KeepItPrinting.com

[cmwade77]

I was wondering if anyone has seen these:
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/commercial-printers/pagewide-printers/8000-series.html

It sounds way too good to be true:

It looks like an amazing printer, if it does what they say and I am being told the price is going to be pretty close to the KIP 9900.

30 D size prints in color and B&W, with a Sq. Ft. cost similar to the 9900 with lower maintenance costs.

Holds 6 rolls at a time, instead of the 4 that the 9900 can hold.

Has a double set of ink, so if one runs out, it switches to other and you can change ink while still plotting.

Plot quality appears to be crisper than even the 9900 offers.

Available from our dealer in fall, which is pretty good timing for us replacing our KIP 8000.

It's a HP, which has always been our go to brand for color wide format.

So, in my experience if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. So, what am I missing?

[TXReproShop]

What is the price on the Pagewide? Had the local designated dealer come by yesterday with some info, but would not talk $$$$.

[tjohnson]

From what I've heard lately, HP had delayed the introduction due to problems with printhead maintenance time, it pauses in the middle of print jobs to perform maintenance. Many delays make me wonder of this technology will ever be a player in the wide format business.

[gjames]

This is what is going on with HP. I am sure there are technical issues as well but HP is looking down the barrel as some hefty fines and they may not even be able to use the tech at all after this.

http://3dprintingindustry.com/2015/08/12/hp-sued-by-memjet-for-patent-infringement-in-mjf-3d-printing-tech/
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"The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten." - Benjamin Franklin and John Ruskin

[cmwade77]

These most definitely are being sold, we just replaced our KIP 8000 that was dying with this on Monday.

Excellent:

• Plot quality is amazing, especially halftoning/shading
  
• Color is amazing in its quality
  
• The speed is absolutely incredible
  
• It is great to be able to have 6 rolls loaded at a time
  
• Love being able to continue plotting even when changing ink, although we haven't needed to do this yet and probably won't anytime soon.

Good:

• The machine is great, very sturdy and well built. Just the feel of the machine is much better than any KIP
  
• Completely silent when in standby
  
• The pagewide software is overall very well written and much less buggy than the KIP Print or Request software and even checks to make sure your plots will plot correctly with your settings and won't cut something off, etc.
  

Ok:

• The Pagewide software is well designed, but lacks unified accounting, so you have to work around it by naming jobs sent to the plotter with no way to force the user to select.
  

Bad:

• Machine is quite loud when it is actually plotting and is in a small room.

Ugly:

• The licensing setup for the Pagewide software is cumbersome at best and cannot be install on a server that is running on VMWare.
  

Really, our only major complaint about the machine itself is that the it is loud when actually plotting, but it goes to virtually silent as soon as it stops and completely silent shortly after that.

As for the software, it does need some work for accounting.

_________________________
Now let's talk about costs:
Machine:
Right about the same price as what our most recent quote on a KIP 9900 was, but the KIP 9900 only had 4 rolls of course.

Paper cost:
The same ($0.0150/Sq. Ft.) since they both use the same kind of paper, although you can reduce ink costs by using HP paper, we are still pricing out the difference.

Maintenance cost (approximate based on life expectancy of printheads, etc.):
$0.0020/Sq. Ft. (The KIP 9900 has an estimated cost of $0.0130 based on similar criteria)

Ink cost:
$0.005/Sq. Ft. (KIP 9900 Toner is $0.009/Sq. Ft. for the exact same prints, except that was B&W only)

The ink costs are based off of an actual set of prints that was sent to both for testing purposes and exact costs are from the accounting software. Although, I am taking the word of a dealer (not the one that sold us the HP, but one that wanted to sell us the KIP 9900) on the KIP 9900 costs for these plots.

Additionally, all ink costs are assuming that I would be paying full price for the ink without negotiating a better price. The KIP 9900 cost was based off the dealer's cost for the toner, not what we actually would have had to pay with their markup, so the KIP cost could even be slightly higher than that and the HP cost may be slightly lower.

So overall, factoring in the machine cost, along with the life expectancy of the plotters, the maintenance and ink/toner costs, we end up with an average cost of:

• KIP 9900 - $0.0674/Sq. Ft.
  
• HP Pagewide 8000 - $0.0507/Sq. Ft.
  

If you do a modest 25,000 Sq. Ft./month, you are looking at the HP being about $400 cheaper per month than the KIP 9900. And considering that KIP has discontinued the 9900, this isn't necessarily a great comparison anymore, it's just the closest we could come when we started looking to replace the KIP 8000.[/list]

[cmwade77]

I will try and post more on this later as we use it for longer, but this is so far.

[Speedi]

Morning Guys,

How are the HP PageWide going in the field thus far?

I'm going on HP PageWide Training soon , so any on going issues I would be good to be aware of?

Thanks

[cmwade77]

Speedi wrote:

Morning Guys, How are the HP PageWide going in the field thus far? I'm going on HP PageWide Training soon , so any on going issues I would be good to be aware of? Thanks

There is now a new forum at the top for discussions on these plotters.

But here are the few issues we have run into:
1. The HP software will sometimes crash, but when it does, it will resume right where it left off.

2. The accounting feature leaves a lot to be desired, but I have written a program for our company that reads the data and asks each user to fill out the missing information. Some things that we need are: Ability to specify project number. We also need the number of sheets per set and the sq. ft. per sheet. These are all things that are missing.

3. Ours is installed on very low plush carpet tile but it still managed to sink into the carpet enough that it wasn't properly lined up with the stacker. Our dealer used some heavy duty pieces of plywood to lift it up just enough to fix this, but really the stacker should have a height adjustment for this situation.

4. Be careful which brands of paper you use, we got some Azon that are very wrinkled at the ends of the rolls and if you set the plotter to use the entire roll, they will cause jams. But other brands we have do not have this crinkle and do not cause an issue. So it means other brands (some cheaper than the Azon) work better on this plotter than others. But this was also true of the KIP 8000 for us as well.

5. We have the 8000 and it is very difficult to keep up with it as far as keeping paper stocked in it. Also, you do have to watch as you can very quickly exceed the maximum capacity of the stacker and/or what you can cary, which is a very large volume.

Ok, so Number 5 isn't really an issue, it's just something to be aware of, as this thing is FAST.

We are averaging a cost of $0.03 - $0.035 per square foot including machine cost, maintenance, ink, paper, etc. Yes that's 3-3.5 cents per square foot.