[Brian Hays]

Surely it is better than the antiquated Graphix Advantage?

Now you come to mention it a lot of our customers have had problems importing our stuff into Omega.

I’ll rephrase it *G* hardware has a good reputation in th UK.

[Brian Hays]

I think you will find it is more down to price than the way *G* products are perceived!

I think for the most part *G* products have a good reputation in the UK.

[Brian Hays]

You mean you make a profit?! 😮

[Brian Hays]

I think he is mostly referring to the Gerber Omega software. I will keep my opinions on that to myself 😕

[Brian Hays]

I preferred the node editing on Sign Studio! 😀

Quite a few of our customers still use it as well, despite having Signlab.

[Brian Hays]

Manage favorite fonts only works if you use version 4.95 text layout.

Click on the *A* text tool and you will see a blue *F* appear above the selection tool, click the F. You will then see the font dectetive come up, from here you can create your own font groups, so you can have a group for the fonts you use most often.

If you want to totally remove fonts from your system…

VEF fonts must be deleted manually by removing them from their folders.

True Type Fonts need to be deleted from within the control panel.

Once you have deleted any fonts you will need to reset the font database. You can do this by going to File, then Install Fonts. You will then need to click the search button & reinstall the fonts left on your system.

[Brian Hays]

What version of Corel are you using Gray? I have version 9 & it works fine with that if you use the PS,PRN,EPS Encapsulated PostScript filter.

[Brian Hays]

Gray I have a friend that has done quite a few curtain sided trucks. He uses Mactac rigid paint mask then rollers the curtains with screen ink.

He has used banner ninyl before but has experienced quite a lot of shrinking with them.

[Brian Hays]

No need to apologise for not having a use for the Beelines cd’s Lorraine. Lots of people say the same as you, but we also have lots of people that use them all the time. You are right that they are quite expensive. If you have the right work it doesn’t take too long to get your moneys worth though. To be honest we don’t sell very many of them, I know in North America there is a company that sells literally hundreds of them though. We have asked the Danish company that do the cd’s for something a little more serious as far as trades peaople & stuff is concerned. All the images are drawn by their own artists who must be very tallented. It is something they told us they were going to look into doing. Hopefully they will do something soon 🙂

[Brian Hays]

Cowdeneath popular for football? You are havin a laff Gray!

[Brian Hays]

It’s like everything with Cadlink they announce stuff before it’s ready. We have been told it’s not gonna be ready for end users until September.

[Brian Hays]

He don’t want one of those mad Aussie road trains Gray, there won’t be enough room! 😉

[Brian Hays]

You can try SMP-Sign Makers Products, they manufacture their own sign frames. I think they are pretty competitive & it’s good stuff.

Contact Mike Smart.

Tel: 01508 531183
Fax: 01508 551139

[Brian Hays]

The PC-600 isn’t gonna print the same colours as on the screen. The best thing to do is make up a colour chart & print it so you can see how the colours are going to come out. There should be a file "chart.cdl" in your signlab folder, it isn’t that clever though so i recommend you make up your own.

Rob may know a better way being a PC60/600 fan and all. He is very close to his PC60 takes it for walks & all sorts 😀

[Brian Hays]

I have set myself right up for this one! corrected by Rob, I am off to hang my head in shame! 😳

[Brian Hays]

There is a difference between a typo and a spelling mistake. That’s my excuse and I am sticking to it 8)

[Brian Hays]

Maybe a good idea Rob i’ll at it to the list 🙂

When I said about us putting the wheels on I meant like standard wheels not boy racer alloys 😀

We have also done the tinting thing with the windows, it’s a shame that they wouldn’t be compatible if we did it to all the vans.

[Brian Hays]

We have found that as well mate, nobody believes us when we tell them though. Will you stand as my character witness?! 🙄

I am trying to put more detail on. For example on all the new vehicles you will notice we have been putting wheel trims on. It is surprising how much better they look when printed with wheel trims.

You lot worry about what people think when you are feeling and looking at signs. You should see the looks I get when taking pictures of wheels! 😆

[Brian Hays]

Errrr we don’t decide as such mate!

If they are on our artwork they go where the artwork says they are. Some of the stuff has been done with photos which tend to make them a bit more acurate as far as badges are concerned. In my very limited experience as a signmaker and speaking to local ones here they often remove badges anyway. Lots of them are just stickers these days aren’t they? At least the model badges anyway.

Have you got into bother with a badge that wasn’t on an outline then?

[Brian Hays]

Grrrrrr! 👿

I was just starting to think you were ok Gray!

[Brian Hays]

It’s the warranty that is gonna be expensive after the 1st year Rob. They were talkin like 4k, I think maybe it has come down a bit since then.

