Roland VP300 Versacamm and Roland BN desktop

[gstk]

We looked into a new printer about 12/18 months ago and ended up buying a BN-20. There wasn't a big enough difference in our eyes to go for an SP.

In all honesty its possibly one of the most robust machines I've ever come across, you can literally throw anything at it and it'll have a go. (except magnetic material we found!) We've printed everything through it from Cotton & Polyester Canvas, Heat Transfer Material, Adhesive & Cling Stickers, Card, etc. There's not actually that much in the machine that you can break, it's a fairly sealed unit, but if you can get a care package of some kind.

You'll find that most materials, whether it be roll up banners or garment transfer is manufactured in 1500mm (or thereabouts) or 1370mm rolls. Garment tends to be cut down into 3x500mm and 2x750mm, so you'll never get a 1000mm or a 1300mm as standard. Though you can order them specially if you order enough.

We use a company called Signmaster for inks and vinyl now, speak to consumables, they can get you anything for digital print, and where needed he'll cut down to size.
If you only need a single roll of something, I'd recommend Xpres as they store 500mm rolls as standard,

Ink for the BN-20 is around 85-90 a cartridge @ 440ml. We were told we'd need a set every 8 months but we got through most of it in 2 months. The only real outlay is at the start since you'll cover the cost as you print the jobs anyway.
A waste tank is about £60, and (unless someone has other experiences) they don't recycle them - however, you can unscrew the lid, pull out the absorbent pads and leave them out to dry for a few days, then plug it in again - so get an extra one. The hardware doesn't know how full the tank is, it estimates based on the time you plugged it in and how much waste ink it's pumped into it, so you can't mess it up.

The printing speed is about 4m/hr, which compared to what we were using before (an inkjet and dedicated cutter) was something of a miracle to just have the machine spew it out. You'll find the printer will slow down if you add metallic or white into the fifth ink dock on it. About half the speed according to our supplier, so we never touched it, and we've never needed them anyway. If something needs white then we use a white backed vinyl or outsource it, but it's very rare.

We bought ours from Xpres, not particularly good on the training since we found we could do a lot more than they had told us. The two profiles that they supplied were for their two different material types, sticker and garment. Garment runs bi-directional print, and sticker runs uni-directional (half the speed to stop it coagulating on the surface).

The software (Roland Versaworks) allows you to do the following:
Varied printing - feed it a spreadsheet of names, numbers or linked images and it will sequentially spew them out - you use bounding boxes in your artwork to specify these things.
Bi-direction/Uni-direction Print - You can give the print a second to dry by only printing in one direction. We have some instances on glossy material where the print gloops together if not given the time.
You can add in profiles for different materials if the supplier has them to hand.
There's plenty of functions to group jobs together, print multiples within groups or individually, mirror, rotate, spacing, roll-back-and-cut distance settings, scaling, etc.

We find it doesn't really cope well with having jobs cancelled manually (ie: lifting the hand while in mid print/cut), it won't damage it, but it takes an off/on of the printer and the software to clear it's memory quickly. If you have the time though it makes no difference.

The machine won't run when it's below 15degreesC, and in our warehouse that can be a problem at night, so we put a little radiator heater by it and it's happy now. We can leave the machine running now and it'll just chew through a roll.

You can print a colour reference chart on any material you have and these link to a colour palette in Illustrator/CorelDraw so you can pick an exact colour you want and know it will come out right. The printer doesn't use reference marks printed on the material, instead it just rolls back as far as it needs and starts cutting - we've never had any problems with where it's cut, but to be aware that you can't stop the job and cut it later, needs to be done all at once. Don't overload the software with too many eps files or it takes ages to load!

It has problems when cutting too close to the front of the roll since the pressure of the knife pulls the material back, but you overcome this by leaving three or four centimetres of material in front of the job, or not cutting the previous job off until a bit is out the machine.

One of the first big jobs we did was for 10'000 200x200mm hi-tack stickers, they cut down a 1370mm to 3x440mm rolls and sent them over. Looking at somewhere in the region of 2 months of 12hr/day printing. Could it handle it? Hell yes!
Though you just need something to catch the material off the machine, a Tesco home delivery tray will do it, with gloss material it takes a little longer, put a box under one end of a table and let it roll down it to dry for a little longer.

