The shop I work at has recently purchased a L65500 Latex printer, which will print 104" wide. We have had the printer running since late October/early November, right after SGIA NOLA. Over the last few months, many questions have been answered, and many more brought up, the cycle continues and I would like to open a few threads on the L65500 pertaining to the hardware, media, IPS software, etc.
Here I want to concentrate on the hardware itself, the printer. If anybody has questions, comments, suggestions with this printer, I hope we can get them answered by some of us, so the people that are looking to buy will be much more knowledgeable than we were when we started. These are observations by me alone and my opinions.
It looks like a really big desktop printer that you would buy at Office Depot or Staples. It is a great printer, and falls in line with the rest of the HP printers. It is self-sufficient, will almost run itself if there was a robot with it that could change the inks, heads and maintenance kit. With a history with Mimaki, Telios, Seiko, Gandi and HP, HP products are head and shoulders above the rest.
That being said, there are cons to the L65500 just like there are pros. This printer is a long run printer. If you are a shop where changing media is the norm and not loading large rolls and forgetting, this is not the printer for you. This printer needs two people to load the rolls. If the rolls are </= 54", or partial rolls </= 54", then one person can totally run this printer. Loading of the media can take 15 to 25 minutes alone, not counting all of the time the printer takes to calibrate and get ready to print.
I was not counting on myself having the hands-on that I have had to do over the last few months. Including myself, my shop has 3 people trained to run the printer, with more full/partial training coming to other employees.
The media has to be connected to a take-up spindle before it will print, so there is a >5' waste of media on the front and back of a roll of media, totaling almost 10', that is a wasted banner per roll, which will add up if you are ordering a case of banner rolls like we do, which totals about 30 rolls per shipment. The way we get around this is to use a lead in of some kind. We use 3" masking tape as the lead-in, it is the fastest way to load the media to the take-up spindle, in our testing. The distributer that sold us the printer said to use 4' of banner media, but stopping to tape it together, loading the media, the tension of the printer separating the pieces, it just wasn't worth it. So we use 3' of masking tape in three places on the take-up side.
The loading time is very slow. The main beam of the printer contains the head carriage, docking station, wiping station, basically everything that pertains to the printing. The beam has to be raised to web the media across the printing platen. To the highest point is around 2:30, so up and down is over 5:00. Which isn't that bad if a shop is running long runs, but a shorter run shop, this is lost production time each media change.
After the beam goes up, the media is loaded, and the beam comes down, the printer has to configure the media. It checks the tension to determine whether or not the media is attached on the supply and take-up, and which way the media is taped. This takes about 3:00 minutes or so.
In a heavy production environment where things change hourly, these times are a potential killer, they force you to change the way jobs travel through your office. We are a overnight delivery shop and it takes some getting used to.
These are my observations and opinions as they pertain to the environment that I work in. I hope these help some people that are considering the L65500.
Here I want to concentrate on the hardware itself, the printer. If anybody has questions, comments, suggestions with this printer, I hope we can get them answered by some of us, so the people that are looking to buy will be much more knowledgeable than we were when we started. These are observations by me alone and my opinions.
It looks like a really big desktop printer that you would buy at Office Depot or Staples. It is a great printer, and falls in line with the rest of the HP printers. It is self-sufficient, will almost run itself if there was a robot with it that could change the inks, heads and maintenance kit. With a history with Mimaki, Telios, Seiko, Gandi and HP, HP products are head and shoulders above the rest.
That being said, there are cons to the L65500 just like there are pros. This printer is a long run printer. If you are a shop where changing media is the norm and not loading large rolls and forgetting, this is not the printer for you. This printer needs two people to load the rolls. If the rolls are </= 54", or partial rolls </= 54", then one person can totally run this printer. Loading of the media can take 15 to 25 minutes alone, not counting all of the time the printer takes to calibrate and get ready to print.
I was not counting on myself having the hands-on that I have had to do over the last few months. Including myself, my shop has 3 people trained to run the printer, with more full/partial training coming to other employees.
The media has to be connected to a take-up spindle before it will print, so there is a >5' waste of media on the front and back of a roll of media, totaling almost 10', that is a wasted banner per roll, which will add up if you are ordering a case of banner rolls like we do, which totals about 30 rolls per shipment. The way we get around this is to use a lead in of some kind. We use 3" masking tape as the lead-in, it is the fastest way to load the media to the take-up spindle, in our testing. The distributer that sold us the printer said to use 4' of banner media, but stopping to tape it together, loading the media, the tension of the printer separating the pieces, it just wasn't worth it. So we use 3' of masking tape in three places on the take-up side.
The loading time is very slow. The main beam of the printer contains the head carriage, docking station, wiping station, basically everything that pertains to the printing. The beam has to be raised to web the media across the printing platen. To the highest point is around 2:30, so up and down is over 5:00. Which isn't that bad if a shop is running long runs, but a shorter run shop, this is lost production time each media change.
After the beam goes up, the media is loaded, and the beam comes down, the printer has to configure the media. It checks the tension to determine whether or not the media is attached on the supply and take-up, and which way the media is taped. This takes about 3:00 minutes or so.
In a heavy production environment where things change hourly, these times are a potential killer, they force you to change the way jobs travel through your office. We are a overnight delivery shop and it takes some getting used to.
These are my observations and opinions as they pertain to the environment that I work in. I hope these help some people that are considering the L65500.