I think Phil has hit on a good point. The PC60 is a good cheap way of getting into colour. You will learn a lot by having one. And if you want to go for one of the solvent machines at a later date the experience is obviously gonna help.

Have a good weekend everybody.

…oh and Rob does the Mrs get the hump when you take your PC60 to bed with ya? 😆

[Brian Hays]

quote robert:

here we go again stevie boy… let it go mate 😆

i think brian hays and you must have spent a fortune investing in roland.. but when the delivery came it was roland rat.. toys. 😆

anyway enough of the cheesy jokes.

ive heard of problems with print heads phil. that is true. but im glad to say
ive only went thru 2 or 3 maybe in 4 years or so…

hey brian! the resolve machine your selling. £20000+ for it mate.
you say its a great machine. but! you need a new print head at least once a year. fair enough. but the head is £5000 not £500, £5000. so how can you say the £5000 PC60 is a crap machine because it goes through print heads. when the resolve at £20000 does the same & they cost £5000 per head.
not to mention and the best part, roland supply the print head for the PC60 free when you return 200 spent catridges. pretty good if you ask me mate..
not trying to be funny, honest. just me in its defence mate… again! 😆

surely

Arghhhhh. I am just offering my opinion. A coupla years ago when we sold the PC60 we had lots of problems. We sold 21 in the space of a few months. On the face of it they seemed great, exactly as you say Rob. In practice things were a different story. What money we made selling the machines we lost through losing customers who were far from happy. Although we sold the machines in good faith I guess that’s fair enough, I would probably be the same. Some of those 21 were happy maybe 50% (that’s 10 & half Rob!) Some were disapointed but have found uses for the machine other than those intended. One customer in Bournemouth was given a full refund by Roland. Some people we sold the machines to will probably never buy from us again.

Fair enough some problems people had were probably because they didn’t clean the vinyl properly etc, but many problems they were experiencing were definitely 100% down to problems with the machine. Ribbons DID break for no reason. The machine DID stop half way through jobs. Some jobs DID show terrible banding. Roland DID NOT seem to care.

I personally do not like Roland as a company. I don’t like the people there, I don’t like the way they treat customers. I don’t like the way they treat end users. I don’t like the way they try to fix their prices.

When we sold the PC60 we were told we WOULD be struck off if we sold the machine at less than full retail price. Roland tried with a certain amount of success to fix their prices. That is fact & as far as I am aware to some extent illegal. I know that is not the kinda company you for one Rob like to deal with.

Anyway enough of all that. The PC60 is a good machine if you have the right work for it & can make money. I am not advising against anybody buying one, I am just saying think very carefully before you do.

As far as the Resolve is concerned that is a whole separate issue. The heads are replaced under warranty for the 1st year. Renewing the service agreement is something I would say you had to do after the year. I am not sure how much the heads cost but I will find out. Dunno where you got that 5k figure from? To compare the 2 machines is kinda silly. The resolve is 54" wide, I would have more faith in the durability than I would with the PC60. Output is a fraction of the cost of the PC60.

I won’t go on because as I said it is silly to compare the 2 machines. I will post some work a customer has done on his resolve soon & I think even Rob will agree you would have no chance of producing the same stuff on a PC60.

Anyway it’s Friday & the weekend, tonight I shall be very drunk & the last thing on my mind will be Roland’s PC60!

[Brian Hays]

Personally I think it depends what you want to do with it. In my opinion they are great for small labels & stuff. Some small stuff that you normally cut with your cutter you will be able to print saving on the dreaded weeding of small letters. We have done some big*ish* stuff, up to around 4 feet. It will do it but it will take ages & we used to keep our fingers crossed all the way through. There are some 2nd hand ones around but I would steer clear of them unless you get a very good price. Speak to Rob & he will tell you it’s the greatest invention since the wheel! I rekon he is getting a cut from Roland! 😉

Also If you do buy one keep your existing cutter.

[Brian Hays]

I could think of one or two things to do with it……

….best leave that to Rob tho he is a fan.

[Brian Hays]

The only people that have taken our number from our van are people phoning to complain about my driving! 😕

[Brian Hays]

Sorry don’t wanna scare anybody. Of the ones we sold many of them had no problems with the head. There just seems to be a few that go through heads quicker than others. Also we sold them before they did the thing where you get a free head after buying a certain number of cartridges.

I am just not a fan of Roland full stop. I know people that are so don’t worry about anything I havta say about them 🙂

[Brian Hays]

Only 3 heads in 3 years? You are one of the lucky ones, we had a demo machine that went through 2 heads in 2 months!

[Brian Hays]

Numbers on pockets?! madness!

