Summa DC3 Plus

[Robert Lambie]

sorry mate i cant help on this one.

when you say reload and contour cut is this a lazer alighning function to registration marks?

henry mentioned a few months back that his “summa cutter” has that function & its seems to work very well. obviously the same makes of machine so i would imagine the results would be as good too.

when you ask what else compares? do you mean in cost or as a thermal printer etc. what type of work are will you be taking on with this machine?
it may help others when replying. 😉

[hedge]

According to sales reps, with the DC3, you could not reinsert the media for cutting once it was removed (for laminating for instance). Supposedly the DC3 plus allows this.

I’m looking for other thermal transfer options – I’m just not familiar with what is available in this price range ($20,000). I like what the Summa seems to offer but I am scared of the cost of foils and the cost of vinyl (since it won’t take smaller rolls and recommends high priced media). Our primary uses would be vehicle graphics and outdoor banners. Much of my fleet graphics are for a local municipality therfore I would like to be able to print on reflective as well. The reviews of earlier models said there were problems printing on the “orange peel” texture of a quality 3M reflective.

This is a very new market for me and I need help comparing apples to apples.

[Bob Gilliland]

Hedge,

Does the DC3 have the ability to print directly to banner material, or would you print on vinyl and then apply to banner stock? This could be an influcing factor on the proper device. Especially important if banner volume will outpace vehicle graphics.

The device is very attractive from a price to feature perspective. I perceive that if you will be doing a lot of four color process, larger format work, this to be an acceptable machine. Spot color support is greater today then in any other time in the history of the entire DC line.

Your mention of cost, while a factor, shouldn’t be the ultimate consideration; depending on your business practice and your view on pricing that is. “I” don’t pay for consumables, the client does. 😉 I know what my material cost are, I know what the labor cost are, I know what overhead is, and I know how much profit I want. This helps to establish the base price for any possible project. If the market won’t support it, I don’t do it. I’m interested in making money, not staying busy. 😀

If you haven’t already established a market, seek a subcontractor to work with at first. More then likely you won’t be making “big bucks” on the jobs, however, you won’t have the finical responsibility either. This can help you determine what device will be best for you, if the market will support it, learning how to use and setup for the device before ever putting into service, and countless other benefits.

[Dave Standen]

Hi Hedge
Ribbons – You’re concerned with regard to the cost of DC3 ribbons. Be assured that the prices being charged for DC3 ribbons makes it the most economical wide format thermal transfer printer available at this time – in the world. (Unless someone knows better) The ribbons are priced to keep the likes of my company out of that part of the market – and it’s worked. Nearest comparison would be Gerber Max on ribbon sizes. It’s hassle to work out – but sit down and work out cost per running Metre or Yard of ribbon. I can’t provide a DC3 ribbon much cheaper than Summa OEM (so why buy mine?) – that’s why there are no alternative ribbons available for the DC1 and DC3 (that and OEM ribbons being chipped)
Media – You will definitely find another media that is more economic than 3M. I’m not familiiar with all suppliers in USA – but you could start with http://www.fdcfilms.com There will be many others. Reflectives will need some experimenting with – but 3M do have the rep. – try LG.
DC3 Abilities. It is probobly the best! Nearest would be Gerber Max (Expensive & No Cutter, & Expensive ribbons – compare to DC3!)
Next to examine maybe Mattan – prints 1Metre wide with 1Metre wide foils. Expensive foils again, expensive machine. For wide format – DC3 is the one – unless we start to talk about inkjet – that’s another subject …..
DC3 does print on banner material – but like all Durachrome’s – it likes a soft surface. Of course there’s always the subject Inkjet or Thermal Transfer? But you seem to have answered that one
Regards
Dave Standen

[hedge]

Great input. Dave… thanks.

Are you familiar with the Nautilus? It is similarly priced. Claims to have inexpensive ribbons, takes media from 5.5 inches to 39 inches, is a print/ cut, and can have media reinserted.

If this machine has any kind of a reputaion and has positive feedback, it would seem that Nautilus has solved the …… few, but significant………drawbacks of the DC3.

I’m starving for information!!! FEED ME!

