Product Review: Primera Bravo Robotic Printer
Robotic Printing
I remember the "good old days". I was sending out an order or two a day. I was burning them myself and printing them on my Casio CW-50 (which I reviewed in this article).As good as the Casio was for my needs at the time, it still had some limitations:
- Printing each DVD required me to manually feed it into the printer twice. Once for the top of the label and then flip it for the bottom half.
- The Casio only prints in one color. There are various color ribbon cartridges available (black, blue, red) but it is only one color per DVD.
Out of all of the limitations to the Casio, it was one that held me back. It was the need to manually feed each DVD into the printer. It was fine for smaller runs, but I was getting orders for several dozen DVDs for some of my projects.
That is when I started looking at the Primera Bravo Robotic printers.This printer comes in a several different styles. Some have DVD burners built in, while others are strictly for printing DVDs. Since I already have a DVD duplicator, I didn't need the ability to burn DVD's on the printer. I decided on the Primera Bravo II. I did some price shopping around on google and eBay. I was able to pick up a brand new unit for $1150 on eBay. Here is a link to the seller's current auctions that I bought from.
My Impressions
The first thing that struck me about the printer is its big! Its only about as tall as my inkjet printer but the "footprint" of base size of the printer takes up about twice the width. This does not make it convenient to put it on the shelf of a computer desk. I knew ahead of time that the printer is an inkjet printer. Because of this, I had to order special inkjet compatible DVD's which my favorite brand of DVDs carried. They were approximately .10 cents more a piece but that wasn't too unreasonable for me. I was able to buy them in bulk for .59 cents a piece for 4x. The printer comes with "Sure Thing" label writer software. The software is extremely easy to use. I was able to quickly design a label for my DVD within a minute or two. In the configuration I bought it in, the Primera is able to print 25 DVDs at a time. There is a "kiosk" adapter which allows it to print up to 50 at a time. Printing is a simple operation. I put a stack of DVDs into the right hand side holder and tell the label printer how many to print. The Primera then does the rest. A robotic arm swings over, picks up a DVD and drops it in the print tray. The tray then disappears inside the printer to be printed. When the printing is done, the tray pops out and the arm drops the completed DVD to the tray on the left of the machine. It then swings back over and repeats the process.
Some Observations
Here are my impressions since I've been using the printer for awhile: The printer takes about a minute to print each DVD. This is fine for my needs as I could do about 60 DVDs per hour. There are faster printers on the market but they are also more expensive. There is an occasional misfeed by the robotic arm. Specifically it can drop two DVDs onto the print tray at the same time. Lucikly this is easy to correct. Simply remove the extra DVD and put it back in the "to be printed" pile. Then press one of the buttons to continue printing. While it does not misfeed all of the time, it is fairly frequent. I would say 2 or 3 DVDs per 100 going through it. I haven't found this to be a major problem for me because I have the printer near me while it is doing its work.
Finally Evalution
I am happy with the Primera Bravo printer. The only drawbacks I have seen with it is that it could be a bit faster and the issue of an occasional double feed of the DVDs. This printer is extremely convenient for me to have in my DVD production "toolbox". I now have no problem printing out dozens of DVDs on a moments notice. I am happy with the product.
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