What printer to get Epson or HP

[funnyb0nz]

I am looking into getting a printer to print vehicle wraps, and arcade graphics. This is more of a hobby/toy for me not a business. I am looking at an Epson SureColor S70670 and HP Design Jet L26500 Latex. They are both previously owned and work great. What should be looking at before purchasing? They both say they can print on Vinyl, however how do you find out what thickness of material they can print on? And also what is the typical thickness of Vinyl for arcade vinyl and vehicle wraps?
I am new to the printing market, also price on these are between 2k and 5K does that seam about right? Looking for the expertise in this forum, do guide me down the correct path. Thanks in advance for your time and answers!

 

[CanuckSigns]

The latex machine is no longer supported by HP, which means finding inks and print heads is going to be very difficult in the near future.

The generation of Epson machines you are looking at don't have the best reputation, the newer ones are awesome machines, but the older ones, not so much.

Have you considered either partnering with a wholesale printer or a local shop? I know if you walked into my shop I would be willing to barter some printing in exchange for a cool arcade machine!

 

[Gino]

Most vinyls will be between 2mil and 4 mil for what you are asking.

As for the cost, that seems super cheap. I'd be a little careful.

 

[funnyb0nz]

The latex machine is no longer supported by HP, which means finding inks and print heads is going to be very difficult in the near future.

The generation of Epson machines you are looking at don't have the best reputation, the newer ones are awesome machines, but the older ones, not so much.

Have you considered either partnering with a wholesale printer or a local shop? I know if you walked into my shop I would be willing to barter some printing in exchange for a cool arcade machine!

Shoot me a Message, let me know where your located at. I have thought about that, I almost splurged 5 months ago and bought new, but I found site that did it barely for more then what my cost would be.....However now I can no longer find the site so guessing they did it too cheap.

 

[CanuckSigns]

Shoot me a Message, let me know where your located at. I have thought about that, I almost splurged 5 months ago and bought new, but I found site that did it barely for more then what my cost would be.....However now I can no longer find the site so guessing they did it too cheap.

I'm in Canada, so I don't think it would work, but I'm sure there are some local shops that would be interested

 

[axelmk]

We used to have an Epson 50670, Great machines but maintenance is a must and can a be an issue if not run constantly.
We installed a Latex 360, two years ago and the difference in required maintenance is considerably less. The ability to replace printheads is definitely a Plus.

 

[CanuckSigns]

Hi yes there are many differences. The Hp is definitely the best way to go. We have them all, new and refurbished. With the quick dry and the low operating costs I would go with Hp. thx www.wideimagesolutions.com

That's your totally un-biased opinion I assume, and has nothing to do with you selling HP latex machines...

 

[Notarealsignguy]

I clean the head on my mimaki maybe once every other month which takes 2 mins, change the captop every year which is another 2 mins and there are times it sits for a week or more if Im gone with no problems. Meanwhile, latex guys are laying prints out on the floor to see if they color match and line up, constantly screwing with profiles, fighting color matches, dealing with headstrikes from the crazy heat and replacing parts (print heads) on a regular basis that the rest of us dont deal with. Ill take the 2 mins a month to swab the head. Its so hard.

 

[Christian @ Visual Graphx]

I clean the head on my mimaki maybe once every other month which takes 2 mins, change the captop every year which is another 2 mins and there are times it sits for a week or more if Im gone with no problems. Meanwhile, latex guys are laying prints out on the floor to see if they color match and line up, constantly screwing with profiles, fighting color matches, dealing with headstrikes from the crazy heat and replacing parts (print heads) on a regular basis that the rest of us dont deal with. Ill take the 2 mins a month to swab the head. Its so hard.

Totally uninformed, as all fanboyism is.

 

[Ldireprophil]

HP latex 365 is a workhouse. I haven’t done anything to it in a almost 3 years, except put ink in it. No maintenance whatsoever. It has yet to let me down. With that being said, I’m not opposed to adding an Epson Surecolor 6 or 8 series to my lineup.

 

[Notarealsignguy]

Totally uninformed, as all fanboyism is.

How many latex problems have you had and posted about? Didnt they take one back after a pile of unresolveable issues? It wasnt that long ago that you were complaining that they didnt hold up more than a year and you bought a colorado. And im the fanboy? Ok

 

[Christian @ Visual Graphx]

I never once said they don't hold up for more than a year. And I just looked on Friday. In 10 years of having latex we have printed 2.1 million sqft through 6 machines.... Pretty darn good if you ask me. My companies point of contention is not with the machine but with the company HP.

