[Colin Crabb]

Onyx 21 – expands on previous features such as auto grommets for banners, improved Adobe RIP engine for extra Speeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed.

Plus we needed it to run HP L700w series kit 😂🤣

[Colin Crabb]

Engelbert Strauss, S1 trainers.
They look very cool (old school Adidas) and have an aluminium toe cap
https://www.engelbert-strauss.co.uk

[Colin Crabb]

My calculator says a piece of 10mm toughened glass of these dimensions would weigh 42.5kgs!

[Colin Crabb]

Checked our server and we have the brand guidelines. officially colours are:

Orange [Internal] Pantone 1585C / Ral 2003 / CMYK 0/61/97/0

Orange [External] Pantone 1665C / Ral 2004 / CMYK 0/80/100/0

[Colin Crabb]

To be fair.. all couriers are overstretched and having ‘issues’ both delivering and collecting currently…

X-mas is just around the corner too.

TNT for oversized, or Parcel Force if it meets size restriction here.

https://www.parcelforce.com

• This reply was modified 2 years, 7 months ago by  Colin Crabb.

[Colin Crabb]

Never liked ‘wraps’. Clients want them, but don’t want to spend the premium costs. Personally we prefer more standard graphics!

But to add this into the mix.. we can produce £500 worth of stickers in the time it takes to design, prep’ and fit a £250 vehicle, with a lot less stress……….

[Colin Crabb]

SO, a lot of these machines are in fact quite good / okay – Distributors will buy them rebranded (perhaps with a few upgrades / changes to suit there market / price point), I know a few companies in the UK that do this with laser cutters, laminators.

BUT:

Spare parts will be an issue.

Limited Warranty – Buyer will be responsible for repairs, and you will have difficulties with breakdowns.

Training – You buy it, You install it, You train yourself, very limited support.

Shipping – Little bit of a nightmare atm, Import duties, its slow, costs are rising, and again, you will be responsible once it leaves China.

Software – drivers might be limited for your RIP, or you might have to use there own software (see Training!)

• This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by  Colin Crabb.

[Colin Crabb]

With the move by manufactures toward PVC free, this type of technology will become an expensive outdated machine – a ‘cheap’ laser system will be able to cut and remove the waste in one pass, as non PVC will not have the chlorine gas issues!

[Colin Crabb]

Never paid. If I was asked, would move account 🤣 and my rep’s know that….

[Colin Crabb]

Summa here with Latex machines – and when contour cutting stickers, will never run more than 3m per batch to avoid any tracking issues.

[Colin Crabb]

Easymount EM1600 – 1700mm rollers

[Colin Crabb]

Sprayed on?

[Colin Crabb]

I have noticed the ‘silly prices’ are starting to appear, lost a £600 van job to someone charging £295….. 🤨

[Colin Crabb]

Metamark MM-SSS has 1 year shelf life, and hate to say this, also isn’t really suitable for exterior usage (they state ‘short term’).

[Colin Crabb]

@RobertLambie Apologies, I haven’t had time yet to listen! I have friends in R&D so hear things, but have to be careful what I say at times 🤣

I saw a demo once Rob of the fixed head machines – they used ‘memjet’ technology where media travels at speeds, ink just drops. We had a test unit here for label printing, 12″ wide print head with media moving through it at high speed. Interesting system, but the heads ultimately proved troublesome.

And as for the future – Digital signage on vehicles has been tested already……..

[Colin Crabb]

This system is not aimed at Vehicle wrapper or signmakers at all. Huge piece of equipment that needs to be on a production line, massive set up costs etc etc

Its been developed for the motor industry, as part of an idea to allow customisation at point of sale – order your new van, either online or in store, supply or and upload the graphics etc and as part of the production line this system will then apply your graphics to your chosen vehicle, as part of the ‘optional’ extras package (Some places will already offer signwriting to vehicles as part of the sales package, this is just the next step).

More money for the manufacture and keeping you loyal to them, and I’d guess a trade in deal at the end of the finance term, because you cannot remove the graphics, so who wants to buy your second hand vehicle!

• This reply was modified 3 years ago by  Colin Crabb.

[Colin Crabb]

‘officially’ only the first 300mm from the rear corner, the full height of the vehicle.

Lighting_and_marking_COP_for_abnormal_load_self_escorting_vehicles_HE_rebranding_v1.pdf 424 KB PDF - Click to view

• Copy Download Link

[Colin Crabb]

Make sure media is exiting the machine by 6inches, add some weights (we use heavy duty bulldog clip and small lump of brass from and old machine 🤣)

This will keep the media in tension while going through the heater section, helping reduce the media ripples.