[Dave Standen]

Hi Hedge
Nautilus is fine – but in the Roland PC60 class. It’s slow. Each print band is completed in CMYK, then on to the next, making a slow job because the machine is constantly changing cartridges. It’s not realy a competitor to DC3. Ribbons are possibly cheaper than DC3. Again I can’t offer a useful saving on these ribbons or those for DC3. To be honest – Large format thermal transfer – you’re stuck with DC3 for economy, and possibly also for quality! Your only other alternative is to look into Inkjet
Regards
Dave Standen

[Lorraine Buchan]

Hedge,

Ref: the nautilus… maybe worth getting the supplier to give you contact no.s for some customers who have the machine.

In the UK i don’t think the machine has faired very well, and i have only heard the bad things about the machine.

Rodney from South Africa, has said in the past that his supplier wont stock the nautilus – has to be a good reason for that.

Maybe worth a search on the site to have a read through the past posts.

[Rodney Gold]

Yeh , and they still refuse to stock it. There was another thread here , susequently deleted , about the nautilus with nothing at all good to say about it. No point in taking a chance hoping it’s been improved. Evidently thew software is really really bad.
I dont want to open a can of worms , but there really is no point going thermal what with the new inkjets. I have both and the thermal printer has faded into obsolescence (PC60) vs the Roland Soljet. Maybe a gerber is still an option…?

[Neil Kelly]

Do prints fdrom a dc 3 need laminating as sugested in hedges original post
I am looking for a machine that will print graphics prodominantly for vehicle use. Whats the expected life of a dc3 unlaminated print and a laminated pint. Anyone got any experiance with this machine,
would be great to get some feed back

Neil…

[Rodney Gold]

Giving a customer a gurantee on unlaminated vehicle prints , no matter what the printer is just looking for trouble. UV stability is not the issue at all , or hardly so. The problem is chemical and mechanical attack. Polutants , solvents , cleaning materials will damage most prints. Scratching , road rash , abraisive cleaning etc will also damage them.
Thermal prints ARE more resistant to these damages than inkjet prints , however thermal prints are STILL a layer of resin or wax on a substrate and are not solid right thru the substrate like vinyl.
There are far too many factors beyond your control as to how a customer handles a print on their vehicle to really market yours vs anothers as that much more durable.
Their are folks here who were giving 5 yr warrantees on prints and these are now coming back to haunt em a year or 2 down the line. The problem is that to replace a print is very expensive in terms of stripping and reapplying and the other issue is the fact that although it is patently obvious the print has been abused by the customer , they deny it and it turns ugly between the customer and the signmaker. Apart from that , one of the issues that is coming up here in the local industry in regard to these warrantee claims is that the signmakers involved are claiming they ONLY warranted against fading (and I KNOW that wasnt the case) as well as now actually saying they never guaranteed it , but just said it should last.
An issue you will also face with Thermals is the max size they do and the fact that they are not at all cost competitive with other methods. We have some Thermal prints out there that are years old and look good and have some that havent survived one summer. We use a Roland which is NOT a dc3 but the priciple’s and resins are much of a muchness.
Whatever we DO use and laminate has been totally trouble free and we charge a lot more for lamination and actually promote it as a feature (We call it a tuffguarded label)
We use a cold pressure laminate , but are now evaluating a product from one of the urethane makers which is sort of a 2 part elastomeric liquid lamination that seems easy to apply (roller or spray) and dries well (albeit you cant mess with the graphic for at least 4-5 hrs ) doesnt affect the graphic or inks and is really cheap , around 20pence per sq meter. It is uv and scratch and chemical resistant. If you do get a DC3 , then its worthwhile to at the very least apply some liquid type protection if you dont want to get a dedicated laminator
If you do get a laminator , then whatever printer you buy will be hugely more profitable if it has a print/laminate/die cut workflow available

Vehicle graphics is such an overtraded and cut throat market , why not concentrate on the far more profitable side of digital printing , if you already doing vehicle graphics , then all you are doing is trying to expand an exisiting market with a relatively expensive machine – far cheaper to contract out for the times you need digital . Opening new ones is a little more difficult , but the gains are huge.

[Robert Lambie]

quote :

There was another thread here, subsequently deleted, about the nautilus with nothing at all good to say about it.

