Printer Review: Gandinnovations Jeti 3300
By Karen Lowery Hall
When Derric Swinfard first opened Monster Media in Riverside, CA, he put several HP printers on the production floor. Jobs that required grand-format solvent-based output were brokered. When his primary vendor raised prices so that he couldn’t be competitive on the outsourced work, he brought that service in-house, too.
Last April, Monster Media replaced its original solvent printer with a Gandi Innovations Jeti 3300. “We were pretty much up and running within two days,” Swinfard recalls of the installation process. “The problems we had with [our first solvent printer], compared to this one—this printer has been 99 percent on the money for everything. Their management is also really outgoing and they’ve been a really great company to deal with,” he adds.
Swinfard explains that the company’s original solvent printer was more of a sign shop machine that his firm was trying to use as a production device. “It was okay if you wanted to print one or two, but it wasn’t suited to a production environment,” he notes. “We were starting to loose business because people were starting to loose confidence in us because we weren’t able to do the jobs that we thought we could do with that printer. To get decent quality, it would print about 25 square feet an hour. [The Jeti] prints anywhere between 250 to 300 square feet an hour. They’re improving the software, too. And as they do that, our speeds and our quality will increase as well. But right now, the thing prints so fast that we don’t run into an issue where we get behind. Speed is not an issue and everyone loves the quality.”
Monster Media’s jobs produced on its new printer have ranged from bus wraps to banners. “We do a lot of action sports industry stuff like for surfing events. For the US Open, we just did a bunch of stuff for some of the sponsors down there—all the stuff they’re hanging from the pier—that type of thing,” Swinfard says. “That’s fun. We also wrapped a 911 Porsche for a guy who’s racing the car, but he didn’t want to paint it. So we wrapped his car to look like a race car. It came out awesome.”
He
points out that, having experience on the previous solvent printer,
the learning curve to get up and running with the Jeti 3300 was not
a problem. “We pretty much knew the software already, so it was
actually pretty easy. There are little tricks. Each material is a little
different on temperature, heat, and tension—it’s something
you just have to play with. That’s with any printer.”
Mostly the company runs 3M Controltac, backlit material, and various types of banner media. Swinfard appreciates the fact that the printer can run the less expensive Asian manufactured banner materials. “People call and say they want 50 banners and they want them on the cheapest material possible. Obviously, I’m not going to put it on 13-ounce German vinyl. We have different materials for different applications.”
Another feature of the machine that Swinfard appreciates is that it is accessible enough for him to do minor repairs and replacements himself. “I actually changed a motor out on the Jeti,” he relates. “We had a motor that was defective from shipping. They [shipped it ‘next day’] and I changed it out myself, and it’s been up and running perfectly ever since. They’ve really worked with us.” Still, he says, the main things he likes about the Jeti 3300 are its speed and the quality of the prints. He credits much of that quality to the Spectra printheads, which he cites as one of the main reasons he chose the Jeti printer.
Asked about consumables, Swinfard replies: “The ink is only $40 a liter—it’s cheap—and [consumption] isn’t that bad. If we’re using a lot of ink, that means we’re printing and making money. The only thing that I do notice, and I think this is true of all printers in this category, is the solvent consumption because you have to flush all those heads every day.”
Photo Finish
National Photo began in Chicago as a traditional photo lab during the 1950s. Time and technology marched on and today the company is run by the second generation of the Rubin family, brothers Barry and Steve. The company moved into the wide-format printing arena in the 1980s due to customer demand after the firm bought out a couple of other companies in the area. In March 2004, the company added a Jeti 3300 to its wide ranging equipment mix.
According
to Barry Rubin, since output from the printer has included event signage,
10x40' banners for a local museum, retail banners, and POP applications.
He is sold on the idea of grand-format output, noting that having access
to the oversized printing has “really made life easier. We’ve
opened new markets and increased our business since we got it,”
he states. “Some of our existing customers are buying work produced
on it, but most of our work is coming from brand new clients.”
Asked how he and his brother settled on this particular printer, he explains: “Steve and I are very conservative when it comes to buying equipment. We do a lot of research—not only do we research the machine, but we research the manufacturer, too. And one of questions we talk about is service and reliability and longevity. We try to find out more about how the machine is put together and the parts they use. Through that, we’ve identified certain manufacturers; Oce’ being one of them, Gandi being another one, that we like to do business with because they take the equipment seriously. They’re just not rushing to put things out on the market to say they have a machine. At least in our experience, the machines that we have were really well-thought-out.”
After looking at a number of grand-format printers at last year’s SGIA trade show, the brothers set about comparing the real-world performance of the various models. “We saw the machine two or three more times,” Rubin notes. “We did comparison tests between the Jeti and [another printer] using the same files and the same materials. And everyone we showed these to, who didn’t know one machine from the other, went with the Jeti.”
And so did National Photo.
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Images provided by Monster Media.
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