Review of the Roland LG-640

[Goatshaver]

Yikes. This and the lack of knowledge of the machine from the salesman is what made me decide against getting a Roland UV machine. Hope for y'all sake they fix this issue soon.

 

[BVG]

Small update on our new machine - 4th day of having a tech here, Roland's tech came out to swap out the head for a new one. Exact same result as the previous head with orange missing completely and the same missing nozzles on the red channel.

Roland tech also realised that the machine has been setup incorrectly - laying white on top of CMYK rather than the other way around. Another layer of things to fix and correct...

 

[SlikGRFX]

Small update on our new machine - 4th day of having a tech here, Roland's tech came out to swap out the head for a new one. Exact same result as the previous head with orange missing completely and the same missing nozzles on the red channel.

Roland tech also realised that the machine has been setup incorrectly - laying white on top of CMYK rather than the other way around. Another layer of things to fix and correct...

Surely the print order is set in the rip? We regularly print white on top of cmyk by choice.

 

[BVG]

Surely the print order is set in the rip? We regularly print white on top of cmyk by choice.

Heads are staggered, so the order that the heads are physically in determines whether you can print white over/under without the need to pullback the media.

Having them in the wrong order means halving the print speed as it has to feed the media back for the second pass.

 

[SlikGRFX]

Heads are staggered, so the order that the heads are physically in determines whether you can print white over/under without the need to pullback the media.

Having them in the wrong order means halving the print speed as it has to feed the media back for the second pass.

Ah ok. Interesting. We are running an LG-640 with a single 8 color head.

Did you check your ink expiry dates for red and orange? We lost red almost completely (only a few nozzles remaining) then switched to new ink, renewed ink and the head came back to perfect condition.

 

[BVG]

Ah ok. Interesting. We are running an LG-640 with a single 8 color head.

Did you check your ink expiry dates for red and orange? We lost red almost completely (only a few nozzles remaining) then switched to new ink, renewed ink and the head came back to perfect condition.

Are you sure? The LG series has 2 staggered heads.

 

[SlikGRFX]

Are you sure? The LG series has 2 staggered heads.

Sorry meant to type MG-640

 

[BVG]

Ahhh yeah that makes sense haha.
MG is running the same platform as the old VS solvent series (including Epson head) whereas the LG is Ricoh heads from memory.

 

[SlikGRFX]

It does feel like a museum piece compared to our other machines. We considered the LG but I’ve learnt to never buy the first version of anything. Our old SG and VS printers were workhorses.

 

[darrellcarpenay]

After having issues with red and orange inks, then later on with magenta, our lg got parked for about 2 months waiting for ink issues to be resolved. I ended up switching from 8 color to 4 color dual cmyk. Machine is much faster with less waste, but black still isn’t black enough.

Ink is also still on back order for a while now, maybe 2 months for me.

Roland needs to fix these issues or they will lose dedicated customers.

 

[jlgb]

We haven't used our LG-640 since december. Never put the machine into production. It's in the hands of the lawyers. (Dealer doesn't even reply to emails (send to 5 people)).

 

[martland33]

This thread has been invaluable in my search for an additional printer to keep up with demand, thank you everyone. I was looking at the LG to run alongside our VS540i (solvent) and was hoping the LG would help as there would be no gassing off time required, however it seems Roland aren't as yet up to scratch with UV printers.
Out of curiosity, is there any update jlgb?

 

[dreko]

Just my 2 cents. Do not run expired inks. We've been experiencing drop in print quality due to the inks going over the expiration date.
Flushing the old ink out resolved our 'blurry' dot on dot issues...

 

[jlgb]

Roland LG-640 print speed and Roland MG-640 print speed. Ink consumption of Roland LG-640 and Roland MG-640

 

[ProColorGraphics]

Anyone that has one of these, wondering what your current thoughts are? Still looking at getting one.

 

[jlgb]

Stay far away!

 

[ProColorGraphics]

Stay far away!

Why is that? It's interesting with just about anything: you find some people that love them and some that hate them. haha. I have seen a few shops that have several of them.

 

[RonnyCrack]

Why is that? It's interesting with just about anything: you find some people that love them and some that hate them. haha. I have seen a few shops that have several of them.

If you plan on printing specialty effects, get it. Don't waste years on a Mimaki trying to get the embossing to look the same. Or if you really need a UV printer with Orange and Red inks.

If you just need a workhorse for CMYK prints, get a dual CMYK Mimaki UVJV300 instead.

Unfortunate that these very similar machines seem to have very different use cases just because their respective companies couldn't care less than to update firmware/software to be more comparable.

 

[JHarker]

I've been working with an LG-640 for the past year (pretty much exclusively vinyl) and I can agree with a lot of the complaints in this thread. The media clamps are the worst by far; a technician I had in to fix an issue with the wiper noted that they're always loose and finnicky. I've had issues before where media will skew slightly or when cutting the material, it'll feed over the media clamps, and I've just hand-trimmed and rolled back to avoid re-setting up the media every time I want to cut off a chunk of vinyl.

As for the smell, it's pretty bad, but I also have the pros of working in a large warehouse so the fumes can dissapate relatively well. Getting that ink or cleaning solution on your hands is no joke either, highly recommend gloves whenever you're using it. Sometimes, it will also leave ink on the main surface or where the heads rest, so keep that in mind. Cleaning times are VERY long and frequent even when you tell the machine to do them less often. (Tip: you can turn on a timer in the settings of your LG-640 that lets you know how much time is left until cleaning. Menu > Preferences > Time until Cleaning)

Versaworks 6 being a pretty robust program helps with many of the technical issues, though. As long as you're patient and willing to work with the machine's quirks, I think it's okay. Definitely don't use as your main printer, though, because Roland is notoriously difficult to contact and hates giving you clear or quick answers... local technicians that service these printers and other manufacturers' printers are going to know a lot more than them. I've had to do a lot of internet searching for anything related to this printer's model and more often than not, you come up empty handed.

Admittedly, I'm newer to the signmaking & printing industry, so some of my thoughts could be due to inexperience with other printers. I hope someone finds this helpful at least