Discussion I've owned an HP R1000 since April 2019, ask me anything

[Lunar Graphix]

Hello everyone,

Feeling a bit chatty lately while working night shifts to keep up with a large job. Wife's running day ops which leaves me alone with my vices and equipment.

Anyway, as the title says we've had an R1000 in our shop since the first few months of US availability. We upgraded from a Scitex FB550 which we owned for a year before the R series was announced and we decided to sell the 550 and upgrade.

Being owner to new tech meant there hasn't been much I could find online when troubleshooting or researching in this last year. Even videos of the machine operating (outside of EU owners) were sparse. There is the HP knowledge center but it's still lacking for the R series.

So I'm here to answer any questions you might have. Maybe this can serve as a future resource for other R1000 and R2000 owners.

 

[Gino]

I have one............ why is there air ??

 

[BigfishDM]

Hello everyone,

Feeling a bit chatty lately while working night shifts to keep up with a large job. Wife's running day ops which leaves me alone with my vices and equipment.

Anyway, as the title says we've had an R1000 in our shop since the first few months of US availability. We upgraded from a Scitex FB550 which we owned for a year before the R series was announced and we decided to sell the 550 and upgrade.

Being owner to new tech meant there hasn't been much I could find online when troubleshooting or researching in this last year. Even videos of the machine operating (outside of EU owners) were sparse. There is the HP knowledge center but it's still lacking for the R series.

So I'm here to answer any questions you might have. Maybe this can serve as a future resource for other R1000 and R2000 owners.

That's great to hear! Here is a group dedicated to those machines fyi: https://www.facebook.com/groups/154473558705908/

 

[Lunar Graphix]

I have one............ why is there air ??

Sorry, I don't understand what you're asking?

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

Sorry, I don't understand what you're asking?

He's being facetious

 

[Lunar Graphix]

He's being facetious

Alright. Went over my head I guess.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

Alright. Went over my head I guess.

You said ask you anything

 

[MikePro]

niiiiiiice, I want one.
so do you basically have to use the adhesive promoter on everything?
Never saw them do it at the tradeshow, but is the removal/reinstall of white printhead fairly simple? Do you have to recalibrate everytime?

any gremlins under the hood yet in terms of printability of certain materials?

edit: good luck maintaining a solid resource through any of these threads. lol. thread pirates abound.

 

[BALLPARK]

How many 4x8 sheets can you print per hour without any banding?

Do you have to use adhesive promoter on coroplast, acm, acrylic, or pvc?

We have seen their samples and it's impressive for sure in terms of scratch resistance on coro.

 

[LarryB]

How has your experience been printing .040 and .080 aluminum? How many 4' x 8' sheets of 3mm aluminum composite can you print in an hour?

 

[greysquirrel]

Gonna spoil his fun...he's not in work yet...two gripes...one has been resolved...there was(and still is until everyone's gets the next firmware) a 23 second delay between boards when running a multi panel job. The latest firmware destroys this almost completely. No need for adhesion promoter at all at this point...I am able to print onto glass and you need something sharp to scrape the ink off. The white ink will not green over time either. White head install from beginning to end(and printing) 11 minutes. Outside of a prime and nozzle check through with the drop detector, no wasted ink. No need to remove white ink box and shake once a day. The ink box has a second bladder and every 24 hours the printer moves all of the ink from one bladder to the other mixing it as well as the ink in the system...
The only time you need to recalibrate the heads is when you replace one. As long as you put each of the heads back in their previously calibrated slot you are good to go.
gremlins under the hood..none yet. The product is still evolving. We have not gotten onboard profiling yet but it is coming in a future firmware update. I just went through service training a few weeks back and it is a super easy printer to troubleshoot and repair. To make this product issue free, you absolutely have to create your own media profiles. Once you dial in your media you are good to go. I was running everything 600dpi/8pass for the first 6 months..now I am 300dpi/pass no banding whatsoever.
.030 styrene was the only media that took some extra time to dial in heat for me.
I honestly haven't timed boards...on old firmware 6 4x8 probably felt correct...I just ran 175 12.5x23 in about an hour and 15min yesterday...

second gripe...for whatever reason it does not like same size file on same size sheet. The printer is designed to print on the belt.(huge improvement over fb's...takes about an hour and a half to change)So you are always printing slightly oversized file or onto an oversized sheet. And there isn't an issue every time...just occasionally. I have a router on the list this year so that won't be a problem any longer.

I do love the r2r and panel to panel accuracy. Way better than my 560.

New stuff...multiple queues so you can set the next 8 jobs up while printing for the printer to just keep running. And end users should be able to upgrade their own firmware in the near future.

and Im still not sure what my compressor is used for...

 

[MikePro]

so you print onto the belt? is that an issue that requires you to clean or replace regularly, or can you "cheat" by butting-in some cheap/thin poly/acrylic strips to run alongside & reuse.

 

[greysquirrel]

you can cheat. The only issue is white ink...that removes with a brush and isopropyl quite easily.