I can understand the odd strange person that wants their name backwards but around here there are bundles of NTL vans with backwards logos! Dunno if they are like that all over the country. 🙄

[Brian Hays]

I mostly use Pop Up Stopper from these mob…

http://www.popupstopper.net/

[Brian Hays]

quote Paul Davenport:

Gray,

er landrovers are made from aluminium ………….. 😮

were all laffing at Gray

I rekon Gray knew that and woz takin da p!ss. Thus I rekon we should all be laffin at you matey! 😀

[Brian Hays]

That would depend on your definition of accurate. 95% of our customers say they find them accurate the other 5% say they are not? If you are one of the 95% then they should be 🙂

Each one is gonna take about 2 hours to scan & vectorise, I am not really sure how long it’s gonna take to do all the ones I have. We are trying to update the disk every 6 months, the last one was in January. Hopefully we can have lotsa roofs in type for the next update.

[Brian Hays]

I could but I might get all horribly confused. It doesn’t take much! 😳

I think I need to do them in some kind of order. Anyone wanna Citroen Berlingo, Dispatch or Relay? 😆

[Brian Hays]

Arghhhhh the dreaded pc60. Last time I used one of their white ribbons you could just rub what it printed off. Dunno if they have improved any since then.

[Brian Hays]

I would buy an Epson or Hewlett Packard one. A decent one will be well under 100 quid. You can buy cheaper but I wouldn’t recomend it.

[Brian Hays]

I am no expert but i think taking longer to remove than put on is the way it is! i don’t think there is a simple way.

Use a heat gun to heat it up peel it off & get some glue remover from one of the vinyl suppliers. They all do it.

[Brian Hays]

I would be surprised if there is such a thing as there is probably a very limited market. We produce outlines for specialised vehicles free for any of our customers that provide good digital photographs. If you have any or can get any we would be happy to have a go at doing them.

[Brian Hays]

Thanks for that Rob, the printer sounds like the best option. As i said we did look at some a while back, it sounds like the print quality is better now than it was then. The business card thing sounds good as well.

[Brian Hays]

Is the quality gonna be a bit iffy doing it that way Lorraine?

[Brian Hays]

Do you know much they cost? We had a look at a cd printer about 18 months ago but the output was cr*p.

we are paying over 4 quid per cd at the moment printed. Considering cd’s are less than 30p each, printing is costing us bundles.

[Brian Hays]

You will need to export it from Corel. I have never used signscript but i think you will need to export it in EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) format.

In corel just go to file then export, there is a box marked *files of type* you will find the EPS filter in there. Once you have done that you will need to import it into signscript, by going to file then import.

Oh when you export make sure you check the option to *export text as curves*

[Brian Hays]

If he contacts me he is guaranteed a good deal 🙂

We last upgraded the cd just before christmas. We make them to order so we always send out the latest one!

[Brian Hays]

There was one at Sign UK years ago, sounds like the one you are talking about.

It only seems to work on 12"+ high helvetica tho?

So if you have miles of that to weed it might be half usefull, if you don’t it’s not!

[Brian Hays]

Yeah guess sensible was the wrong word.

It mainy hadta go coz i couldn’t afford to fill it up every 220 miles. As i do quite a lot of miles it was costing me a fortune.

I was gutted when it went 🙁

One day when I am rich i’ll havva nuvver 😀

[Brian Hays]

Lucky man Subaru, i hadta sell mine for something half sensible 🙁

[Brian Hays]

The 4100-75 is a much better buy than the *plastic* CE-2000 if you can afford the extra grand.

Much better for tracking, it’s faster, wider & has lotsa fancy functions.

It is gonna last Mike 10 years after all!

Impreza Turbo issit mate?

[Brian Hays]

Graphtecs have got to be the best plotters out there for reliabilty. Graphtecs service is also 2nd to none, are there any other manufacturers left that service their own machines?!

I for one would rather they went wrong more often though! 10 years is far too long to be using the same cutter!

Oh and you will be looking at under 3k for the latest model to replace yours Mike. And it will be a bit wider as well 🙂

[Brian Hays]

Ok then… 🙂

Sally I am obviously gonna say ours is worth the extra money, here are a few reasons.

We have been producing our vehicle cd’s for 6 years. During this time we are constantly striving to improve & update them. We provide free upgrades for a year (if you request them!) As I said in the software post we could never guarantee 100% accuracy, but we do believe ours to be the most accurate. On our site you can find a list of what is covered on the cd (it may be a little out of date as we are adding stuff all the time) If you compare what is on ours to the others we have seen our is far more comprehensive.

Bear in mind producing vehicle cd’s represents the bulk of our business, we do it all ourselves in house so we have to get it right or else we wouldn’t be in business!
We have 100’s of customers that come back every year to update their cd.

Have you tried downloading the samples?

Lastly whatever one you buy it will be a great sales tool & they are great for producing visuals. Most people recover their outlay within no time at all. If you are into vehicle graphics you havta have one!

[Brian Hays]

I could give you a few clues but would probably get told off! 🙂