UV Coaster Printing

[garysub]

Hi

I'm looking at putting together a system for UV printing coasters. We dye sub them at the moment but the potentially lower cost of blanks and the relative ease of UV printing is drawing me to a UV printer/laser cutting solution (probably laser cutting blanks and then printing coasters held in a jig). I can also think of lots of others way we might be able to monetise this machinery but they are not that convincing without being able to "crack" the coaster printing. We need to be able to produce around 1,500 a day for a 6 week period (the rest of the year we'll keep it busy with other work):

Anyone got any opinions (good or bad) on any or all of the following:

1.) The small desktop machines by Roland and Mimaki (Roland 200 and 300 and the 3042 and 6042). These look good but I'm worried they would be a bit slow. I'm not sure yet whether I would need to lay down "white", print just CMYK+Varnish or white+CMYK+varnish or just CMYK. I've got a demo tomorrow, so we'll see what the results of this look like!

2.) The much larger Mimaki (JFX200-2513)

3.) Any other machines in either the A2 or "large flat bed" categories that you have good (or bad) personal experiences of.

My primary application will be to flat items, so large depth is not all that exciting. Speed and print quality are my primary concerns (oh and as cheap as possible! :))

Regards
Gary

[socialgiraffe]

The UV coasters I have seen printed have never impressed me tbh.

Always felt that UV ink is too "heavy" and the resulting image has a very rough feel.

[AGS]

I've used an Oce Arizona (Fuji Acuity) flat bed in the past and could see one of these machines working for large scale production

A decent second hand machine could be picked up for 20 - 30k (possibly less) but would open up a host of other options

The machine I used, printed an 8ft x 4ft sheet in around 15 minutes at near photographic quality

You could barely feel the ink lay down on these printers

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-Sj9lXAFRE8

[socialgiraffe]

I've used an Oce Arizona (Fuji Acuity) flat bed in the past and could see one of these machines working for large scale production

A decent second hand machine could be picked up for 20 - 30k (possibly less) but would open up a host of other options

The machine I used, printed an 8ft x 4ft sheet in around 15 minutes at near photographic quality

You could barely feel the ink lay down on these printers

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-Sj9lXAFRE8

Top info there, may well take a look myself :-)

[froggy]

I have flatbed Uv machines, please feel free to drop me a message.

[AGS]

Top info there, may well take a look myself :-)

Get in touch with Phil Harris @ Harris digital (not a million miles away from you)

He has his ear to the ground and knows when machines are coming available - he also decommissions them and installs


https://www.digitalprintersupplies.com

[GoonerGary]

Very impressive printing on that OCE, but when does a £30K machine make a profit with cheap coasters? The slowest part of printing coasters is cleaning the dust off them before printing. A Dyson airblade would be cheaper!

[garysub]

Very impressive printing on that OCE, but when does a £30K machine make a profit with cheap coasters? The slowest part of printing coasters is cleaning the dust off them before printing. A Dyson airblade would be cheaper!

When your blanks are closer to 10p than 50p and with the volume to get that money back.....

[socialgiraffe]

An OCE RMO 300 Series Flat Bed (2011 model) Just sold this morning at auction for £360 so someone got a bargain!!!! Looked in really good condition as well. Even tought about it myself, but realised I have no where to put the darn thing...

I picked up an Adkins for £260 including VAT and buyers premium though so happy days :-)

[garysub]

I saw that but no space at the moment and I know far too little about UV printers to contemplate it (but great if you know what you're doing I suspect).