Im about to buy a new cutter. Help?

[David Rogers]

I’ve been using my summa D120 for 4 1/2 years now. Besides changing blades and requiring a new holder it’s been totally rock solid & trustworthy.

It’s up there in the performance, accuracy & reliability stakes with the likes of Graphtec, Roland, Mimaki.

The specs on them are impressive – even more so now that prices have tumbled.

Dave

[John Childs]

Nothing wrong with Summa.

[Kevin Flowers]

Summa excellent machine, had the 610 for coming on 7 years & the 1220 for 5 years. The Pharos have the opus system from the high end Summa’s
Been looking at the Pharos 160 to go with a Versa Art.

Kev

[Peter Normington]

quote Kevin Flowers:

Summa excellent machine, had the 610 for coming on 7 years & the 1220 for 5 years. The Pharos have the opus system from the high end Summa’s
Been looking at the Pharos 160 to go with a Versa Art.

Kev

Did you buy a versa art Kev?

[Robert Lambie]

Summa cutters have a very good reputation from what i read on the boards. So a good investment im sure…

i personally cannot fault Graphtecs, we renewed both our cutters around summer last year and bought two graphtecs 54inch wide. as a uksg member ben, ide suggest comparing your prices against what you as a member will pay for a graphtec on par with the summa model you have in mind.

[Paul Humble]

Im with Rob on the Graphtecs. Ive got a Graphtec 5000-120 and a Roland GX-24 and lean towards the Graphtec everytime.

Ive now got my Roland set up just for garment vinyls.

[Kevin Flowers]

Peter
looking at the figures at the moment

Kev

[Chris Wool]

my first choice would be a S CLASS but the price difference between that and a graphtec fc7000 was to much so went for the graphtec.
now would be a fc8000 if the price of the sclass has come down give it a good look

chris

[Colin Crow]

I have an s class and a fc7000. For speed the graphtec just edges it but the main difference everyone here notices is the noise. While the summa is not particularly noisy, the graphtec is near silent by comparison. If you have to use the cutter in an environment where you need to talk or use the phone then the my recommendation would be the Graphtec.

I also had a D60 but this doesn’t approach either of the above for speed or ease of use. Not sure how the Pharos compares as not had one of these.

Colin

[John Childs]

quote Colin Crow:

For speed the graphtec just edges it

Colin, do you consider speed important?

I ask only because we never run our cutters at anything like top speed.

[Jason Xuereb]

Graphtec FC8000-160 here. Already have run through a good 500 metres through it. We even did just over 50 metres of floor graphics with that non slip laminate.

It has some quirks I wish graphtec would address but once its running you can stop it. We’ve left it over night to run off about 30 metres come in the morning and its done. I have mine running at top speed at the moment 105 and its fine. Scares you abit lol when it feeds the media but I keep my segments short.

Perf cut feature is a beauty as well we use it all the time.

We’ll probably add another one very soon.

[Robert Lambie]

we always run ours at top speed also…
if we are doing very small text as in 1inch high or smaller we will change the setting to cut in tangental mode which does it spot on.

[Jason Xuereb]

I should mention we only run print and cut no cut vinyl.

[Colin Crow]

John, a lot of what we do are repeats of large quantities of very small text. We cannot run at full speed but instead have to work out an optimium speed versus quality by trial and error, trying to maintain a certain quality at the best speed the cutter will allow.

For the smallest text we are running at around 30% full speed and because of the repeat work it is easy to tell which is quickest. For example, 16 sets of one file would take the summa S class 30 mins, the Graphtec around 25 mins but the D60 nearly 2 hours!

I would also say that the graphtec seems to be looking after its blades better too with fewer changes needed.

Colin