Mimaki vs. 4060 UV vs. L805 UV vs. Asiga Max: An Honest UV Printer Buying Guide

I spent years making excuses for the wrong machines I bought before I finally sat down and documented what went wrong. I run production at a small print and sign shop. Over seven years, I made three significant UV printer purchasing mistakes — roughly $14,000 wasted, not counting the jobs I lost from downtime or missed deadlines.

These days, when someone asks me "Should I get a Mimaki printer, a 4060 UV flatbed, or just start with an L805 UV?" I don't give a vague answer. I show them the comparison I wish someone had handed me in 2017.

Here's the framework I use now — and the checklist my team runs through before we sign off on any UV equipment.

The Comparison Framework: What Actually Matters

Before comparing anything, lock down your criteria. If you only compare purchase price, you will absolutely buy the wrong machine. I did.

I evaluate every UV printer on five things:

1. Consumables economics — ink cost per unit, and whether you can safely use third-party Mimaki ink suppliers or alternatives
2. Uptime and maintenance — every down day has a dollar cost attached to it
3. Application fit — does this machine actually do what you plan to sell to customers?
4. Parts and support — when something breaks, how fast can you get back online?
5. Three-year total cost of ownership — including ink, service, downtime, and waste

Five years ago I skipped that last calculation. That's where the $14,000 went. Let's break each dimension down.

Dimension 1: Consumables Economics — The Surprise

Mimaki printers run on proprietary ink. This bothered me at first. Why pay $180+ for a liter of Mimaki ink when a generic substitute costs $60?

I ran the math. If I'm printing 30 liters a month, that's $3,600 in OEM ink versus $1,800 in third-party. That's $21,600 a year in savings. So I tried it on my JV300.

Two weeks in, it looked fine. By week three, nozzles were clogging. Week four I replaced two printheads — $1,400 plus two days of downtime. Honest lesson: for Mimaki printers, use authorized Mimaki inks suppliers. I now verify batch numbers quarterly through my dealer. Not something I enjoy, but something I do.

But here's the counterintuitive part. The 4060 UV printer — the entry-to-mid-level flatbed — actually tolerates third-party ink well. Those printheads are built to looser tolerances and designed for a less controlled environment. My 4060 runs a good generic UV ink with acceptable results.

The L805 UV printer — a converted Epson desktop — is somewhere in between. The ink is cheap, but color consistency drifts over months. If you're doing color-critical client work, that's a headache.

Asiga Max UV 3D printer uses a completely different consumable class (photopolymer resin instead of print ink), so the comparison breaks down there. But the lesson holds: the consumable system determines the real cost, not the machine sticker.

Dimension winner: Mimaki for consistency. 4060 UV for cost-per-print at lower volumes. If you can't afford OEM ink on a Mimaki, you can't afford the machine. I mean that literally — a single printhead replacement wipes out a year of ink savings.

Dimension 2: Uptime — Where Money Silently Bleeds

This is where I lost the most money. In my first year, I bought an L805 UV printer. Thought process: $1,200 for a desktop UV setup, low risk to test the market. For the first four months, it was genuinely great. Vibrant colors, easy to operate. Customers loved small items — phone cases, promotional goods, small plaques.

Then it started having ink delivery problems. The converted ink path had sediment build-up. Monthly downtime averaged one to two days per week. That year, I estimated $4,800 in lost job revenue. On a $1,200 machine. That ratio should terrify anyone.

The 4060 UV printer was more stable. I ran one from 2020 for two years. Downtime was maybe two to three days a month, mostly maintenance. Acceptable. But it was never a "set it and forget it" machine.

Mimaki printers are boringly reliable — and I mean that as the highest compliment. I added a Mimaki UCJV300 in September 2022 for roll-to-roll UV work. It rarely goes down outside scheduled maintenance. First year, I think we had two unplanned stops.

But the $890 error I made on the Mimaki was my own fault. I ordered the wrong ink configuration — I mixed up flexible and rigid ink — and had to reorder consumables, recalibrate profiles, and sit on my hands for a week. Eight hundred ninety dollars in rework plus a one-week delay. Lesson: verify your ink config before ordering. Commit the exact part numbers to your checklist.

