Printing onto a banner? Which Printers

[Peter Normington]

Thats quite an odd question gav, the answer would depend on how many banners you have to print and what timescale.

If its only a short run I would buy them in, 10 x 2 full colour finished banners of high quality can be bought for about £35 + vat

Peter

[Gav]

Thanks for the info Peter. I am more interested in getting the equipment so i can start producing them myself.

[Chris Dowd]

Hi Gav,

If 2′ width is the maximum your looking at, then the Cadet will handle that, however, if your looking for wider then there are several printers out there. We have a Seiko Colorpainter 64S (now HP9000) which prints 64", we use Xerox 550gsm banner which is 63" wide, and print on average 15-20 rolls of banner a month on it.

We also have a welder and eyelet machine for finishing, so keep the whole job in-house.

Chris.

[Peter Normington]

Sorry Gav, I though because you specified the size it was for a specific job.

The banners I buy are top quality and printed on a Roland versacam.
but I can only vouch for the product, not the machine.
but an 8 x 2 is an odd size for a printer. most now start at 750mm (3′)
but if you went for a wider format, you could print 2 at the same time, say a 54" machine (allowing for hems)

Peter

[Chris Dowd]

quote Peter Normington:

most now start at 750mm (3′)

Peter, so it’s you that give us men a bad name for exaggerating sizes! 😀 😀 😀

[Peter Normington]

quote Chris Dowd:

quote Peter Normington:

most now start at 750mm (3′)

Peter, so it’s you that give us men a bad name for exaggerating sizes! 😀 😀 😀

Sorry, who’s bothered about the odd six inches 😀

760mm = 29.92 inches

Peter

[John Simpson]

As Peter says there are firms out there that can print them far cheaper that we can (approx £35) because that is all they do, they don’t make fascia signs, or letter vehicles or wrap vehicles………all they do is printed banners or lettered banners. They are geared up only for that purpose so they can produce them far cheaper than those of us with printers can do.

All you have to do is the design & email to them, approx a week later they turn up on your door step. All you do is put on your mark up & phone the customer to say they are ready……….what could be better.
No paying out approx £10 – £30,000 for a printer, then you need to buy an eyelet machine & a plastic welder or industrial sewing machine.

I USED to print my own banners, but now i have found this firm that Peter & I are on about i wouldn’t even bother switching on my printer for that price, (£35)

Another major thing to think about is when you have your own printer what happens when the dam thing lets you down & needs repairing (when it’s out of warranty) average costs for repairs approx £1,000.

Just think how many banners you would need to print at £35 each to make enough profit to pay that bill.

Take my advice sub out the work & put a healthy profit margin on top, sit back & let someone else worry about repairs, breakdowns & deadlines.

Do yourself a favour go on a wrapping course after you have bought your printer & learnt how to use it, & specialise in printing vehicle wraps……..bigger profit margin & sub out the banners.

sorry to go on but this is all from recent experiences.

Good luck with what ever you decide to do.

L J

[Richard Urquhart]

i have to agree i also use a small firm which prints all my banners at very good prices i can charge my customer double the price i pay and im still cheaper then the signshop down the road

turn around 2-3 days
rich

10,000 printer let me think !!!/????

[Chris Dowd]

John, can’t really see your theory on this one. If you have a printer your just as likely to have a breakdown printing any media, so why stick to just vehicle wraps.

Lets look at a 10′ x 2′ banner – 1.83 square metres, lets say your buying in at £20 per square metre, that’s £36.60, probably £10 carriage, now £46.60, 100% markup £93.20 and you’ve made a profit of £46.60.

Now whats that cost you on your own printer?

On average, probably £5 per square meter ink and PVC so £9.15, half an hour to trim, hem and eyelet for one member of staff, £7.50 tops so £16.65. Sell it out at the same price (£93.20) and a nice profit of £76.55.

Okay, so you have wear and tear on your printer, but you still got that happening anyway with all the other printing your doing.

I really cannot see the point in subbing anything out when you have the equipment sitting there.

Chris.

[Chris Dowd]

quote Richard Urquhart:

i have to agree i also use a small firm which prints all my banners at very good prices i can charge my customer double the price i pay and im still cheaper then the signshop down the road

turn around 2-3 days
rich

10,000 printer let me think !!!/????

Richard, ask yourself, would you still sub it out if you had a printer?

