Moving from Roland VG2-640 to Epson S80600

[John Shofner]

Long story short, our shop is at a race track and were moving away from the track due to commute issues etc. The track likes having the shop there and offered to purchase all the equipment. Were entertaining this while doing some research. We only ever used Rolands and have been mostly happy with our machine however the newer Rolands all seem to be backordered for longer than we can wait.

In my limited research the Epson sounds like a great alternative however I am worried about the white Inks. I was told by my dealer to steer clear of the white inks on the rolands because they clog and require tons more cleaning and it is overall a PITA if youre not using them constantly. Would this be the case with the Epson as well?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Boudica]

short answer - yes. We tried white in our Epson, but it's a pita to switch out , and it's not very opaque. We don't ever use white in our epson anymore. Now we have an Agfa Annapurna that we use for printing white.

 

[White Haus]

We went with from a Roland XR-640 to an Epson S60600, and we're very happy with it so far. They're built quite differently but so far I like it much better than our Rolands, even after running them for 15 years. We had white on the XR but it wasn't worth it so just ended up plugging cleaning cartridges in - so we kept it simple and went with the 4 color Epson.

Do you absolutely need white? I haven't seen the Epson white but on our Roland it was very underwhelming. Compared to UV white it's very weak and washes out easily.

If you don't need white and don't need the extra color gamut, I'd highly recommend the S60600 - from what I've heard they're quite a bit faster than the S80600.

Just some food for thought.

 

[John Shofner]

We went with from a Roland XR-640 to an Epson S60600, and we're very happy with it so far. They're built quite differently but so far I like it much better than our Rolands, even after running them for 15 years. We had white on the XR but it wasn't worth it so just ended up plugging cleaning cartridges in - so we kept it simple and went with the 4 color Epson.

Do you absolutely need white? I haven't seen the Epson white but on our Roland it was very underwhelming. Compared to UV white it's very weak and washes out easily.

If you don't need white and don't need the extra color gamut, I'd highly recommend the S60600 - from what I've heard they're quite a bit faster than the S80600.

Just some food for thought.

I dont need white, I just wrongly assumed that it was there so it had to be hooked up. A rep did finally get back to me and told me the metallic and white were this way but theres no need to run them, which is nice. The speed is an interesting tidbit... Something to munch on... Thanks for the reply! How'd you find working with ONYX over Versaworks? I know its more robust, but its all I know at the moment.

short answer - yes. We tried white in our Epson, but it's a pita to switch out , and it's not very opaque. We don't ever use white in our epson anymore. Now we have an Agfa Annapurna that we use for printing white.

Yeah, now that I know that I can run without white that eases my mind some. Thank you!

 

[PhantomSteve]

The 60600 uses 2 heads to print CMYK only, so it's a lot faster than the 80600 which uses 2 heads to print CMYK and Lc, Lm, Lk, R and either white or Metallic.

40600 215sqft/h CMYK (1 print head)
60600 550 sqft/h CMYK (2 print heads)
80600 340 sqft/h CMYK Lc Lm Lk R and white or Metallic (2 print heads)

 

[White Haus]

I dont need white, I just wrongly assumed that it was there so it had to be hooked up. A rep did finally get back to me and told me the metallic and white were this way but theres no need to run them, which is nice. The speed is an interesting tidbit... Something to munch on... Thanks for the reply! How'd you find working with ONYX over Versaworks? I know its more robust, but its all I know at the moment.

Yeah, now that I know that I can run without white that eases my mind some. Thank you!

No problem, any questions regarding the differences between Roland/Epson VW/Onyx just ask.

We started using Onyx 10 or so years ago (Came with our flatbed) and we gradually moved all our printers/cutters to this workflow. Versaworks is a great OEM RIP and is easy to use, but Onyx opens up a lot more options and versatility.
You can print to any device then cut on any device - we ran our XR-640, Mimaki UCJV, Oce 318gl and now Epson S60600 from it and it works really well. Easy to send cuts to multiple plotters as well.

Onyx has some great videos on their youtube channel, lots of overviews and information there: https://www.youtube.com/c/OnyxGraphicsONYXTV

Some really cool features in the new version (22.5) which we just upgraded to but haven't had a chance to install yet. Archive feature (finally), Drag and drop files, color swatches 2.0 the list goes on.

Color replacements are really easy and versatile, you can create as many quicksets as you want which saves a lot of steps. CutServer is a bit different than VW but works well once you get the hang of it.

We created some custom profiles for our S60600 as soon as we got it and it's fast as hell. We're printing jobs on it in 2 hours that used to take a full day on our Roland, very happy with it so far.

Any other questions, let me know!