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nuclear808

want to start printing onto vinyl

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Hi Everyone,

 

I am currently looking to get a canon ipf605 printer or an HP designjet t120. These are around my price range. I am wondering if these printers will be able to print onto vinyl that could be placed on vehicles.

 

I basically need a printer able to print designs onto vinyl in this price range. Any help from you experts would be greatly appreciated.

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short answer is no - you need to find a solvent or latex printer and plan to spend around 6,000 min to get going - the printer you have picked is a water based ink and must print on a vinyl with a special coating to accept that ink - then it has to be laminated -  -problem being that special coating is what fails and even laminated it will fail a lot faster than the proper printer for printing on vinyl.  the inks will fade quicker and the product will have a livespan of around a year at best.  you need a printer that the ink actually attaches to the vinyl for durablity- thus the solvent or latex inks.  there is also thermoresin printers that have good durability but not much cheaper,

 

now with that said can you sell a product from the canon - yes but it will be a far inferior product that will fail quickly, hardly good for repeat business  

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Also, both of those printers you're looking at are dye/pigment combo (pigment ink for black, dye ink for CYM). So, the colors not UV protected and will fade quickly in the sun.

At this point, you're better off saving your money and outsourcing your print jobs. Please also understand the cost of operating a printer before buying one.

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Also, both of those printers you're looking at are dye/pigment combo (pigment ink for black, dye ink for CYM). So, the colors not UV protected and will fade quickly in the sun. At this point, you're better off saving your money and outsourcing your print jobs. Please also understand the cost of operating a printer before buying one.

+1

 

Although I would love to be able to sell my printer to you, make sure you know what you're getting into before you make a purchase, and then find out you cant afford to run it yet.

 

Ink isnt cheap. to replace an entire set of CMYK carts on a roland printer is about $280.00. Then there is lamination. the eco-sol inks have some UV inhibitors in them and will last a year or two, but to get the full life out of a printed graphic, you need to laminate. Some do it with a B.S. but nothing beats an adjustable auto crank or hand crank laminator. The expenses add up quick in the print world.

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I think every single one of us on the forum would be printing if it was even remotely affordable.  :-\

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Depending on the UV (sun) exposure, you can get a good year out of UV laminated pigment prints. Reds maybe shorter. Plus, the fact they don't make comformable aqueous media, most is only good for flat surfaces. 

 

 

Complete set of OEM inks for my Epson, is about $1000-1200 bucks.

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ya, solvent is by far the cheapest ink out there in terms of just the ink itself. 

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I make some printed stuff for myself and friends only. I have a Epson wp1100 with cobras pigment ink. It only prints 8.5x11 and I use waterproof labels that are designed for inkjet. I then laminate with oracal 651 transparent. I had some on the back window of my car for close to a year that looked like new. My wife decided to be nice and scrape my car off last winter so they didn't survive longer. I don't offer them for sale though because of what others have said about the aqueous layer possibly failing and potential fading.

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Thanks everyone, this is exactly what I needed. Got my answers way faster than expected. I'm glad I decided to post here before rushing into things.

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