[David McDonald]

Hi Martyn

How about direct UV print onto the existing ceiling tiles, probably with a white ink base layer and CMYK over the top.
We’ve printed onto suspended ceiling tiles and acoustic panels in the past and the textured surface works really well, no worrying about getting a film to stick and the humid air wouldn’t be a problem.

[David McDonald]

Hi Karen

If you’re screwing to Kingspan type insulated cladding then these composite screws are very good. They come in a variety of lengths to suit the thickness of the cladding. The cladding only has a thin foil of aluminium front and back and these screws mean that your load weight is distributed over the full thickness of the panel and both the front and rear skins of aluminium.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Dave – yes 100% work on the business rather than always working in it. The last 12-months have been incredibly busy, our best ever by a large percentage and the outlook is very good for this year to keep growing, that said being busy is really getting in the way of me getting anything done!

I’m going to try really hard to ring fence at least a few hours every week to improve something in the business; more standardised pricing, updates to marketing, standard literature, better processes, better working practices, more business analysis, better systems – the list is endless and can never be finished BUT if we keep making incremental improvements then we’ll improve customer service, quality, percentage of quotes won, margin levels etc. etc.

I need to be Managing the business more, rather than trying to be the ‘hardest digger in the mine’ all the time! Hopefully everything will be more streamlined and manageable so I can be less involved in every tactical element.

Working out a priority list at this very moment.

Looking forward to the challenges and opportunities this year brings.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

This type of bracket, quickly drawn!

[David McDonald]

Hi David

All look excellent.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi Dave

We print a lot of table tops, white backed CMYK. They come into us with a variety of pre-treatments, waxes and lacquers and the UV ink sticks to some aggressively and others a bit less so (the limed effect being the least bonded), when they are just plain raw wood it bonds extremely well. They all get heavily varnished to finish and the level of ink adhesion is 100% fine.

BTW we design these with a distressed effect – the missing bits and corroded bits are intentional !!

Rob – thanks for the mention.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi Martyn

We use SLX+ by default on all wraps – tried everything and left it to the team to decide which they preferred / performed the best – they all wanted SLX+.

I seem to recall there a multiple laminates to go with it though, albeit can’t remember the differences, sure they are all gloss but possibly different thicknesses / performance characteristics – you are best checking with your supplier.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi mate

Like Graham said we offer the range of adhesive backing as the main option for clients to choose from, or we’ll give them a discount if we can use one of the many roll ends we have and the exact specification doesn’t matter to them or the intended use.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi Hugh

Not much to add on top of the other comments but if we were doing this, and you had the space, we’d most likely go for a truck mounted boom. With the distance you’d be coming in there’d be much less ‘bounce’ when you’re in the basket.

Look forward to seeing the photos when done.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Thanks for these suggestions – I’ll work through them all and see how we get on.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi Pane

1, How important is social media to your business?

Not huge but still significant enough to spend time and thought on. Its just part of a well rounded approach to marketing (I’m told). When potential customers are searching for us they’ll find us everywhere they look, Google shows search results including things found on Social Media, including images, and reviews. Some customers only search for suppliers on media. It shows we are busy and and our service is in demand, and its a quick and easy way sometimes of showing something current. I think the danger is you can spend too much time on it though. For one specific category of client we get the biggest percentage of their enquiries via Social Media, some other client categories we get zero.

2, Do you believe that creating good content helps your business or is it a waste of time?

Yes, 100% and we need to do more. Google likes continual updates of unique and authoritative content. Its like a snowball – keep adding more and more and it will get found, linked, shared, quoted and referred to. If you author something then its not just for social media – stick a version on Facebook, LinkedIn, another blog version on your website, even on YouTube etc. etc.

3, Do you believe that posting your projects on social platforms can help your opposition to steal your clients?

Yes suppose it can happen but only as much as posting a gallery of work on your website and you have to show your work, we don’t worry about it. We follow lots of our competitors on social media and look at their websites, (and I know many keep up to date on us) – its interesting to see who’s doing what, and even get inspiration if they’ve done a good job, or of course criticise heavily if they haven’t 🙂 We don’t steal clients but its really good to be knowledgeable on your local industry to be competitive when selling.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

I’ll second Rob’s recommendation for these specific LED’s, they work great in block acrylic letters – we’ve used these a few times

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi Allister

That’s very good of you, much appreciated – looks like it works well.
We already have 2 of the version that uses a 2-piece eyelet but we have a potential large job so wanted to try and speed things up!