We believe in the Latex and we are eagerly waiting for the new version to release, most likely later this year, and migrating from 570s to whatever the new one is called or the R series.

You want to talk about problems, look and the many Mimaki problems posted on here.

 

[Snydo]

and be down for about 2 weeks

I've had at least three Surecolor heads replaced, and typically would be printing by the end of the next business day. Your dollar amounts are accurate for out of warranty, but the service contracts for after warranty are fairly priced and include one printhead per year if needed.

 

[ikarasu]

Our Seiko needed 5 heads replaced at $4000 a head. That's $20,000 - we were down for a few weeks trying to figure out issue out. We had techs from Japan fly.in and finally said our heads are 5 years old and they need to replaced... That the average is 4-5 years.

So they wanted us to spend $20,000 to replace 5 heads. Then in a few months we'd likely have to replace the other 3 heads. That's after a year of running less than perfect prints, because who wants to spend $4000 to fix a little.bit of banding?

Now we have a latex - our prints are 100% everyday. We've spent less than $1000 on heads over the past year and a half, and printed 5x as much as we did on our solvent.

We now own 3 latex machines and are looking into the r100 - I don't want to say well never go back to solvent because the Epson does look awesome, but I can say we don't have a reason to switch, and no plans to.

I find the people that cry over latex consumables are ones who have never had or tried a latex. It's funny how vocal some people are about technogy. I've used solvent, thermal, UV, latex, I want to use uv gel, etc. Every machine has its place...and the only time I'd recommend not buying a machine is based on the model having issues, not based on the technogy used.

 

[Notarealsignguy]

Our Seiko needed 5 heads replaced at $4000 a head. That's $20,000 - we were down for a few weeks trying to figure out issue out. We had techs from Japan fly.in and finally said our heads are 5 years old and they need to replaced... That the average is 4-5 years.

So they wanted us to spend $20,000 to replace 5 heads. Then in a few months we'd likely have to replace the other 3 heads. That's after a year of running less than perfect prints, because who wants to spend $4000 to fix a little.bit of banding?

Now we have a latex - our prints are 100% everyday. We've spent less than $1000 on heads over the past year and a half, and printed 5x as much as we did on our solvent.

We now own 3 latex machines and are looking into the r100 - I don't want to say well never go back to solvent because the Epson does look awesome, but I can say we don't have a reason to switch, and no plans to.

I find the people that cry over latex consumables are ones who have never had or tried a latex. It's funny how vocal some people are about technogy. I've used solvent, thermal, UV, latex, I want to use uv gel, etc. Every machine has its place...and the only time I'd recommend not buying a machine is based on the model having issues, not based on the technogy used.

Care to tell is what 54-60” eco-solvent printer has 5 - $4k heads when pretty much every single printer on this level runs $8k-20k brand new? You guys always jump to how cheap and easy the heads are to replace. You never bring up that they are this way because its a regular maintenance item unlike every other printer on the market that uses a robust permanent head.
Its like saying cheap chinese tires are better than goodyear cuz you can get new brand tires every 3 months.
Im not saying its a terrible printer but for once be honest about them and their pitfalls.

 

[Christian @ Visual Graphx]

Care to tell is what 54-60” eco-solvent printer has 5 - $4k heads when pretty much every single printer on this level runs $8k-20k brand new? You guys always jump to how cheap and easy the heads are to replace. You never bring up that they are this way because its a regular maintenance item unlike every other printer on the market that uses a robust permanent head.
Its like saying cheap chinese tires are better than goodyear cuz you can get new brand tires every 3 months.
Im not saying its a terrible printer but for once be honest about them and their pitfalls.

The Seiko/Oki is $30k+ new depending on the configuration, the head costs have come down significantly. Our Colorado has $4,000 heads.

The heads being a consumable on latex has never been hidden by anyone, it's an uptime part and required for optimal printing. What is skewed is when people say color matching panel to panel is a struggle or the heads only last 1L, etc. That is all based on the operator and their proper setup.

