Summa DC3+ ….questions

[Rodney Gold]

I really dont think an expensive thermal printer is a good option , you already have a thermal and the addition of a small inkjet print and cut will open many more markets to you than just another thermal. In terms of maintenance , the Roland Soljet/Versacam machines require virtually none , certainly no fiddly cleaning cycles and flushes. Digital printers these days have come a long way.
We have both thermal and inkjet (roland thermal – eeeuw) but are findinding that most anything the thermal can do , so can the inkjet at vastly reduced consumable costs(in the order of 1/5th to 1/10th the cost) apart from which we can print on an a hugely enhanced variety of materials.

[Dennis Van Der Lingen]

i own a summa dc3, i’ll try to answer as best as i can.

materials:
the manual says only to use 3m 50 series or 100 series in white or clear.
looking at the price of the media and the ribbons that’s not a good idea, i know it’s the customer that’s paying in the end but you’ll price yourself out of the market if you do, i asked my supplier if they had anything that as compatible with it, they didn’t know so we agreed that they would send me 1 square meter of every digital white they produced, we then printed a file on all of them (thin line, spot colour and a photo) then compared all the prints and made our choice, of course we had to send the printed materials back to the supplier who then made their own ratio on it and used it in their tabels for compatibility, we ended up with a digital soft calandered white, wich we use for everything, it’s suitable for a wrap and priced low enough that we can even use it for those “use and throw away” plates.

the media it can cope with has to be 1meters wide, no more and no less.

maintenance is reduced to cleaning the “sticky roll” (cleans the vinyl just before it prints it’s first band) once a day

the summa can:
-print and cut
-print only
-cut with opos

it cannot:
-cut only like a plotter (tried it and turned out an expensive joke: it goes beserk on the media totally destroying it) not funny 👿

the software that it runs on is called color control, it’s a rip software like mistral or the production managers of say flexi, omega,

omega does not support the dc3
flexi does (when given the propre profile)

it prints suberbly up to an apparent 600 dpi, very vivid colours and
durable. it’s totally self automated: switches it’s own colors, aligning the media,… it can run actually unattended (not like some inkjets that only say in the manual it can and in real life cannot)

and the greatest plus of the machine is that it’s a summa, doesn’t break an runs steadily for ages, not to forget the world’s best tech support, all errors and hitches are solved by email free of charge.

some of the work i made with the summa on the digital white from my suplier can be found on the folowing links:

https://www.uksignboards.com/viewtopic.php?t=17465

https://www.uksignboards.com/viewtopic.php?t=16361

https://www.uksignboards.com/viewtopic.php?t=16845

hope i’ve helped you,

if ther’s anything else just ask

[Marekdlux]

Thank you Rodney and Dennis,
I have presented my boss with some more information and we are actually now looking in to going with a Roland Versacamm. He is still weary of inkjets and lamination but I think it will be better for us in the end. I was under the assumption that he really wanted to go with thermal, but today he told me it is basically up to me what I want.
The Versacamm is now claiming the new Eco-Sol max inks are 3 year outdoor durable. Anyone have experiences with this?
I am off to do a search, but in the mean-time if anyone has some opinions that would be great.
-Marek

[Stephen Sill]

marek –
I’m sorry I’m late to the party but i wanted to share one divergence from Dennis’s good summary. You can cut only with the DC3+ but you can’t do it through the color control software. To do it I use my regular cutter software (in my case, Vinyl Express 7.0) and add the profile for the DC3+ to the output options. The VE sotware is just a package around the Scanvec-Amiable engine.

I have found the Summa over the past year to be troublefree and the output quality superb. One other thing – the life of the unlaminated product is supposed to be greater than 5 years. I have a piece hanging in direct sunlight to see how it holds up.

Dennis is correct that Summa’s media is really expensive, and I’m always on the lookout for ways to do it for less. But I’ve found that I can factor the cost into my customers projects even in the least expensive projects and still have a good margin because of the reduced labor cost. For example I did a set of 4 square magnetic signs this weekend each of them 12" on a side. My cost including the magnetic sheeting was around $14, and I charged $48 for them. I had less than an hour of time in, including the layout and application. The end product is full color, photographic quality with crystal-clear text.

Now if I could just find customers for 30 sets a month I could retire from my real job! 🙂

[Sead]

just for inform suma users
tonight i read on an european web-site about new SUMA DC4 printer:
127.5 cm, 600 dpi, 6 sqm/h, …

new thermal printer after few years