Cheers
Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi All

We sometimes get asked for eyelets in correx boards – does anyone think this machine will work on 5mm Correx?
Cheers
Dave

[David McDonald]

Thanks Rob!

Have sorted it.

Cheers

[David McDonald]

Hi Adam

We’ve installed a fair few containers and we’ve switched to using extra sticky polymeric print vinyl, rather than cast, as on balance that gives us the best overall results. We’ve never come across any that the paintwork was good – always poorly done with loads of flaws and the extra sticky is the only way we get it to stay on there.

I think heating will be difficult in these temperatures – there’s possibly too much mass of steel to get it really hot enough.

If we were doing it in these temps it would be accompanied with a disclaimer that usually warranties don’t apply – if the manufacturer of the film wont warranty installation in these temps then we won’t.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi All

It’s been a while since I last posted that we’d just got our new Platinum Q3 printer and thought I’d post an update.

We’ve had it 3-months now and we feel like we now know the machine very well beyond the basic operation, so we’ve got that sense and feel of how to get the best out of it.

Firstly, we are extremely pleased and delighted with the unit. We’ve printed a huge range of materials, using every combination of ink layering, and print settings and every time we try something new it just works. I’ve broken our feedback down into sections below. We are happy to recommend the printer range to anyone (who isn’t a local direct competitor to us)!

1. Build Quality.

Everything remains rock solid, and sound and we are still impressed by how heavy duty and even ‘over engineered’ everything feels. There is nothing plasticky or flimsy anywhere on the unit. The main gull wing doors over the print area weigh a ton though – they’re not difficult to lift with the gas struts but you can feel the weight in them. In operation it just sounds smooth, no vibration.

2. Print Quality / length / repeatability / white ink / registration / materials / adhesion / speed.

Print quality isn’t a standalone item and obviously is related to print speed, pass count and feathering between passes etc. You have a great deal of flexibility in setting this up, but we’ve experimented and settled on 2 standard settings for each media group, a ‘high quality and a ‘high speed’. Generally, this equates to circa 40+sqm/h high-quality, and circa 60+ sqm/h high-speed. The print quality at the high-speed profile is better than our previous Arizona at its best quality, and the high-quality profile we’ve created is probably higher quality than we actually need. We’ve tried printing faster and reckon 2-pass, minimum feathering would be getting above 80 sqm/h and could be sellable for specific jobs, but we’ll probably never use it. We’ve used Onyx for ever and have upgraded to the latest version with this printer – so it’s all very straightforward to drive. We’ve had excellent feedback from our customers on the print quality and colour matching. We are still mightily impressed by the quality and the lack of any unexpected results.

Print length and repeatability has been faultless. We’ve printed a few wallpaper jobs now for atrium / tall stairwells and even though we’re printing 3.2m wide we’ve had to tile multiple drops due to the walls being wider than the 3.2m roll width. The first one had drops of around 6m+ height and we couldn’t perceive even the slightest fraction of a millimetre length difference between each piece – not a single pixel. Likewise perfect colour matching between drops. We’re still trying different media brands for the one-piece wallpaper, and one did start to gently finger on the printer meaning someone had to stand-over it smoothing these out to prevent scuffing. Not sure if that was the brand, our settings, or the printer. The other 2 brands worked perfectly so I’m thinking towards the brand but well monitor that one.

The white ink is extremely smooth and a nice bright vibrant white. We recently ran a reverse on clear job with a white ink flood on the back for a run of glass, circa 100m length. When installed and you looked at the back of the vinyl it was a totally consistent solid run of white backing from end to end, no variations in the solidity of the white at all. We had the white at a higher density and it was somewhere between 30-40 sqm/h, in hindsight we should have used a lower density to speed this up and it wouldn’t have mattered for viewing of the graphic from the other side. We find a purge once in the morning and again if the white hasn’t been used for 4+ hours. Overall great white printing and the white ink is the same price as the other inks.