Just for the record:
There were a few posts made downing the neutalis. Like Rodney has said, anything mentioned was “not” in its favour. I do know the person posting was far from happy with the machine. I haven’t heard of anyone else in the UK that has the machine (not saying there is not plenty. Just not on this site) so it’s hard to properly weigh up what has been said without another’s opinion.
(the posts were deleted due the person making them having his site registration dropped.
After being advised twice, the registration was dropped because the person was showing hostility to several people on the site within only 6 days of registering. the person in-turn demanded i delete the neutalis posts, WHY? 🙄 )

[Dave Standen]

Hi Neil
Life is not a simple situation – and vehicle graphics do not have a simple life! The view of experienced graphics people in the trade are that you ALWAYS overlaminate vehicle graphics – but of course it’s not that simple.
Perhaps it should be said that graphics being applied to rigid (metal/glass) panels on vehicles should be overlaminated. A curtain-sider wagon printed on an inkjet would not be overlaminated – you would have problems with the flexibity/delaminating and other such considerations.

So it’s not 1 rule fits all.

Flexible sides and such probobly don’t get the same chemical cleaner exposure as the rigid panels.

Will any print stand up to the isopropanol test? – Probobly only thermal transfer prints – but only the test. How about the test being applied every week for 12months? – Would this be the equivalent of a chemical vehicle wash? – Probobly! Would the graphics survive – probobly not.

So I think it’s a combination of requirements that is required. If indeed you are going to overlaminate – Inkjet versus Thermal is pointless – whatever you wish. If you’re producing flexible wagon siders – Inkjet is probobly your only sensible choice. If you only work up to Transit size vans – Gerber Edge may be the best bet. If you want flexibility – maybe an inkjet – you can always overlaminate – but doing that also takes a little thought. Make sure ALL the evaporates are gone before lamination.

The area is full of potential mines – each job should be considered on it’s merits. There no machine available that answers all questions with the one answer.

Rodney speaks from his experience, which may be extreme (lots of UV in SA – but no acid rain or any rain at the moment!) and Rob speaks from his experience in Scotland (Don’t think they’ve heard of UV there – but they’ve got acid rain!)

So what exactly are you considering!
Regards
Dave Standen

[Neil Kelly]

Thermal or ink ? to laminate or not to laminate is that the question ??
Thanks for the feed back chaps..

What I am after is a combination of durability and ease of production, cost is not the main concern, but space is limited, I have concidered an edge 2 but feel that for not much more money I could get a dc3 less joins not as high res but 300 dpi fine for what it would be used for (Functional Signage) my experiance with inkjet is not to good i have a small graftec signjet pro using GO inks and have had poor durability problems even when we have laminated with vinyl. havnt used it for 12 months at the moment all work is subed out to larger print houses that offer print and thermal.
I dont think that moving into large format digital printing is the direction i want to take at the moment. or the market Im set up to deal with.

But I would like to be able to print 10 750 mm x 750 mm prints for the side of 5 transit vans in the morinig 200off 100 mm x 50 mm 2 colour hard hat stickers over lunch and half a dozen A4 faded logo’s for some site boards before I go home for me dinner. We are a full service high st retail sign shop and I want a work horse that will plod a long complimenting the vinyl graphics that we do verry well at.

What i do understand now is that all need laminating if durability is required
but ink and cut or thermal print and cut ?

Your oppinoins and comments will be well received..

Thanks Neil…

[Nigel Fraser]

Well Neil, it sounds like you want just the same sort of machine that I did 15months ago. I was really interested in the DC3 but since it wasn’t available and financially I had to move quickly, I went for the edge2. Whilst this has opened up new markets for me, I can’t help regretting not waiting untill I had at least seen the DC3 in action.
In my opinion from the limited output I have seen, it is a very much more capable machine than the gerber. I have weighed up the thermal/inkjet route for 5years or so and am still confident that thermal was the right route for me to take, having very limited space and no extraction facilities at home ! Also I have no space for a full blown laminator setup and so still buy in large format laminated prints even having spent 20K on the edge !
If I had to make the same decision today, I would be leaning very much toward the DC3 in preference to the edge, not that I have sufficient experience of that machine, but I now know lots more about the edge than any salesperson will ever tell you.
If I was offered 15k for my edge now, I would look very seriously at changing it – nuf said i think 😉

Nigel

[hedge]

Great info, guys! Keep feeding my head!

