29th Dec – Solvent Printers

[John Childs]

Hi Dave.

How big a problem is head blocking? (I’m thinking of buying a JV3)

[David Rowland]

well we are on 2nd-3rd year now… great machine and well made.. I would go with the SP and not the S like we have, however the SP is a colour per head (4 heads) and the S is 3 heads (2 colours per head).

The SP can do the white ink now for clear (depends on rip).

Heads are typically £1000 each.. sometimes less depending on your supplier and where they get it from. The JV3/Cadet/Grendier/VersaCamm/Espon 10600 are the same heads just with a different body and handling.

If you don’t keep a waranty/support contract going then you have to budget about £1200 every two years on repairs (if you do it yourself). The nearer you are to London the better, we are charged by the mile and time it takes to fix it, so our recent bill was £1800

Get a dust free room, no carpet, keep it above freezing and nice, your repairs bills will be lower. Most of the printing problems are related to atmosphere, the JV3 and any solvent should be printed every 3-4 days to keep the heads flowing, when the machine is idle it will sleep and wake up every 30minutes to do a quick squirt and wipe which helps the maintenance. You must clean the capping station every few days and look after it.

If you have not already got a profile-cutter/plotter then the CG-FX range works well out of corel, but if I recall you are a Mac user, well Shiraz will operate on the Mac and that might help, FineCut is available for the Mac and that works out of illustrators 7+. FineCut is great, so simple and has a lot of features.

You can get Corel for the Mac but it seems that FineCut have not listed it.

The JV3 is a small to medium production machine and is designed well.

[Peter Normington]

Dave you have always been well versed on print, and costs.
I know this is a big ask but here goes anyway…..
If I spent £15k on print and cut kit. How many square yards a week would I need to print and cut per week, including all running costs, to give me a net profit of £30K Ignoring rent rates and general overheads.

Peter

[John Childs]

Peter,

Whilst you are waiting for Dave……

What you really need to know before you can work out those sort of sums is how much you can charge for print in your area. It won’t help by budgeting for a sale figure of, for example, £50 per metre if your local competition is selling at £40.

Only then can you work out a likely net profit figure.

[David Rowland]

I dont know Peter, however our first printer was £45K ish, did we make a profit… your guess is good as mine. However it did bring customers to us as we was one of the first in North Devon to have such a machine. Our client base increased because of the flexabilitiy.

Its so easy to print, dry & (maybe cover with laminate/clear) and then apply to fascia/vehicle. Time saving = huge cost benefit. If your multilayering lots of stuff and weeding then you save there.

We possibly print about 4-10mtrs a day or every other day. Nothing huge but the re-sale is charged good to make our money back + profit.

We would be lost without a dig!

[Peter Normington]

Thanks guys, what I am really trying to find out, is the true costs of print.
I know there are variables, but the variables are more complex with print than just cut vinyl. So to cut it down to basics, how much would it cost to print an average of 4 square m per day over 260 days. Taking into account, consumables at average market price, maintenance, and depreciation? The companies that sell the machinary rarely give the real life cost. Knowing a figure like this, I could then extrapolate the profit margin etc.

Peter

[David Rowland]

the maintenance and depreciation is the one, who knows… the plotter will be less value after 3-4 years. UV ink will take over by then. Maintenance, you might have noticed that I try to do that myself. Put back about £1500 every two years but the contracts are normally about £1000-1500 per year.

INK
costs 4mtr square at 100% on each nozzle (solid black muck) = about a 15-20!
cost 4mtr square at text mixed with a picture on clear (about 40% coverage) would be about a tenner.

MATERIALS
say £200 for 50mtr… 25p per linear mtr length * 1.5mtr wide.. that sounds too cheap.. i might have that wrong as i am at home..

our re-sale i will tell u via pm

[John Childs]

Ah, right.

I too have difficulty in trusting figures from salespeople so I got these from someone with no axe to grind. Ink = £2.50, Vinyl = £1.50, Laminate = £1.00. That gives a total of £5.00 per metre, so I’m working on £6.00.

Never mind depreciation, how soon do you want payback bearing in mind the rapid obsolescence with this type of kit. I reckon two years, so work on £7.500 pa.

So, your costs for 1040 metres (4 metres per day for 260 days) are going to be…

Materials = £6240
Equipment cost = £7500
Maintenance = £600

Total of £14340

Add a contingency and you are there.

Does this help?

[Robert Lambie]

i will try answer a bit better later… but…
ink on vinyl at qaulity, i estimate “ink” at about £6 then there is vinyl. cost on that depends on what you pay of course.
most “within a few pounds per cart” pay same for ink. thats unless you go bulk of course.
banner printing per square metre is about £2.20-£2.40 per square metre, thats ink only.

[Nick Minall]

Does the equipment cost include a laminator John.

Nick.

[Peter Normington]

Thanks john,
so if we did 4m per day we are looking at 13.5 quid pm costs (app)
That sounds more realistic than some figures I have seen.

peter

[Peter Normington]

I was including that in the 15k nick (entry level cadet + lam)
Peter

[John Childs]

Edited ‘cos Peter’s answered already. Must learn to type faster.

I love this type of exercise and wonder how many current printer owners would have bought, or even worse, leased, some kit if they had known the true costs.

Especially as we haven’t even considered labour costs yet. 😀

[Nick Minall]

And that’s the problem, there is all ways better kit!!!!

Nick

[Robert Lambie]

assuming you have a good, powerful computer already. it is fair to say you could set yourself up with a good printer, software/rip & laminator for about £12000. based on 30″ wide model.

[David Rowland]

figures are good above folks.. the sq price figures from our supplier have been fairly good.

Now comes vehicle wrapping!!!! now that is a much different figure!

[Robert Lambie]

how do you mean on the v-wrap mate?

[David Rowland]

i mean… we ‘used’ to use Avery 1005, well not exactly £2 sq mtr lol
Think my collegues been trying out Ri-wrap, not sure what progress yet.

[Robert Lambie]

there are a few good alrounders for wrapping. grafityps a good choice. im trying oracals new command form wrap. so far im impressed. will keep you posted. i havent yet tried ritramas.

[David Rowland]

i guess your waiting for ‘dry’ weather 🙄

[Stephen Morriss]

I bought a Cadet, was a bit worried about costs etc but decided to go ahead anyway.

I’ve got loads of extra work because of it, including artist wanting prints off my old printer so that’s also getting more use.

Clipart type work is much easier, no weeding and fitting together, like 1/2 hour instead of a morning.

There are loads of uses for a printer, you just have to get used to it and you also need to learn about colour management.

In all I’d not be without it now, I wouldn’t have bought it if there had been someone close to me with one, I’d have just subed it out and not had the worry of ownership but I’m out on a limb at Kirkby Stephen.
I did hear about a new company in Kendal that just do large format printing the other day though, apparently their doing a load of stuff for Reebok.

[David Rowland]

Hi
I just been in the unit… gave the printer a quick start to stop nozzle cloggin and the rest of the building is so damn frozen, I have a heater in the print room where the materials are so that helps from becoming bad.

It was minus 11 last night… so hopefully I wont need to see the printer again, the printer did need some headcleans but is working now. Our ink cartridges are low and forgot to get some good stock in so hope it will be okay.