 

[rjssigns]

Picking a printer is based on what you produce and how it gets produced, which is different for every shop. Case in point. I looked at all the printers and I mean all of them. Wired my office for a latex and was ready to buy one. I ended up getting another solvent printer. Why? Deal breaker for me was latex can't run small pieces and small pieces left over from larger jobs are what I use for industrial labeling.

Not knocking the tech, but it wasn't the right fit for what I do. I don't run full rolls of anything in one shot. Also not going to run several square feet of vinyl to produce two 4" x 6" labels. Some say it's the cost of doing business with a latex. I can't accept that and wring every last bit of printable area out of every roll I buy.

Every printer has strengths and weaknesses. Buy what fits your business model not what works for someone else.

 

[ikarasu]

Care to tell is what 54-60” eco-solvent printer has 5 - $4k heads when pretty much every single printer on this level runs $8k-20k brand new? You guys always jump to how cheap and easy the heads are to replace. You never bring up that they are this way because its a regular maintenance item unlike every other printer on the market that uses a robust permanent head.
Its like saying cheap chinese tires are better than goodyear cuz you can get new brand tires every 3 months.
Im not saying its a terrible printer but for once be honest about them and their pitfalls.

Seiko h2-74s. 8 heads - a year and a half ago we were quoted $4400 per head, including labor to change them. We had 6 heads all die at once... And we were told it's because the heads last an average of 5-6 years. We had the official seiko engineer who makes the machines fly out from Japan and examine our machine because we didn't like the explanation that 6 heads die for no reason, and we weren't about to drop 25k on a machine to fix and then in 6 years have to do it again.

This is Canadian funds... So a bit Cheaper in usd.

Either way. Let's say all heads need replacing on 6 years ( we were told it's rare for it to happen, but is possible). Lets say 4k a head x 8 heads. $32,000/6 - $5330 a year... Or $440 a month.

We spend maybe $1000 a year to replace our print heads on our latex. The maintenance cart is cheaper and less manual labor also. So in Printhead regards... Unless you get a machine that you can do your own print heads, and they last beyond 5 years.... I'd say latex wins in that regard hands down. People always talk like consumable heads is a downfall, but it's not to us.

And our machine wasn't unique. Search for Seiko heads failing and there's dozens of posts about Neary every head in their machine breaking all at once with no head crashes or nothing. It's why although seikos are beasts and great machines, I'd never recommend one.

But even after that... I'm not against solvents. The new Epson is awesome. If I knew the heads wouldn't all die and cost me 20k to repair in 5 years, I'd probably have one.

 

[ikarasu]

Picking a printer is based on what you produce and how it gets produced, which is different for every shop. Case in point. I looked at all the printers and I mean all of them. Wired my office for a latex and was ready to buy one. I ended up getting another solvent printer. Why? Deal breaker for me was latex can't run small pieces and small pieces left over from larger jobs are what I use for industrial labeling.

Not knocking the tech, but it wasn't the right fit for what I do. I don't run full rolls of anything in one shot. Also not going to run several square feet of vinyl to produce two 4" x 6" labels. Some say it's the cost of doing business with a latex. I can't accept that and wring every last bit of printable area out of every roll I buy.

Every printer has strengths and weaknesses. Buy what fits your business model not what works for someone else.

This was hard to get used to. If I remember to untape the vinyl to the core I can print up to the last 12" on a roll... But everything 4 ft and under I don't even bother with our latex. Too much effort / work for such minimal savings. It is expensive media I save it and use it on our flatbed. But yes... I agree with you, using offcuts and scraps isn't feasible on the latex. Most material has a 12" waste in the front also... So more.media wastage. If you're constantly changing materials to print a foot or two, you'll be wasting more material than your printing and it's not worth it.

I remember on our Seiko we could print half an inch from the edge of the material... It was great.

 

[rjssigns]

This was hard to get used to. If I remember to untape the vinyl to the core I can print up to the last 12" on a roll... But everything 4 ft and under I don't even bother with our latex. Too much effort / work for such minimal savings. It is expensive media I save it and use it on our flatbed. But yes... I agree with you, using offcuts and scraps isn't feasible on the latex. Most material has a 12" waste in the front also... So more.media wastage. If you're constantly changing materials to print a foot or two, you'll be wasting more material than your printing and it's not worth it.

I remember on our Seiko we could print half an inch from the edge of the material... It was great.

My new printer is set for 5mm margins. Great for doing posters and banners, but I manually adjust the width to 52" if there's a contour cut.