New membership - small time printer :-)

[Goatshaver]

I do business in Wisconsin, I'm curious who it is lol

Just get ink prices and see who is charging $295 for Mimaki UV Ink. Should be fairly easy to narrow down.

 

[Nancy@creamcitymarketing]

Stacey - It has come to my attention that the numbers I'm relying on may not be correct - I'm in the process of clarifying them. I had been told that the usage number referred to not the lamp but the time the printer is plugged in. I double checked that over the weekend and the number did not change so I don't think that is correct. I'm working today to get documentation on what each of the numbers tell - I'll report back when I find out. There still is no justification for the manner in which this issue has been handled.

What kind of printing business do you have?

 

[Stacey K]

I have an HP315 so I don't know about the pricing, I'm more curious about the vendor to make sure I stay away from them. They seem shady

 

[JBurton]

I double checked that over the weekend and the number did not change so I don't think that is correct.

You may need to power cycle or run a print for the numbers to update, but I can imagine that 'usage' is 'powered up' time only, as it's over a years worth of hours listed here, and I think the lamp is only rated at 10k or so hours.

 

[Jrassel]

I do business in Wisconsin, I'm curious who it is lol

As so we! Based on Sheboygan falls

 

[Stacey K]

As so we! Based on Sheboygan falls

I'm about 17 minutes away in Kiel LOL

 

[Nancy@creamcitymarketing]

Sweet! What kind of businesses do you both have? I have a marketing firm and retail store - we serve nursing homes and they use a lot of paper that's what got us into printing - we thought the store would be fun - it is, we make about 75% of what we sell.

 

[Stacey K]

Sweet! What kind of businesses do you both have? I have a marketing firm and retail store - we serve nursing homes and they use a lot of paper that's what got us into printing - we thought the store would be fun - it is, we make about 75% of what we sell.

I do probably 70% vehicle graphics and signage and 30% apparel. 95% of my customers are small businesses.

 

[Nancy@creamcitymarketing]

What kind of apparel do you do? What are your minimums? Our retail store is in a town with a lake and many seasonal shoppers - we've talked about doing nice t-shirts or socks but our volume would be low.

 

[Stacey K]

What kind of apparel do you do? What are your minimums? Our retail store is in a town with a lake and many seasonal shoppers - we've talked about doing nice t-shirts or socks but our volume would be low.

I do apparel for small business. Mostly 18500 and 2000 with 1-2 color inks. I prefer a 24 piece minimum but will do smaller amounts IF they business is a current established customer. I have some school apparel in my shop in which they grab a blank shirt and select a design then I can print right then because I have plastisol transfers. It's more of a pain than anything but during certain times of the school year I sell a lot so I keep it LOL

 

[White Haus]

I'm sorry to hear of your trouble with that "demo" and the crooked dealer. Sounds like an awful person and someone Mimaki wouldn't want to be associated with if they knew the way they operate.

Selling a used printer w/ mileage as a demo unit? Dirty.
Charging double for inks that everyone sells at nearly the same price? Dirty.
Threatening to crush you when you mention taking action to protect your investment? Unacceptable.

I hope you get some results from Mimaki and/or your leasing company. Keep good records of the communications, from the sounds of it this may turn into a legal battle.

Also, feel free to post who the dealer is. They deserve to be blacklisted - I can't say I've ever heard of anyone being treated that poorly from a sign dealer before, it's just unacceptable.

 

[Smoke_Jaguar]

Alright, another UCJV300 user! Hours on those aren't printing hours, but you definitely got a bit of square footage on the thing. Thankfully, the printers are great in my experience. Got a 2016 model myself, so really early production and it lacks the curse of most early versions. With how silly easy it is for dealers to adjust the hours/sqft on the parameters, I rarely count on low numbers being that accurate. Main thing with any printer is how good it prints and the uptime it has doing those prints. Right now, the UCJV300s are pretty much being sold out for the newer UCJV330 series. Since it's still a brand spanking new model, probably good to avoid until the issues that new printers tend to have been worked out.

What inkset are you using? Can have lots of stupid fun with white/clear inks doing things like texturing, special art with backlighting, double-sided prints on clear media, etc. If running double CMYK, the things run pretty quick as well. Never used the light cyan/light magenta set myself, but the extra color can help. We do lots of promotional type items with ours, small batch items and outdoor decals and the like. We have REALLY good luck with the LUS-170 ink (Mimaki and aftermarket) without even needing to laminate. When we feel like going extra cheap, we just snag up ink that's a few months out of date and still have great results. Probably not a great idea of on a lease though, but we got ours dirt cheap and we like to abuse it.