Heat may need to be reduced from generic profile,

[Colin Crabb]

Is the media connected to the take up system ?

[Colin Crabb]

We’ve just dropped holding ‘standard’ Monomeric and holding Polymeric with gloss and matt lam only instead, due to a very nice price drop deal.

* Banner
* Mesh Banner
* Wallpaper media
* Polypro ‘cheap’ poster
* Pull up 300 & 500micron
* High Tack 100micron Matt & Gloss finish
* Lightbox film & poster

• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by  Colin Crabb.

[Colin Crabb]

Check for a ‘hair’ hard to spot but can cause drag issues like this.

[Colin Crabb]

Your example picture show standard T-Rails with fittings, we buy ours here:

Sign Trade Supplies
http://www.signtradesupplies.co.uk

[Colin Crabb]

All artwork has this footer:

No unauthorised distribution or reproduction of these images without written consent from (company name).

If any of the design, layout or content is used without payment or consent, consultation & design time accrued will be

invoiced at £50p/h.

Additionally, a £200 copyright release fee, or £150 per use** of design will be invoiced – whichever the greater.

** ‘per use’ means each vehicle, print use, embroidery etc.

Upon completion & full payment of the job, design time & any logo design fee’s, copyright transfers to the customer.

[Colin Crabb]

Its not so straight forward with road signage, depends on speed approaching sign, type of road etc – See attached if you really want to be correct and work out X height, therefore size of sign.

This is heavy going and overkill, unless its for DoTransport!

traffic-signs-manual-chapter-07.pdf 9 MB PDF - Click to view

• Copy Download Link

[Colin Crabb]

FYI: to upgrade from Onyx 12 to latest (21?) we’ve been quoted £1200 (multi machine dongle)

[Colin Crabb]

Rebadged Freecolour machines (Chinese made by Shanghai Zhenshi)

Shanghai Zhenshi Industry Co., Ltd. – UV Printer, UV Ink (alibaba.com)

[Colin Crabb]

Summa has a different program (Summa Winplot) for cutting – you just open your .ai file in this program and send to cutter, instead of sending to cutter from Illustrator directly.

[Colin Crabb]

We use cheap’o polyprop media – and promote it as water & tear resistant for prolonged life on site 😄

[Colin Crabb]

AD Young, Bristol.

[Colin Crabb]

So why I asked about owners and staff:

they’re not retiring or leaving the trade, so nothing stopping them from opening a new company again at a later date, or a member of staff from ‘having a go’ and opening… attracting the old contacts.

Buying ‘Good Will’ isn’t worth very much at the moment.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by  Colin Crabb.

[Colin Crabb]

Will you be taking on the staff?

Are the owners retiring / leave the trade completely?

[Colin Crabb]

Luckily we don’t currently have any booked in till February, but I’m totally aware of this Hugh and after staff meeting, their wellbeing and safety comes first.

[Colin Crabb]

The only change we’re making is no vehicle graphics during lockdown. Reason: We feel it’s against the movement of people restrictions and my staff are unhappy with people travelling distance to drop off a vehicle and collect a day or two later.

[Colin Crabb]

Fitting inside = shop fitting = building trade.

[Colin Crabb]

Bought a reinforced glass sheet – best purchase ever, 2 years later perfect, much better than cutting matts.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by  Colin Crabb.

[Colin Crabb]

Sign fitting = Construction Trade = Permitted to work

[Colin Crabb]

Teslaflex from PaperGraphics

paper-graphics.com

https://youtu.be/Ceqvd_Gj1Yw

[Colin Crabb]

at nearly £120 + shiping and VAT

Ouch, that’s nearly £40 more than genuine 831c ink.

I don’t think HP will be changing the system anytime soon, I understand that a new variant model is under going testing at the moment with white ink option (using the tech / ink from R series)

[Colin Crabb]

With all machines, click rate will depend on the machine bought.

For example we bought our Versant 80 instead of leasing, was but this was £14k, but we do 40,000 clicks per month and have a lower click rate than our other machines.

You can buy a second user Xerox C60 for £5000, but you do have media weight of 300gsm limitation.

Our you could lease a Oki Pro machine from £80 per month (and this would handle 350gsm media)

Just be aware of a few things with pay-per-click:

Make sure its for SRA3 sheets size (this applies really to the lower cost ‘office’ machines)

Check there is no monthly minimum click

Check call out response time

Example of 1000 colour A5 S/S leaflets: 4 up on SRA3 = 250 clicks @ 3.2p = £8 + media price + finishing costs.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by  Colin Crabb.