Double sided print registration is a complete doddle to achieve, we didn’t expect the accuracy of a dedicated flatbed with pop up pin registration, but nevertheless very impressive with the bar that drops down to square up to, and the 4 or 5 (can’t remember how many) end stops. Clearly the conveyor bed movement must be accurate and true, likewise the gantry and alignment must be very accurate. Mostly we’ve printed double sided on correx boards but many long thinner banners which would have shown up any deviations. Side A never gets any marks, scratches or scuffs on it as you print Side B. The only thing to mention is an operator issue and common sense in that there are large heavy pneumatic rollers that you optionally drop onto the media on the feed and output sides to clamp it if required – you must remember to give them a clean from time to time or it introduces dust and artifacts onto the substrate (single or double sided). Overall, really good.

We’ve put through Monomeric vinyl, polymeric vinyl, one way vision, all adhesive types on the vinyl, 320/440/510/710 single- or double-sided banner, every thickness of Correx, every thickness of PVC, 3/5/10/20/25mm acrylic, 38mm timber tabletops (they looked superb), 12mm/18mm ply, 12mm MDF, ACM, Hoarding. All the latter just printed great without any issue, the adhesion on the acrylic and ACM is extremely good – CNC’ing through them is perfect without any edge chipping – all just very clean. Prior to the Q3 we never printed direct to ACM on the previous Arizona which just wouldn’t adhere well enough even with primer – so we can’t give a wider comparison, that said we did have the pleasure of giving a demo of the Q3 to another sign company not long after we’d had it installed – they mostly print site hoarding boards and they’d used a variety of alternative printers – I don’t know if they’ve now gone on to get the same unit but they were amazed by the quality and ink adhesion, the best they’d seen. We don’t use any primer. On the strength of how good it prints we’ve recently won a tender for 200m’s of hoarding panels to be installed January.

3. Ink costs.

I can’t tell you exactly how much its costs per square metre, I keep meaning to work this out exactly – as a guesstimate it’s got to be less than £1 per sq/m on average and as mentioned the white (and varnish) are the same price per litre as the colours. If the ink usage wasn’t so light, then I’d have been more motivated to measure this properly! The ink layers are really thin but still everything is dense and vibrant. When we’ve laminated prints, you can hardly feel the ink under the laminate, again only got our previous UV to compare against but that was like an embossed tactile map in comparison. I’ll post an update in due course on a proper measured price. I understand ink prices are going up in price in the New Year but if that’s just inflationary they are still cheap enough.

4. Training & Support.

The lads were brilliant in showing us the unit and software but as we were experienced in UV printing and the use of Onyx, we didn’t require a lot from them, more a case of showing us the basic functionality and general differences in using a flatbed to a hybrid and we just started using it and asked questions as we went on. When we’ve needed usability / feature help they’ve been very responsive calling in or over the phone. We’ve not had any support issues other than after 1-week we needed some additional calibration of the printer, and a pipe in the chiller unit need some minor attention – they were straight on it and nothing since. I reckon if you’ve used a RIP and another UV it’s an easy transition.

5. Trade printing.

I recall someone asking if we’d be doing trade print now we have the Q3, yes only if you are within our normal day to day range of travel in the NW, Lancashire, North Merseyside, Greater Manchester – all areas we can deliver with our own vans, no to other locations and anything that needs sending by courier (as 50% of the time we get a courier problem – but that’s a whole other thread we could start). We aren’t intending to go gung-ho into trade supply but if you are stuck, please ask and we’ll do our best to help. The Q3 does have the capacity to be a trade supply workhorse if that’s your business though.

6. Overall value for money.

OK, it’s not cheap in that printers of this size are a big investment (it was a big step up for us with associated risks), but it was very competitively priced and is performing so well so far that we’re sure we’ve got the value for money we thought we’d be getting – we did a lot of investigation and due diligence in the market. It’s paying for itself already, we no longer have print bottlenecks, and we’ve won new business on the strength of new products, output quality, and economy. So, all good so far.