It's given us very few problems in the time we've had it, and even though we're now using a Mimaki CJV30-130, we use the BN-20 for short runs or overflow, LB logos, sleeves, bags, etc.


The SP-300 (which we don't have so my information is a little limited...) I know only the following about:
5m/hr (if the 1m/hour is really that necessary then you've got too much work on and should be getting a BIG machine!)
750mm rolls (only worth it if you're printing anything which is bigger than 470mm on BOTH sides)
Print resolution (i believe) is the same at 1440dpi.
Faster cutting & print speed. (again if it makes that much difference then you need a bigger machine.)
A pot to collect waste in (which doesn't cost anything)


Just one more quick thought, I can happily leave the BN-20 running overnight to run off 1000 or more LB logos, the thing will just pump them out.

Hope that's helpful, although a little disjointed!!
J.

Why have you now switched to the mimoki. What does it do the BN can't

[jennywren]

Johnny Many thanks for that review, it has made me look at bn20 in a different light, its back on my list of possible. Thanks

[Johnny]

Why have you now switched to the mimoki. What does it do the BN can't

The Mimaki is 1370mm and it runs at 12m/hr on that width, can be quicker with less passes depending on the material, it's also quicker at cutting, as well as having the ability to 'half-cut' which essentially means cutting the shape out of the backing sheet and leaving tabs so you can push it out. There's also 3 heaters where the material runs over it to help it with printing and drying.

We were initially looking at doing 850mm roll up banners, PVC banners and canvasses up to 60 inches wide, and this is what we decided on. The only downside is it retails at 16k.
J.

[gstk]

Its a tricky one for us. We need to increase the range and we feel we lack in some areas. We have narrowed down our stocklist to the items that are profitable without a lot of timewasting (any fool can be busy) We did it before about September time. Over Christmas our turnover was down BUT our leftover was up. We do vinyl stickers and they are a bit of a clat in a lot of ways. We often get asked if we can do stickers and have to turn them down (We did try someone to outsource with someone but they always were 2 weeks from order or let us down and you have no control and the customer thinks you are a waster) We also would like to do bigger coloured stuff on t shirts than A4. Also would like to print pictures - not sure if the BN is suitable for canvas or similar prints and of the quality. We also do some clubs and garments that are mulitlayered vinyl (we all know the pain involved) It would be nice to do a one layer colour print.

I cant see us every getting into wraps or big banners ( I have done some Vinyl Banners in the past ) but I can see the banner side is probably quite lucrative if you get the work. Catch 22 - buy a big format and spoend a lot more to do the job of the smaller format OR buy a smaller format and then wish you'd bought the bigger.

[Andrew]

So what would the benefits be of printing with white? Is it just when you are printing onto clear? Not sure how often it would be used but I am sure there must be more reasons to use white ink. Metallics just add a bit of bling so that makes more sense if it is what you want.

[Hyraxx]

Mainly for windows and backlit work, we use our Mimaki in 2X CMYK as we have never had a call for white print and if we did we would sub it out as white ink is still a pain in the arse and TBH just not white enough for our liking.

[Andrew]

I couldn't think of too much use beyond window cling myself. Do you get more for your money with a Mimaki/Mutoh?

[socialgiraffe]

White just gives you the ability to print on clear as you say. Window clings and stickers are where this comes into its own. I assume many D2C guys have small clubs and societies that would probably love to have some car stickers but only want 50. With this you can do them and essentially charge a fortune. Metallic is really only useful for stickers and posters in my opinion. Until recently I had not seen that much of a benefit, but I had a poster come in the other day that I printed and it really did "pop" and even the normally unimpressed wife said wow!.

[Andrew]

When you say stickers Simon, are the standard stickers not printed onto white anyway? Is that something specific you are meaning?

I have considered metallics for console graphics (PS3 xBox) and that is the only thing I could think of. It's all this type of vinyl I need really as this is what I am getting nagged for right now.

[Hyraxx]

Well you would use the white where you need a base coat, Mimaki has the best white and metallic ink on the market but also the metallic is not very durable as scratches very easily so you would need to lam it really. Another factor is metallic inks have about 2-3 week outdoor life, due to the fact that it's actual metal and tarnishes in the sun (No sales man will tell you that fact)