We’ve talked about the Summa DC3, the Nautilus and the Gerber. Who else makes thermal transfer?

Hedge

[Robert Lambie]

just the roland PC600 left that i am aware of, but not the machine i would advise on for the work you want to take on.. costly to run on anything large. 😉
oops theres the gerber maxx?

[Bob Gilliland]

Following are of some selected color thermal devices. Not all are available anymore, not all are applicable to what everyone wants out of devise.

GCC: Nautilus
Gerber: Edge/Edge2/MAXX/MAXX2
Matan: Sprinter/SprinterB/Spark1612/Spring12
Roland: PC50/PC60/PC600/PC12
Summa: Durachrome/DC2/DC3

There are also a few “smaller” formats such as those made by Brady, Zebra, etc. not listed.

Contrary to what some would lead you to believe, thermal is not dead. Paint was announced dead with the arrival of vinyl, but I still plenty of it around. Thermal is past its hay day, but new devices are still coming, new consumables keep arriving, and it can produce certain product today that others cant or not as easily.

Machines are just a tool; pick the right tool for the job. Wouldn’t want to use a drywall hammer to demolish a building, nor would I want to use a sledge hammer for finishing work. Besides, all of these machines require some “intelligence” on the other side of the keyboard in order to make them sing and produce a profit. That “input” makes such a huge difference most of the time and isn’t listed with the MSRP!?!

Nigel,

Care to list some specifics as to your disappointment with the Gerber device? To add some perspective, might be nice to know what your market is as well.

Guess if I was selling and installing full fleet wraps on large cargo vehicles day in and day out with an Edge, I’d be disappointed as well. A Matan Sprinter may be a better fit for this. If I had very little call for thermal prints, and little need for anything large, perhaps a Roland device would fit the bill. Doing a lot of four color process on the side of standard side vehicles, the Summa device looks attractive.

[Nigel Fraser]

Hi Bob,

I would say that my market for the use of digital printing is quite varied. I do do quite a few “small” label jobs but also some larger format stuff too. Almost all has to be durable i.e. outdoor use and often on vehicles machinery etc.
As I said I looked at the DC3 at the time I ordered my edge but found that a) they were not available at that time b) the UK distributor and Summa themselves were amazingly uninterested in my business. I spoke to Summa direct and they were going to send out print samples etc but I am still waiting ! Also a company called Solutions2 in the UK even booked a demo for me – but when I rang the day before I was due to travel down they said tha machine hadn’t turned up and would call me when it was available – still waiting on that one too 😕
So having gone for the edge I was convinced by the rep for Spandex that the 2 was much superior to the 1 and so this was what I went for.
If I was to list it’s main bad points –

1) Software is really not user friendly or capable given its cost – e.g. today I tried to rotate a bitmap by an arbitary angle to line up with another item and discovered you just can’t do it in Omega ! There are so many other flaws with this software too but I wont list them here in case every one goes to sleep in the maen time.

2) The fact that having sold you a machine that is capable of 600dpi printing you find that any job with either a fade or graduation in has to be printed using a really course dot pitch to avoid terrible banding effects.

3) Having bought a machine that is “three times as fast” as an edge 1 you discover that you can only actually run three times as fast using certain colour cartridges and on certain vinyls.

4) The registration is frequently quite poor between colours – leading to having to spend hours longer trying to make the awful software do what it should do automatically in my opinion – traps, overprints, outlines, bleeds etc.

5) Envision plotter makes some weird noises – always has and apparently it’s quite normal – still my other plotters never made that sort of noise !

6) Why on earth can’t a machine costing this much have a foil end sensor on it ? Is this really necessary that you look at the end of the roll and take a best guess if you’ve got enough, and if not you risk having a complete reprint.

Think that’s my main gripes – In my opinion the gerber software is pants and is the major downfall of the whole setup.
Don’t know if you can tell, but I actually feel a little resentful that I have parted with £22K for this machinery/software and yet have no real cause to ring up and complain because the answer is “they all do that sir” !

That’s just my thoughts anyway – I know people who use these machines much more than me and seem to accept the faults readily, guess it depends who actually pay for it to an extent.

Nigel