Hope that’s interesting to someone, otherwise I’ve just wasted an hour!

I’ll post some more pictures and videos when I’ve got a free moment.

Ask any questions please ask away

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Thanks for the suggestions guys, think we’ve found an alternative that’s close enough, cheers Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi All

A very quick update.

The Platinum Q3 has arrived and is currently being commissioned – we should be printing towards the end of the week. I clearly can’t give any comments relating to printing and operation yet but so far the logistics and getting the unit in place have been seamless, and we’re mightily impressed with the installation team and the overall engineering fit and finish of the printer.

I know we’d measured up many times to decide on the exact position and how our physical workflow would operate around it BUT to stand next to it in the flesh its bloody massive!

Anyhow, more to follow.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi

We’ve been using Clarity since 2012, were quite happy with it for quoting but I have a nagging feeling we could optimise it better to speed up the process. Telephone support is always good but I’d really like a proper full on user manual.

Big benefit of using it for 10-years is the historical detail on jobs for materials used, production notes, prices, reports etc. the downside is we’re kind of locked into it now.

As an aside when I look at some historic quotes I’m amazed by how much material prices have increased in 10 years. I like that its quick and easy to refresh whole quotes though when supplier and internal prices have gone up.

@DavidHammond
I think we discussed this before, Clarity is good when the enquiry /quote is entered and you can run reports but we introduced a very lightweight planner for a “pre-Clarity stage”. Basic – date, which member of staff took the enquiry / how the enquiry came in, customer name, very brief description. i.e. we get enquiries over the phone from multiple numbers, all the different social medias, web forms from multiple sites (these automatically populate the planner), walk ins, common sales@email enquiries, direct e-mail enquiries to each salesperson etc. etc. The lightweight planner means we can see all enquiries in one place even before its in Clarity, so things don’t get missed or get old. Not sure how this could be included in Clarity but would be good. We us Microsoft Planner.

In summary the Clarity price is reasonable for what you get and it works well.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi mate

Had this happen once before with a white colour change on a BMW 1 series, it took 5 days to strip! Never could figure out why it happened and it was the normal vinyl we always used and vinyl from the same batch on other vehicles was fine.

Can’t help you but Pane, but we shared your pain!

BTW not sure who manufactures the glue remover that Metamark sell but we’re finding it’s excellent stuff.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi, how about a paste the wall, polycril media, we can print this up to 3.2m wide, we use it as a seamless wallpaper. A fair few of the usual trade printers will do this or another similar product called Rafa canvas.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi rob

I think it’s mostly vinyl work

I’m waiting on full details

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi Rob

We wet sprayed the letters front face/returns white to help reflect more of the light out the back of the letter and sprayed them black for a light block, it’s just a build up of paint. They wanted a non illuminated white face so 1mn white engraving laminate was bonded to the face to hide this.

The halo worked better having the LEDs still facing into the block letter, rather than pointing to the rear – more diffused. The triangle logo face was left without any spray and printed translucent white vinyl.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi John Hughes

Nice choice with the 135GT and the roll option. We needed to go a bit wider as we wanted to start printing seamless wallpaper – polycril / rafa canvas.

We will more likely try increase our e-commerce non-trade sales first – less demanding customers. If we do go down the proper trade supply route it will only be when we’ve absolutely nailed the printer, software, workflow, packing etc, plus we’ll need more finishing kit – can’t see it in the immediate future, may be just on a more local basis.

It has taken some time to produce and present the business case to our Financial Director, aka my wife 😃, she runs a tight ship indeed. Forklift is a good idea but were tight for space.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi Graham, interesting info, it is a great piece of kit and a solid deal, we’ve dealt with Eddie and the team since 2016 and we’ve only ever had good advice, experience and superb support for the 6 years. We’ve researched the brand internationally and we’re more than satisfied with the results. We’ll give warts and all updates when it’s commissioned, so far so good and the kit with the package should give us a competitive advantage, watch this space.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi Warren

Yes, let me know as I really like the look of the 2-part system

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi

We could only find this company when we needed some. We did quickly find a voucher code online that we used at the checkout and reduced the price significantly, don’t hAve any details with me but can take a look Monday

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Thanks Rob, have dropped them an e-mail.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi Warren

Think we have the same table as you so this one made me spend 2- hours googling!

