how good are graphtec plotters?

[stuart]

HI Eddie

I have a CE2000 a 24″ version and its been going pretty well for the past three years. I have had two occasions to call about faults, the engineer who is incidently directly employed by the firm, was with me within three hours and seemed to know his stuff.

Fault one was when the machine was two weeks old, one of the motors had been fitted slightly askew putting too much pressure on the spindle which obviously knackered the bearings. New motor carried by the engineer was fitted and I was up and running again within 4 hours of my call to them.

Second fault was only a few weeks ago, the maintenance agreement was about and the machine was “grumbling” or making a groaning noise. Again engineer was outin a few hours. There was no evidence as to this noise but he serviced and lubricated everything. The screws tyhat hold the plotter head to the rail were slightly loose and that seemed to sort the problem and I got a service too.

Excellent machine, runs off a bit if you try to cut too long at once. As with most plotters though we just cut a length roughly to what is going to be plotted and run that through and it helps.

Blades are a bit pricey for genuine ones and the pens are ridiculous price, we just wrap some tape round a pen till it fits. I think Gray posted a pic once of himself using this method too.

anyway I have nothing but good reports of the machine and glowing reports of the company.

Stuart

[Steve Broughton]

Eddie I must say in the defence of Roland machines, I have a PNC-1200, had it for 7 years never a problem with it (Touch wood! 😆 ) other than replacing the cutting strips and new pinch rollers nothing, faultless performance 6 days a week, the new machines yes are faster but not THAT fast, if they where that fast you’d meet yourself coming back the other way 😆 I’ve seen the Graphtec machines, never used one, but first impressions are they are not built as solidly as my Roland but saying that the newer Rolands seem a bit iffy too, what reason do you want a new machine, bigger one ? if so I would look at the Summa ones they look very solid, have a word with Sparky he’s had a Summa D60 for a bit now see what he says, you can get very good prices on Summa machines so I hear. 😎

[Sparky]

Hi m8,

Yep Mr. Broughton is right 😉

I’m one for change, rarely want the boredom of replacing something with a new, identical model but the D60 is something i would without question. 2 years of hard use now & never a foot wrong, just does the job (FAST) day in day out without altering settings unless i use reflective or flourescent.
Take a look m8, you could do a lot worse !!

HTH

JOhn

[Alastair K]

I spoke to Graphtec at Sign UK and they said there’s a new CE3000-24 out soon, so you might be able to get a discount on the CE2000…

[eddie cotter]

thanks to all, i am a bit wiser now 😉