[Colin Crabb]

365 is just a updated version.

Slightly reduced overspray (can’t notice any difference), improved power transformer (a fault on some early 360’s), new media tension thingy (aka a weight pully, that’s still in the box), reduced noise level (we think!), ‘might’ be quicker – That’s all we have noticed in the real world situation,

[Colin Crabb]

🤣

[Colin Crabb]

As long as the logo / sign doesn’t resemble the Trademarked image, or imitate the Trademarked brand all will be fine – Even more so as its a Fruit & Veg shop, not a Animation Company.

EG: You can be called MacDonalds Builders, but cannot have a logo of golden arches, or a tagline say ‘Big Mick Builders’ 🤨

[Colin Crabb]

Here how we do it using Illustrator & Onyx RIP:

Create new top level layer – duplicate outline of item to be cut & paste into this layer, lining up with the original path on layer below – turn this new outline into cut path (in Onyx its simply a spot colour with special name for Onyx to recognise) – Save as PDF

When sent to Onyx it will generate a cut path (and not print this colour overlay).

I’m unsure how Flexi works, but hope this helps.

[Colin Crabb]

Your opening the PDF’s in Corel? not the original .eps files?

Then the gradients will have been turned to raster/bitmaps which is what your seeing (its like a clipping mask). Depending how the PDF was saved will effect how much you can ‘pull apart’, sometimes a multi layer raster image will appear as blocks where the PDF has flattened the layers, and as here Gradients have been rasterised.

It will print fine, as the PDF data is processed so the file is ‘ready to print’.

[Colin Crabb]

Threaded wall anchors / drop in wall anchors

[Colin Crabb]

We do the same as Phil, photo of vehicle required required!

Had this issue before with Transit / Transit Custom confusion by customer.

[Colin Crabb]

Signwaves do a nice selection of lockable cases, good quality too

[Colin Crabb]

Onyx 12 Production House is about 4 years old(ish), and the oldest current supported version, with all functionalities, like ICC profiling (get for making custom media profiles if your printer has a spectrometer), finishing functions for banners (grommets etc), multi printer & cutter support.

RIP Centre doesn’t have the full functions – BUT worth checking the upgrade cost to production House if new and you’d like the extras – you also get a years membership with Onyx to upgrade if new version comes out if I remember correct.

[Colin Crabb]

Metamark MDP matt version, 100microns so easier for customer to peel and stick, also available as a High Tack version.

We go through this heavily for fire stickers etc

[Colin Crabb]

A new 6 inch squeegee?

[Colin Crabb]

Sorry didn’t make myself clear – blue is made up from Cyan and Magenta – so its one of those associated heads is misfiring, a plot test will show you.

Hugh, on a 360, printheads are:

Cyan + Black

Yellow + Magenta

Light Mag + Light Cyan <—- this is the one to check!

Optimizer

We carry a few spare heads for our fleet, it saves panic when you get this issue.

[Colin Crabb]

Cyan / Magenta head or LCyan / Lmag head needs changing – just run a test pattern, you will see any drop out.

[Colin Crabb]

Wish I had photo of a very similar one:

7 1/2 ton box lorry, client not willing to pay us to remove graphic like you from the box part – so did it themselves… with a wallpaper stripper! Removed the paint in sections from the aluminum skin.

Ended up having to pay more for the whole sides to be flood coated to cover the damage!

[Colin Crabb]

Box profile roofing sheets also have a textured finish….

[Colin Crabb]

360 was launched 5 years ago, being replaced by the 365 last year(?).

Consumable wise, no difference with inks, printheads etc

The was a few mechanical updates, improved power supply and comes with some odd counter weight thing for the take-up reel (never used them yet).

[Colin Crabb]

Both are to blame – as Phill says ‘ your get what you pay for’, and the wrapper wasn’t up to the task, or rushed to fit in an allotted time.

But, legally: he has delivered the goods at the quoted price, and the customer excepted when collecting. I’m also guessing client paid cash……………..

As I’ve said before, this is an unregulated trade, but would a regulative body make a difference?, or just add costs to those who sign up, while those who don’t make there service even cheaper? Double edged sword.

[Colin Crabb]

+1 for Anchor Magnets – https://www.anchormagnets.com/ supamag

(BTW they are the manufacturers, that supply most of the resellers!)

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by  Colin Crabb.

