.... changed that and it looked like I had the same issues with print head # 2 .... all in all I did change prinheads around and it apears that print head # 2 turned out to be bad ..... it's just sprying a 1" think black line when I try to print with it.... hooked up the print head #1 to both connectors on the new board and it it prints fine......

What I did discover while doing this is that the ink lines for print head # 2 were chocking at the point where they were coming out of the rail....so ink would not go thorugh.... didn't see that till I started taking stuff apart...... so I think that if from the beginning those lines would have been curving properly and not choke.... eveything would have run properly.... I always looked at the ribbons to make sure I connect them properly...so I'm not sure if connecting and disconnecting them cause the board and then print head # 2 to go bad.... but somehow it did.... I will ship them (the old board and print head # 2) to Witcolor and see if they can provide me a second print head..... either way the entire problem appears to have started with ink lines of printhead #2 choking......if if anyone ordered this ...check that too....

Ok so now I have replaced the dampers with DX5 dampers from DX4 which were originally included and they fit in better.,..stay straight and seem to work perfect with printhead #1...... While I get the issue with printhead # 2 solved I have setup the machine to work with just one printhead and it working perfect now........ just batteling the color profiles at the moment....and I almost got the 13oz glossy banner and Oracal 3621m pretty good....

I will post pics and more updated in the coming days.....

Cheers!

Chris
 
premiercolour

premiercolour

Merchant Member
Chris & Others,

One of my customers in Las Vegas bought one with four print head configuration. It's been sitting in his shop almost a month now. Not working. The problem is the cap top not creating perfect seal for inks to go through. Any good advise would be greatly helpful. Only one color went through a little bit, rest is not.
 
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