versacam print costs?

[Graham.Scanlan]

you could try basing your selling price around 55.00 pound a square mtr and you wont be far wrong..

[johnlewis]

cheers moonbrat, nice to know what the printed vinyl sells for in the uk but im working with a mate, he’s knocking em out im making them and we r splitting the profit. so im trying to find out an accurate cost for the ink so im not ripping myself or him off

[Rodney Gold]

Depends on coverage and resolution but the averate is about 15ml per sq meter (from 12-20) or 1.5ml per sq ft. Carts cost $75 or so in america , I believe about 60 quid in UK , they effectively contain about 205ml (call it 200) thus its 300 quid per litre , 4.5 quid per sq meter or 45 pence a sq ft. Thats a reaslitic costing.
I would love to get 55 quid a sq meter for raw output (IE just printed) , Im sure its only achievable in places where there is no competiton or one does small one off’s
Over here in South Africa , a good price is about 30 quid and it goes as low as 7 quid a sq m for billboard , generally running to 12 quid for large runs

[Bill Dewison]

So at the rate of £30 a linear metre, with a cost of say a fiver a metre, you’re looking at doing 400 metres to earn back what it cost for the machine, minus a laminator? Am I working that out right, as that sounds pretty good!

Cheers, Dewi

[johnlewis]

cheers lads, very helpful
rodney don’t you think that a meter will take more than 20ml of ink, these r really colorful, pure mg , cy , black
cheers

[johnlewis]

also is the 30 quid for just the print or print and vinyl
cheers

[Rodney Gold]

You will never use more then 20ml , unless you use the overprint options or have a huge ink loading and print dark colours full coverage.

The 30 quid is per square meter including vinyl and print. costs dont include material wastege , tests etc. Decent material costs about 3.5 quid a sq meter and with wasteage etc , your WORST print cost will not be more than about 9 quid per sq meter , perhaps up to 10-11 on real premium polymeric stuff?

So you really make about 20 quid gross profit and with leasing , operator etc , most likely about 10 quid nett – so to pay back a 10 grand machine you need to do about 1000 sq meters.
Realistically , you can do about 60-80 sq meters a day on a soljet and about 1/2 that or less on a versacam – lets say 25 sq meters – IE you need about 4-5 months of constant work to pay a versacam back.

Print and cut can command far higher prices , up to 60 quid or more a sq meter for small decals etc and print /lam/cut can get you up to 100+ quid a sq meter on small stuff.
We would charge about 50p on a 8cm x 5cm overlammed die cut decal , IE about 125 a sq meter – we would use top grade polymeric + high res printing + premium cold cast overlam and would guarantee the decal for at least 3 years and market it as “indestructible” tuffguarded. (it actually even withstands acetone etc)

For a 1″ round unlammed decal on a medium quality vinyl , we would come in at about 4p for a qty of 5000+ – around 60 quid a sq meter.
cutting takes a lot of time and lamming/cutting uses a lot of material thats wasted. (premium lams cost us about 2 quid per sq meter)

You can easily convert from expensive eco-sol inks and then pay less than 100 quid a litre for inks , thus reducing your print costs to at worst 2 quid a sq meter (10 sq ft per sq meter) if you got volume work on a constant basis.

We dont compete in the banner/billboard/high vol low rez market as we cant come near the 10-15 quid a sq meter selling price that is the norm here and don’t really want that type of work.

If you dome the output then the prices and profits are spectacular. Domed output goes for about 300 quid a sq meter and all it costs is the labour and doming material
Doming material costs about 10 quid a kilo in bulk and a kilo covers 900 sq inches , (about 2/3rd of a sq meter) so total costs are about 25-30 quid per sq meter.
Printing and cutting on HTM (media that you can print and heat press onto t-shirts) is also lucrative at about 60 quid per sq meter , with media costing about 8 quid per sq.
Its a lot better to find specialist niche market and thus very profitable apps with a machine like a versacam.

[johnlewis]

thanks barry really helpful,
I’m gonna work my cost from your information,
i pay 85 euros for a cartridge = 880 ml for 340 euros, 880ml /20ml per meter = 44 meters, 340 euros/ 44 meters ink cost = 7.7 euros per linear meter
i think thats correct
thanks again mate
ps what’s domed material

[Rodney Gold]

Hiya , not per linear meter , per sq meter. Bear in mind 20ml is a worst case scenario too.
Doming applying a clear resin atop something , surface tension lets it run to the edges and stop there and form a dome or a lens on top of the graphic. Stuff you see on upmarket badges , the clear covering on key fobs and the like.
http://www.mockridge.com has examples and a description and equipment for doming.

[johnlewis]

cheers mate just found a page on it
thanks again very helpful

[asifnmalik]

I was originally told £5/m2 by roland (being truthful, makes a change), our costs have worked out to around £4/m2 on average. It all depends how you design the banner or vinyl. Try not to use full 100% coverage, as far as the customer is concerned even if the ‘job’ contains 50% coverage then it is ‘full colour’.

[johnlewis]

cheers, i find i have to lower the ink anyway to get good results i seem to use mostly the generic profile with my own tweaking, i lower the head speed to 250 and uni direction print, also lower the total ink to 170, and clear the color curve adjustment to 0 works a treat for my versa, comes off the machine touch dry instantly and the colors look like the screen, I use a one eye display screen calibrator so i know the colors on the screen r true ones
uk roland dealers r more honest than spanish ones though i was told 150 meters to a full set of inks, from the helpful info from the guys on here i worked it out to just under 40 m
cheers john

[popester]

Hiya, we work out of Mallorca and deal with several companies that provide prints on verscamms, they charge around 85 euros per square meter to the public, we manage to squeeze some discount though!
Hope this helps with your pricing
Steve

[Rodney Gold]

You are being totally ripped off at 85 euros per sq meter – even half of that is not trade price. (unless of course they are using premium cast polymeric with a matching overlam , doing your artwork etc etc)

[Freddy.Tait]

mod-edit – please use the correct forum when requesting quotes/prices from other members admin@uksignboards.com
………………………………………………………………….

i have been stopped from asking what people would charge me per meter
for trade work this is not a quote this is an enquire along the same thread
the pricing and passing on to customers must be aloud
please reply
to this list

also what happeneed to the PPM facility (taken away or just resting)

p.s.
come on its not a police state yet?

thanks from freddy checkout my details if thats aloud.

moderator comments welcome