[Nicola McIntosh]

quote Chris Dowd:

Richard, ask yourself, would you still sub it out if you had a printer?

i wouldnt…cause machine is still working away earning me money while i do other things and without the hassle of sending artwork out and the worry of late deliverys to the customer 😀

nik

[Peter Normington]

Chris it’s all down to number crunching. I could buy a printer for 10k, but then I would have to find it work, I would always look at the most profitable way to gain a return. so if the printer was printing for wraps most of the time, then for the odd banner, it may not be worth buying in the material and other stuff. Numbers work but only if ther are lots of them, so if a company specialises in banners, and can produce them for the now and again market, it more cost effective than doing them yourself.
You could of course argue, that it would be cheaper to produce your own banner material, than buy it in, if you had a big enough market?

horses for courses, Nothing wrong with doing banners, as long as it makes optimum profit for your set up.

I would not advise anyone to buy any capital equipment, unless they at least had a customer to sell to, or were able to afford the risk.

Its quite a bad arguement to say that if you have kit doing nothing, why not use it? it often why start up business goes skint, they undersell the product, and at the end of the month the books dont balance.

Peter

[John Simpson]

1st of all Chris you have to realise that i bought my Rockhopper 1, 4 years ago on lease hire, Just finished paying for it in June. Compered with new printers mine prints so slow it’s unbelievable. I need to replace it i know but it will have to be later not sooner as i have recently bought a laminater & took on the unit next door & replaced 3 computers etc, etc..

Secondly, i have an eyelet machine but no welder or industrial sewing machine, so i find that taking my printed banners to a local "lorry sheet maker" the best way to finish them at a cost of £10 to sew the hem & eyelet them…..i have to pay out for diesel, use of my van & pay Julie half an hours wages to take it to the sheet maker & pay the same again next day to go & collect it.

So it works out far cheaper to sub it out & let us get on with other more profitable work back at the unit.

Yes my printer can & does cause problems recently (since finishing paying for it) whether i am printing banners or wraps, but i allow more time to print wraps where as banners i can sub out & forget about them.

In my situation i still say it’s not only cheaper to sub out but also a dam site easier & less hassle.

I pay about £26 for 6′ x 2′ up to about £39 for 10′ x 3′, as i say not worth me doing my own unless i have nothing else to do.

L J

[Chris Dowd]

quote Peter Normington:

Its quite a bad arguement to say that if you have kit doing nothing, why not use it? it often why start up business goes skint, they undersell the product, and at the end of the month the books dont balance.

Totally disagree Peter. The chances are if you have the kit most people have financed it in some way, and the repayments still need to be made even if the machine is sitting idle!

I’ve proved by my figures above (and lets face it they are realistic figures) that I would make more margin by printing that banner in-house than you would buy using a 3rd party, and on top of that, I have total control of the job, you don’t. Your in the hands of at least two other people, your supplier and the delivery company!

I can only speak from experience, and since we installed a 64" printer in March this year, we have not looked back. Our Edge seldom gets turned on now, and vinyl cutting is getting less and less, following on from that, we bought a laminator, then a banner welder, all of which are now used almost daily, like I say, just my experience!

With regard to buying in the material, at around £100 per roll for 550gsm banner, you’d be mad not to, lets face it, your 10′ x 2′ banner had almost paid for that roll!!

Chris.

[John Simpson]

must add to that, I really must print a few banners myself soon as i have almost a full roll of 54" banner material stood there doing nothing, (dead money)

L J

[Chris Dowd]

John, I understand what you are saying, however, when you look back at Gav’s original post, he is clearly asking what type of printer would be suitable for printing directly to banner, not "should I buy a printer or sub out". The fact still remains with the printers currently on the market it will still be more beneficial to Gav to print in house!

With regard to welding or sewing, have you tried the bannerbond tape from B & P, before we bought our welder we were using it by the box, ideal for hemming quickly!

Chris

[John Simpson]

quote Chris Dowd:

John, I understand what you are saying, however, when you look back at Gav’s original post, he is clearly asking what type of printer would be suitable for printing directly to banner, not “should I buy a printer or sub out”. The fact still remains with the printers currently on the market it will still be more beneficial to Gav to print in house!
Chris

Yes but what Gav doesn’t say is whether he has taken into account the extra expense on top of a new printer for setting himself up (as you have) to do the finishing of the banners by buying a decent plastic welder or sewing machine. Also does he realise the room he will need to lay out big banners?

IF he is just starting out in this business, i still say he’s better off subbing them out till he’s built up a big enough customer base & tested the water. Then decide if he wants the big expense.
L J

[Nicola McIntosh]

i cant see what the hassle is with this disscusion…. i make more money everyday since buying my cadet…couldnt do so subbing out 😉

nik

[John Simpson]

Sorry Chris forgot to say, no i haven’t tried that make of tape but have tried 2 other makes & i was very disappointed with them. Still think sewing them is strongest way.