[Colin Crabb]

Unless you actively follow up with your own social media, complete with ‘push’ links to relevant product on your own website (normally with one-click to buy option) then you see very little if not zero return – Social media sales have to be very simply & easy to use for the end client, as the attention span will be low, before they click on to the next picture! After all we are a bespoke professional service, not a ‘dropship’ vendor.

Having worked with several national & multi national companies, I was surprised by the amount of work and money they spend for online promotions, one client has a Adwords budget of £1800 per month alone.

For our trade, you might get some ‘likes’ but this will rarely transition into work without serious work of your own.

[Colin Crabb]

Yup, quick Google search will take you to brand guidance and files:

Facebook: https://en.facebookbrand.com/facebookapp/

Instgram: https://en.instagram-brand.com/

Twitter: https://about.twitter.com/en_gb/company/brand-resources.html

Linkedin: https://brand.linkedin.com/downloads

All free of charge, and the correct up to date icons (I still see out of date Facebook icons on new vans!)

[Colin Crabb]

Word of caution – anything below V12 will have limited printer support for newer machines, eg will not support HP Latex 315.

[Colin Crabb]

@RobertLambie Ahhhh… document wording…. Like the Business Interruption section in our policy that doesn’t seem to cover C19 lockdown as an interruption according to the wording…

Been happy with them to be fair, only made the one claim and it was painless and simple.

[Colin Crabb]

Bespoke Business Insurance from Allianz, very happy and completely covered, approx. £700per year.

Broke a £1000 ultra wide monitor last year, they paid out within 3 days.

[Colin Crabb]

We have the Makita V groover with a 3m fence, plus a Evolution saw blade to fit – great piece of kit, can’t fault it.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by  Colin Crabb.

[Colin Crabb]

After costing us £2500+ to have a machine fixed due to 3rd party ink, we’ve only used genuine inks for years now.

3rd party ink will void manufactures warranty, some suppliers will offer a limited warranty, but….. its was worthless when we tried to claim.

[Colin Crabb]

“But I think this will be because as the furlough cushion disappears, companies chasing their debts push companies under and Phoenix companies appearing all over the place.”

Yes, this is going to be very common, in my area I’m already aware of a couple of companies that will ‘Phoenix’ soon as they have to start repaying the loan back………

We’re being VERY strict with payments & credit accounts, no more 30days, limited to 5days for top customers, rest is payment first.

[Colin Crabb]

Very interesting times for us.

We’ve burnt through 2000m + of banner media, 300m of floor stickers for C19 information at high speed with some late late nights due to the short turnaround needed.

We have added another latex machine to the workshop, something that I was thinking about in December, but at the time put it off until spring, but went ahead due to the very nice discount quoted

It has slowed down now, but order books seem to be at prelockdown levels once again, BUT with a different client base! plenty of vehicles, signs, posters, banners & stickers etc, but unsurprisingly zero for our normal tradeshow clients, and very little from Holiday Park & Seasonal clients.

I personally think the autumn is when we’ll see the impact on our trade, as C19 market will be finshed (hopefully!) and client will have spent their bounce-back loans!

[Colin Crabb]

4pm and: ‘But I need it TOMMORROW morning at 9am!!!!!’

‘Yes, Sir/Madam thats no problem, but its +100% to your quote for super-duper overnight turnaround (I have to pay staff to work overnight, I’m sure you understand)’

‘Oh…. 3 day turnaround is fine then.’

Works every time, or if they ‘really’ want it, someone’s getting double time

[Colin Crabb]

@rob We always print the posters with 300micron roller banner media for these jobs, as theY self support themselves and don’t ‘wrinkle / collapse’ due to the elements.

Signwaves / Innotech / Plex Display / eurostand display are all trade supplies for these snap frames

• This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by  Colin Crabb.

[Colin Crabb]

i will also keep one separately for reflection only and see how these ones go.

Tell Edward Mathias that your require one blade for reflective, they can sort you out a special blade just for this media

[Colin Crabb]

Smack a screw with silicon into it Rob, just like my customer did. 🤣

[Colin Crabb]

AD Young in Bristol – ask for Sam

[Colin Crabb]

Corel X3 isn’t compatible with Windows 10, due to a change in windows and will have no support even if you can get it running with registry hacks.

Just install it on a Windows 7 or Windows 8 machine!

[Colin Crabb]

We have multi cutter so avoided running direct from art dept.

[Colin Crabb]

Hope we’re not paying to much then!

[Colin Crabb]

Yup, looks good and you should look at releasing it.

[Colin Crabb]

Looks very good – what program was this made with / in ?