 

[Ldireprophil]

Is it worth that big lease payment?

 

[greysquirrel]

For me, absolutely. Bought a demo unit, received service training to future proof my investment. I can print on anything without any fear of failure or lack of quality.

 

[Lunar Graphix]

niiiiiiice, I want one.
so do you basically have to use the adhesive promoter on everything?
If you mean optimizer, yep have to have it on all the time. I will say that the canned print modes from HP have the optimizer jacked way up, I typically run it between 10-15%, or if I need ultra fine detail I will go as high as 25, though this is rare

Never saw them do it at the tradeshow, but is the removal/reinstall of white printhead fairly simple? Do you have to recalibrate everytime?
It's as easy as it gets. Tap printhead menu, tap replace, swap in heads, tap finish. Takes about 25 minutes, but they recently improved this time with a firmware update (which there have been several throughout the year). We try to gang up our white print jobs as much as possible, since the print speed is pretty slow. Normal jobs sans-white we can run between 4 and 10 pass, white is typically at a 33 pass. Did a double sided "sandwich" window cling for TGIF and it took 2 hours.

The best part about white is that it doesn't gunk up. I've used the white heads probably a dozen times over the year (they are the original heads that came with the printer), and I've experienced ZERO issues with them.

any gremlins under the hood yet in terms of printability of certain materials?
ACP no doubt. We do a ton of 0.032 mil aluminum signage. It was a real b*tch getting the head dialed in to where it would dry fully, but also not over head and flex which would trip the crash sensor. Same goes for acryllic sheets, though these are a bit easier.

edit: good luck maintaining a solid resource through any of these threads. lol. thread pirates abound.

thank ya, matey!

 

[Lunar Graphix]

How many 4x8 sheets can you print per hour without any banding?

Do you have to use adhesive promoter on coroplast, acm, acrylic, or pvc?

We have seen their samples and it's impressive for sure in terms of scratch resistance on coro.

Another question about adhesive promoter. I think this is optimizer, yeah? If that's the case then yep have to use on everything.

We don't do a ton of 4x8 sheets, since it's actually cheaper for us to buy bulk 24x18 coro from grimco (we do around 1100 at a time). But we did do one job and I was impressed at the speed. It was about 5 min including load time for a solid 4x8' rectangle of bright magenta with no banding

Scratch resistance = overcoat. I keep ours at around 20%. For things that get laminated, I turn down to 10% (just so it doesn't scratch while we move the roll to the laminator. There's an easy test you can run to figure out optimal overcoat % setting, it basically prints several swatches at various percents and you try to scratch each with your fingernail.

 

[Lunar Graphix]

How has your experience been printing .040 and .080 aluminum? How many 4' x 8' sheets of 3mm aluminum composite can you print in an hour?

Largest ACP we run is 12x18 sheets. It's can be a pain, due to heat transferring up the sheet and causing flexing which leads to a crash sensor tripping. We can do five 12x18 sheets at a time in about 6 minutes (0.032)

We've tried going after 4x8' jobs but our customers seem to like the small stuff, which is all fine to me since storing raw material is easier!

 

[Lunar Graphix]

so you print onto the belt? is that an issue that requires you to clean or replace regularly, or can you "cheat" by butting-in some cheap/thin poly/acrylic strips to run alongside & reuse.

We tried for a while to avoid printing on the belt, but if you do a full bleed it will happen eventually. I have tried everything to clean the belt. To the point my shop smelled like something Walter White might cook in. Can't get it clean.

Talked with a few techs about it when they've visited, they said our belt was the "cleanest they've ever seen". It's definitely not spotless, but it hasn't hindered vacuum pressure either.
I had the same problems attempting to clean out FB550 belt, tried a bunch of suggestions from this site and couldn't get it clean. IDK, until it becomes an issue I've stopped caring :\

I wouldn't recommend putting strips alongside, you risk tripping a crash sensor if it curls up i'd think.

Most of the time we cut our sheets 0.25" larger and then trim down afterwards for full bleed.

 

[Lunar Graphix]

Is it worth that big lease payment?

Well, last year we doubled our sales after picking up the R, so I'd have to say that's a hell yeah brother. Printer has already paid for itself considering cash in the bank, but we're still on a 5yr note making $1110/mo payments. Materials are much cheaper than the scitex and maintenance is WAY better. Speed also improved which meant less man hours = more $$

We sadly lost our ass on selling the Scitex, having bought it brand new and sold a year later for 25k. Still making payments on that one ... however the work we got out of it more than paid for itself. Interestingly enough, the location where we had our scitex was destroyed by an F4 tornado 2 weeks after we shipped the printer off to the buyer. Should have put it off just a bit longer and insurance would've bought it from us Got a new car though.

Our 18 month manufacturer warranty on the R ends this year and we're pre-purchasing a 3 year for $800/month. I'd rather safe than sorry which is why we've chosen HP over and over, since their warranty service is top notch. Just can't beat it IMO. But this means our payments will be $2k+/month.