L J

[David Rowland]

Well done Chris, our contracts for banner printing dried up so we just use the JV3 for sign making tasks now… but Chris is right about the cost situations, we would never sub out as Chris proved also we have to keep the staff working. However for a smaller outfit who maybe doesn’t have enough time and just want to email the artwork to someone while they are out on another job then I can see the sense in that. Although our printer does work unsupervised quite well.

Interesting deals at Spandex for the Hp9000, I had a flyer through stating around £14-15K i think. Considering they have a good reputation with the Seiko product, I certainly would look over it. But as im from Mimaki backgrounds, they are a good printer but look at the width you need as you can really only buy a printer once and you must get the right one.

Warantys are deadly important on a solvent, but if you start throwing 3rd party ink at it then you may invalidate the waranty, few companies offer contracts with 3rd party ink. Heads are the issue, they can clog with missuse.

The big boys do use cheapest ink and roland printers or they use vuteks which run off cheap ink by standard… vutek’s cost an aweful lot of money and not to mention UV printing lol.

I dont think anyone is posting incorrectly, I think everyone here treats a banner job differently due to their setup, but after 2 years with a JV3 it is certaintly paying itself off easily, just got to consider the payment as another member of staff

i must go home
dave

[John Simpson]

quote Nicola Rowlands:

i cant see what the hassle is with this disscusion…. i make more money everyday since buying my cadet…couldnt do so subbing out 😉

nik

You would Nik, if your cadet was printing wraps or vehicle prints instead.
Just depends on your customer base!

L J

[Chris Dowd]

quote John Simpson:

Yes but what Gav doesn’t say is whether he has taken into account the extra expense on top of a new printer for setting himself up (as you have) to do the finishing of the banners by buying a decent plastic welder or sewing machine. Also does he realise the room he will need to lay out big banners?

Like I said John, we started by using bannerbond tape. The only reason we bought the welder was because we took an order for 125 8′ x 2′ 6" double sided banners!

As for room for big banners, we just finished two 10 mtr x 1 mtr double sided banners on a 10′ bench!

[Nicola McIntosh]

quote Dave Rowland:

I dont think anyone is posting incorrectly, I think everyone here treats a banner job differently due to their setup, but after 2 years with a JV3 it is certaintly paying itself off easily, just got to consider the payment as another member of staff

thats what i was trying to say…….nice one dave 😉

nik

[John Simpson]

quote Dave Rowland:

also we have to keep the staff working.
dave

Who says my staff are stood around? 😉

[John Simpson]

quote Chris Dowd:

As for room for big banners, we just finished two 10 mtr x 1 mtr double sided banners on a 10′ bench!

I have a 20′ x 6′ work table, still not big enough sometimes.

Dave: whats up mate, haven’t you got a home to go too?

nite nite,
L J

[David Rowland]

i came in as the internet router died odly and wanted to test something.. settings in Corel PDF are just not as good as they were in version 11. Corel X3 has a buggy PDF ‘save’ dialog.. crazy.

We have around 8-10mtrs out of 4 tables by 64" side by side.. works a treat and we have a laminator in the centre which we can pull out when not-needed.

[Graeme Speirs]

some people seem to forget that these machines do a hell of a lot more than just banners. A lot of my work of late has been posters, point of sale material, display boards etc. On top of this you can add value to your existing vehicle graphics business by adding on full colour images or part wraps.

This all needed digitally printed which my cadet did very easily.

All well and good subbing out banners but you can bring in constant revenue with a steady customer base for pub posters, shop displays etc.

cheers
graeme

[Chris Dowd]

quote smedia:

some people seem to forget that these machines do a hell of a lot more than just banners.

Quite Graeme, we have just put through 21 roller banner stands this morning, printed on the Kurnow 170 mic solvent media, which is the whole point I’ve been trying to make about if you have the printer – use it!!

[George Kern]

Ive got to agree with Chris on this one, first we bought a Seiko Colorpainter 64s, then the HP9000 (same machine), now we just got a 10000s just for the larger stuff. These machines can turn a big profit in a little amount of time, you just need the incomming workflow to justify buying them. As for the repairs to the machines after warranty, they are costly, we have had two printheads go on our Colorpainter 64s and it was expensive. These machines are workhorses though i have to admit, they run about 16 hours a day non stop so when you consider the work they have produced they have easily paid for themseleves time and time again along with costs to repair them.

[Dennis Van Der Lingen]

george,

just to be curious how’s the 10 000 S ?
does it print the same quality as the 9000S or does the width take something of the the print quality?
i’ve also heard that the hp’s use lot’s of ink. and that if you print a lot the cost of the ink can weigh harder than the lease?

comments would be much appriciated as we are looking into the 9000 and 10000 for next year or so.

regards

Dennis