Printer Review: Seiko ColorPainter 64S
By Denise M. Gustavson
When
it finally came time for The Sign Factory to purchase a wide-format
digital printer, the decision had been a long time in coming. Founded
in 1982, the wholesale, custom electric sign manufacturer based in Houston,
TX was no stranger to the technology—even though they had never
owned a wide-format digital printer previously.
“For the past eight to ten years, ever since the first introduction of water-based wide-format inkjet printers, we’ve been looking at them,” says Al Roberts, founder and president of The Sign Factory. “In our line of work and with the requirement for our products to be displayed outdoors, the water-based inkjet printers wouldn’t work. Most of the prints would end up fading within days.”
Instead, Roberts says that the company focused on other sign equipment during that time—using pressure-sensitive vinyl and some of the Gerber machines. Additionally, the Fargo thermal foil printer allowed the shop to do small logos on lighted signs which, according to Roberts, helped get them into digital, even if it was on a small basis.
Roberts, though, did not give up in his search. Every six months, he’d review the offerings from the inkjet printer manufacturers, waiting until the machines improved.
And they did.
“We came close last year, within a day, to placing an order for another wide-format inkjet printer and then we saw the press release about the Seiko ColorPainter 64S,” says Roberts. Since they had never seen anything about the printer previously, they made it a point to get a closer look at the ISA Show.
“We were looking for a 5-6'-wide printer that could produce good quality, long-lasting prints and we were looking to spend somewhere between $30,000 and $50,000,” says Roberts. At the show, they met a representative from Chromatek, a wide-format dealer from the Houston area, and arranged to meet after the show. Roberts prepared several different layout files, samples of typical jobs that they would run, and brought them to the meeting. Running the files on the two different printers they were interested in, the side-by-side comparison left no doubt in Robert’s mind. “There was no comparison. The Seiko printer had better richness of color, finer detail, and fine line qualities. It was even faster, but speed wasn’t the main factor for us, quality was. The prints just looked better.”
The printer was installed in May and Roberts was running small jobs on it the next day. The customers, according to Roberts, love it. “Our customers were buying this kind of product from other shops, but now we can offer it and they are overwhelmed by the quality of the prints,” says Roberts. The Sign Factory mainly has been using the printer for one-pass backlit graphics and some front-lit signs. But no matter what the job—whether it’s elevator maps with copy as small as 10-point to 5'-wide signs that fade from dark to light—the prints are crisp and their customers are pleased with the results.
“We weren’t doing any of this before, so as we spread the word we’re getting more and more jobs,” says Roberts. “We knew we had to have the digital printing solution since out competition was offering digital prints. We didn’t want to lose the business.”
Would Roberts recommend the printer? He answered with a resounding yes, with one caveat—get it with the heater/dryer addition. “The printer puts out a lot in a short amount of time and it needs a little help getting it dry,” Roberts says.
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