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I have been publishing CDs and DVDs for years, and have used Neato brand labels and the various Neato labeling programs to design those labels. For the higher class jobs, I was using an Epson Styles Photo R200 inkjet printer, which includes a special CD/DVD printing tray and label design software. I did not care for the Epson software when it came to label design, so I continued to use the Neato software, export a JPG of the label, and use that file as background for a label design in the Epson software, which then was only used for the actual printing operation. This worked very well, I got good results, and all was well with the world.
However, now I find that my quantities have gone up somewhat, and customers who had received the inkjet direct-labeled disks from me no longer wanted to accept the regular ones with the paper Neato labels. By the way, I have always been very happy with the Neato product, and have found them to be easy to deal with, providing good customer service and tech support. So, I don't want to imply that there is anything wrong with Neato...it is just that my customers now prefer the directly printed ones instead.
The Epson inkjet printer was now overmatched by the quantity of disks being put through it, and since it printed to them slowly, it became a real drag for me to sit by the printer and feed it a new disk every couple of minutes. Too short of a time to go and do something else, but too long not to notice how agonizingly slowly the printing was taking.
A pro-audio dealer recommended the Primera brand Bravo II AutoPrinter product as being 'probably the best of a not very distinguished market'. In other words, it's not really that great overall, but you could do a lot worse.
The purchase price of the Bravo II is very high for what you get. The Bravo II series includes versions with and without disk burning capability, but all models have the printing function. You can get disk burning versions for either CD only or DVD/CD. The lowest price model is the AutoPrinter, which does not have any drives; you must have a separate disk burner. The Autoprinter goes for around $1300 US, which gives one pause. An inkjet printer of similar speed would cost around $300-$400, leaving the remaining $1000 price to pay for what?...the tiny robot arm mechanism?
I read lots of online reviews, almost all of which were obviously written by reviewers who had not used the printer at all, or perhaps only for long enough to write the reviews. In other words, they were not concerned with reliability, price, cost & availability of ink cartridges, etc. I called Primera to inquire about the ink, since I do most of my printing on weekends and evenings, and did not want to find myself running out of ink unexpectedly early. With my Epson, if I keep one of each kind of ink cartridge for it in stock in my office (they are expensive enough that I don't care to stock more than that), but if I run out there are more available at the nearby office supply stores (OfficeMax, OfficeDepot, and Circuit City etc.) I wanted to make sure that I could do this with the Primera if I decided to pop for what seemed to be an overly pricey machine. The Primera agent advised me that, "the printer part of the BravoII is a Lexmark inkjet engine, and while we advise the use of our own special Primera cartridges, you can put regular Lexmark cartridges in it if you want to." So, I bought the unit.
The printer arrived, and I was surprised to find it much larger than I expected it to be. It measures 17-1/4" wide, 16" deep, and7" tall. The printer is not at all heavy, though, even with the steel chassis. My first impressions were:
- Multiple warning labels inside the box state that you had better keep the box and other packaging materials, because the warranty might well be voided if you have to send it back in any other packaging. This is not an uncommon warning, but Primera makes it sound even stricter.
- Why, oh why, does a $1300 piece of equipment have a wall wart power supply? It should really have a normal IEC type plug and power cord like almost every serious piece of electronic equipment.
I installed the software according to the printed instructions, also referring to the slightly different instructions that appear on the computer screen when the Primera CD is placed in a drive. Both were wrong! Quite a few steps were different than listed in the instructions, requiring a certain amount of experience with installations on Windows XP. Other steps actually had to happen in a different order, and the upshot is it could be confusing for less savvy people to accomplish gracefully.
A look at the printer hardware revealed a few disappointing issues:
- A bundle of wire that appears to go to the moving carriage assembly was so tight at the end of the travel that I worried it might break prematurely. However, the carriage will not move with the cover open, so without actually opening the printer beyond simply opening the cover, I could not be sure whether this was a real problem of not.
- The ink cartridges are the smallest ones I have seen, which makes me believe the frequency of ink changes will be greater than I hoped for.