Dimension winner: Mimaki, without question. The reliability gap is real. If you're running production with deadlines, this dimension alone can justify the higher upfront cost. Downtime doesn't show up on the invoice — it shows up in your P&L and in client complaints you never fully recover from.

Dimension 3: Application Fit — Three Different Tools I Treated as One

This mistake cost me the most time and aggravation. I thought "UV printing" was one category. It's not.

L805 UV printer: Small format, flatbed, desktop scale. Great for phone cases, small plaques, prototypes, promotional items, personalized gifts. Not for large format. Not for volume.

4060 UV printer: A2+ flatbed size. Good for medium-batch signage, custom panels, small runs of packaging proofs, occasional on-demand work. Typical pricing (as of early 2025, depending on config) runs $4,000–$8,000.

Mimaki printers: Industrial scale. Flatbed or roll-to-roll. Built for production signage, textiles, packaging, and anything requiring color consistency across thousands of prints.

And then there's the Asiga Max UV 3D printer — which is an entirely different category. That's additive manufacturing (3D printing) using photopolymer resin. It's for tooling, molds, dental models, jewelry casting patterns, small precision parts. It doesn't compete with Mimaki or the 4060. It shouldn't be compared to them.

This was my binary struggle in 2021: I went back and forth between the Asiga Max and a second 2D UV flatbed for two weeks. The Asiga offered ±20 micron resolution that no 2D flatbed could touch. But my pipeline that quarter had zero clients who needed 3D prints. It would have sat idle for months.

I chose the 2D flatbed. So glad I did. Six months later, I saw a used Asiga Max listed at 35% below retail because a local dental lab downsized. I dodged a very expensive bullet there.

Dimension winner: Depends entirely on your customer base. Flatbed 2D UV (4060 UV or Mimaki) for signage and decor. L805 UV for prototyping and small goods. Asiga Max UV 3D printer for precision manufacturing applications. Don't mix them up, and don't let overlapping keyword search results convince you they're interchangeable.

Dimension 4: Support and Parts — The Thing You Only Appreciate When It Fails

I put this issue at the bottom of my evaluation list for years. Now it's near the top — after one specific incident in early 2023.

A servo motor failed on my 4060 UV printer. The seller was in another country. Replacement part: three weeks. Three. I turned down four orders, referred one client to a competitor (whom I never won back), and ate the loss. That single failure cost more than the machine's annual depreciation.

By contrast, when a motor on the Mimaki failed, my regional dealer had a replacement to me in 36 hours with phone support. They charge more. But that time gap saved a $3,200 job.

Dimension winner: Mimaki, if you're doing commercial work. For the 4060 UV, verify you have a domestic or regional parts source before ordering. If you're buying from overseas, confirm you can wait three weeks without revenue — or don't buy the machine.

Which One Should You Actually Pick?

I'm not going to tell you "buy Mimaki, ignore everything else." That's lazy and wrong.

If you're just testing the UV market with limited budget: The L805 UV printer is a reasonable toe in the water. Just treat it as a consumable. Budget for replacement around 18 months. Don't build your business model on it.

If you've validated demand and need reliable mid-volume production: The 4060 UV printer can work — provided you have local parts availability and accept more manual maintenance than industrial equipment requires.

If you're running commercial production with deadlines and color-critical work: That's where Mimaki printers enter the picture. Yes, the Mimaki ink suppliers cost more per liter. That premium buys predictability. For us, predictability turned out to be the single most profitable thing we ever purchased.

If you need high-resolution 3D output for molds, dental, or jewelry: The Asiga Max UV 3D printer is its own category. Don't compare it against 2D machines. The comparison won't make sense and you'll waste weeks deciding between fundamentally different tools.

The $14,000 I spent learning this reduces to one line: Five minutes of verification beats five days of correction. That's why my team now keeps a 12-point pre-purchase checklist for any UV equipment investment. We've used it to catch 47 potential errors in the past 18 months. We're not planning to stop.