-
Specialist Domer needs some advice on the next step
Hi there – Excuse any newbie questions, looks a great board and I’ll try not to embarrass myself.
Question – We are a specialist doming company that can coat almost any (impossible) shape at a reasonable cost as we have been developing new processes to wrap around the technology, however………..On our “penny market” stuff we currently use an Edge II and Envision or Fastrack 650 to print and cut long run decals.
However, I am constantly bugged by customers for High-res domed decals (the kind of thing The Versacamm/Cadet does) and my question is this……
Can I just buy a printer and use my existing plotter(s) to cut the decals? Or can anyone recommend a combo package?
Any help gratefully received – And if I can help on any doming questions let me know. -
5 Replies
-
We do a huge amount of doming as well , using thermal printers (we use a Roland PC series) and a roland Soljet inkjet print and cut.,The soljet (or versacam) that prints and cuts is a marvellous machine for this , we dome 1000’s of items a day using output from this machine. We bought it for that application.
We did however notice that with certain resins there is an ink bleeding problem , mainly with one of the soft dome epoxies we used. We have subsequently gone onto a polyurethane we apply with Dopag mixing and dispensing machinery (urethanane is a local product – very flexible yet tough , dries with a nice gloss and without any heating , the domes are ready to go (well can be handled) in about 1/2 and hour after dispensing)
We do also use epoxies sometimes for hard doming but have moved extensively toward UV resistant urethanes. We set up our doming dept in a controlled environment , heated and de humidified to be able to use the urethanes which were much more sensitive to moisture etc. We also do scripting using some of our old ISEL 1m x 500mm CnC xy tables , tho for smaller qtys , we script by hand.
Our urethanes work out to about 8 quid a litre which will dome about 1000 sq inches.
Im not sure what you charge , but we go in at about gbp 350 + per sq m with small stuff and a bit less for larger doming areas
So a 1″ sq domed full colour decal on a premium grade vinyl sells for about 20 pence on a qty of 2000+
Cost to print and cut is about 10quid a sq , so this decal costs us less than a penny to dome and about the same to print and cut – about 2p in total.
The soljet (roland print and cut machine) was key in terms of developing this market – we print cut and dome many substrates , from vhite vinyl to shiny silver and gold foils, matt silvers and golds , 0.9mm abs etc. We also dome output from our other processes like our laser engravers that work on engraving substrates , etched stuff like metals , cnc cut stuff and even dome cut perspex letters (they look wonderful domed)
We combine processes to make and dome a lot of items too , like cut brass backs for keytags on our Cnc engravers and mills , apply a decal and dome the whole thing etc. Same to fabricate badges.
By far the biggest application are ore flexible domed decal which are used in 100’s of applications , customers love the look and feel.
Good to se someone else in this business here.
Tell me about your setup?
Regards
Rodney -
Welcome to the boards Crystal.
-
We have two streams of doming work, one very high value (and markup) mainly to the Car / Boat modification market, and the other long run decal doming market(s).
The High value stuff came out of an expeditionary trip we had to the SEMA show in Vegas. (Aftermarket car modifications) in which we blew our yank friends away with some of the stuff we had on show – As technically some of the shapes we domed are undomable!
We still get commissions now on both sides of the Atlantic, and photos of our stuff turns all over.
When I learn how to drive this board properly I’ll pop some pictures in.Because our high end stuff is so very high value and low volume, the business tended to grow in fits and starts, so we entered long run (but not as big as you by the sound of it) markets.
The long run market now keeps the business ticking over, and the high end stuff goes out by commission. Our markup is similar to yours on the long run stuff – The High end items are works of art in their own right and have gone out for Hundreds of pounds each.
We use only top quality polyurethane regardless of whether it’s an indoor decal, or a speedboat logo – and use a variety of x-axis machines (and talented people!) to dome accordingly to the volume and complexity.
We can source substrates as esoteric as laser cut dyed seashells (so thin they bend) and have tie – ins with some big names in the U.S. Modification industry.
A couple more questions for you:
Roland list a SOLJET and a VERSACAMM as different products – Which do you use? And that’s the machine that prints to different substrates?We’ve looked at outsourcing some printing and cutting to a VERSACAMM partner, but the definition hasn’t been all that great (Accepting it’s not going to be as bright as an Edge spot colour).
(mod-edit) admin@uksignboards.com
-
We use the soljet which is sort of the big brother to the versacam , its a 6 colour machine and prints about 3-4x faster , we use it for other applications as well like banners , meshes , digital wraps etc , but its mainly churning out decals for doming. The versacam would work as well for you too if you arent doing big volumes daily at less then 1/2 the price of the Soljet , ours is a 54 inch model.
The only shapes we find undomeable is anything thats not flat , we also dome unusual shapes and cant quite see why one cant do so , the only hassles we have are very sharp corners where we have to pull the domes by hand to these corners.
There is one thing I would like to get into but dont know how its done an that is labels for clothes where only sections are domed or selectively domed. I cant see how this is done unless the domed items are layered on top of the backround , like vinyl on vinyl or this
http://www.uksignboards.com/download.php?id=6294
The Versacam and the Soljets output should be as good if not better than an edge , we did a direct comparison when getting our soljet as we did consider an edge. Certianly the definition is way better , tho spots on the edge might be better or more opaque.
Have a look at my website to see what I do and lots of examples of where we use doming
http://www.tokerbros.co.za , I am based in South Africa -
quote :We’ve looked at outsourcing some printing and cutting to a VERSACAMM partner, but the definition hasn’t been all that greatquote :do you know at what resolution it was printed at because the versa would be quite slow at 1400 dpichris
mucked that up
Log in to reply.