- The robot arm does not have its own carriage mechanism. Instead, it hitches a ride along side the inkjet carriage, letting the printer motor pull the arm back and forth. This makes for rather clunky activity when the printer is in use. The inkjet carriage has to make several left-right motions in order to pick up, and drop off the robot arm, which cannot be hitched to it during printing maneuvers. Also, each coupling and uncoupling operation requires two movements of the inkjet carriage. Also, the robot arm disk-grabber mechanism seems to wait longer than necessary before positioning over the various disk trays (In, Printer, Out) before actually picking up and dropping off a disk.
I noticed that nowhere in the manual or packaging was there any information about which Lexmark cartridges to buy for the unit, if one wanted to use them instead of the Primera-branded ones. So, I called Primera and was put in touch with tech support - they told me that whoever told me that the Bravo II could use regular Lexmark cartridges was mistaken. The printer engine was indeed made by Lexmark, they said, but the cartridges were a custom version that had a different 'chip' than the regular ones. They said a regular one would fit but would be recognized by the printer as invalid, locking the printer out and requiring service to reset. I hate this kind of thing! There is not likely any difference in the ink between Lexmark and Primera, so I imaging that this is just a marketing thing. This makes sense for $100-$200 cheapo inkjet printers, where the manufacturer is really making their money from the ink and basically giving the printers away at cost. But a $1300 printer that probably costs less than $500 to make has lots of profit margin, and the customers should not be so restricted on ink. The Primera ink is not widely available in stores (although it is easy to order online), which kind of crimps my style when doing jobs at night and weekends. If I run out, it would be two or three days before I could get more ink. I don't really mind the nearly $50 price of Primera ink (that's EACH cartridge; the unit uses one color and one black cartridge), but the lack of ready and quick supply is a serious disadvantage in my opinion.
Anyway, I calibrated the printer, using the software's utilities for aligning the color and black cartridges, and aligning the print engine to the actual disks. This is important, since when you print directly to an inkjet printable disk, you want to use the entire white printable surface without actually going outside the printable area. Printing inside the margins leaved unsightly borders, and printing outside the margins will put ink where it should not be, either on the disk tray or on parts of the disk surface that are not able to absorb the ink. The SureThing label design software that comes bundled with the BravoII is OK, but has by far the worst user interface of any label design software I have used. I have ended up doing what I did before with my Epson; designing the labels on my Neato software, exporting a JPG of the label, and then using that image file as background in the SureThing software.
I have clocked the BravoII at 1 minute and 45 seconds per disk, faster than my Epson and certainly more convenient. The printer has a left disk tray and an identical right disk tray. You can specify whether the robot arm drops printed disk into the left tray (it always pulls blanks from the right tray), or sends them flying out the center chute to the front. Since the printer will not operate with the cover closed, you cannot get access to the left and right trays during printing. So, if you want to get your hands and the printed disks as soon as possible, perhaps to stick them into their cases, it is a nice feature to have them coming out the front chute onto the table. If you put the printer at the edge of a table, the disks will come flying out onto the floor. When you register the BravoII, Primera is supposed to send you a free 'kiosk kit', basically a 50 disk tray that attaches to the bottom of the center chute to catch the flying disks. Why does it hold 50 when the two other trays only hold 25? Because in KIOSK mode, the robot arm picks blank disks from both trays, not just the right one, for a maximum total of 50 per batch.
One nice thing about the SureThing software is that it has a printer options dialog that allows you to specify, in 10th of a mm, exactly what the inner and outer diameters of your disk's printable surface are (they do vary from one manufacturer to...Read more›
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Product Description:
Product Name: Bravo II CD/DVD AutoPrinter
Marketing Information:
Bravo II is Primera"s newest and most advanced "all-in-one" disc publishing system. Itcombines fast, automated robotic CD/DVD duplication along with full-color, 4800 dpidirect-to-disc printing - all-in-one compact, desktop unit. Bravo II is ideal for producing either one at a time, unique discs or jobs of up to 50 identical discs at a time.Product Type: CD/DVD/BD Printer
Technical Information
Print Technology: Inkjet
Print Resolution: 4800 x 1200 dpi
Print Resolution: 2400 x 1200 dpi
Print Resolution: 1200 x 1200 dpi
Print Resolution: 600 x 600 dpi
Interfaces/Ports
Interfaces/Ports: USB 2.0 - USB
Media Types & Handling
Media Type: CD/DVD
Physical Characteristics
Dimensions: 7.25" Height x 17.25" Width x 16" Depth
Weight: 18 lb
Warranty
Standard Warranty: 1 Year(s)
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