Can’t find the manufacturer of that bit, only someone else, SALED, in Australia selling the same system. It does give a cross section with measurements though so you can see what finished slot profile you are trying to achieve.

The beauty of that bit is that it looks like you can plunge with it and then start to move through the material and then lift back out – so can ‘up cut’ back up. Plus it chamfers the top edge which presumably helps with pushing the sleeve in but you might be able to get away without that, and it’s also spiralled for chip removal, a marvel of engineering.

Anyhow you could achieve all this with 3 tools.

First off cut a 6.7mm wide channel, so a closed loop and cut on the inside with a 6mm acrylic bit – you cant get a 6.7mm bit.

Cut a circle 8.1mm at the start and finish on the centre line of the channel so the t-slot can plunge in without cutting. Use an 8mm full radius t slot mill to plunge into the the hole to the depth required (need to work that out) and follow the centreline of the channel. I’ve found a few with a 6mm shank on line.

Change the tool to the really wide V angle tool kongsberg do and cut very shallow on the centreline which will chamfer both sides.

Might work, what do you think?

Downside is trebling the cut length and 3 tools, upside is might be the only way unless they launch an 8mm collet or a 6mm shank version of the tool. Big unknown is lack of spiral for chip removal might mean it all just melts in the groove?? Much experimentation with feed rates and RPM. (We usually go for 45k on everything but that’s not going to work on slotting)

I’ll let you buy the tools and let me know how you get on? This method is copyrighted by me!!!

Datron.com have the t slot but not sure if they sell in the UK, I’m sure there will be an equivalent in the UK though

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi mate

Can’t help you on square metre rate but aren’t you approaching this from the wrong end? How long will it take you specifically to fit, what’s your business costs per hour, and what do you want/need to earn on top of your costs? There are companies that specialise in fitting volumes of commercial tint/mirror and they will be likely much faster and will have different overheads – matching their prices my prices could leave you out of pocket, or conversely you maybe over charging – who knows? The only sure fire method method is work out what’s right for you.

Just my thoughts

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Kevin, good idea.

When being asked to install signs in a dangerous fashion, onto a rotten fascia etc, we decline and give them a quote subject to installing onto a rebuilt fascia, pointing out that they would be liable for damage and injury caused otherwise, I guess if they knowingly engage a contractor without insurance, or fail to request insurance then they’d be equally liable?

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi Rob

I think we’ve come across 2 more signs they exported to Lancashire. We attended an emergency call out to demolish what was left of them during recent high winds.

See the photos – batch of two signs, one still ‘intact’ and the other missing all the panels and a post. Overall sign face 6m width x 3m height made from 4x portrait 10*5’s, base of panels to the ground 2m’s, overall height then at 5m’s. Each post had 3 or 4 random widths of sign rail on and unconnected to any rail on the adjacent posts/panels. The panels were butt joined and held together with strips of ACM D/S taped in place over the joins with the only mechanical fixings being a couple of self-tappers top and bottom of each strip. Come to think of its possible the sign rails were just taped and had no mechanical fixings – Can’t remember but most likely based on the rest of the construction. They’d used 89mm steel posts and a fair amount of post mix, however the incredibly steep fall angle of the land immediately behind the sign meant there was effectively no bracing to the rear of the signs – any leverage from the front would tip the posts. It was quite stormy when we went out but to be honest if a cow had farted in the next field it would have knocked them down.

Must have been the same company – surely there can’t be two out there working to these high standards!

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Yeah! van has been found abandoned in Bradford and is in a recovery compound. No news on if its damaged, catalytic convertor removed, any tools or scaffolding left in the back etc. but at least we aren’t starting again from scratch. As that was the final van due to get updated with the new branding, I’m really hoping they stripped the old wrap to try and move it on as a white van!

I know everyone has been out 24 hours a day looking for it but please now stand down 😀

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Well no joy from the police so far but a friendly neighbours CCTV shows it driving off the estate at 17:43 on Sunday, other than the confirmed time there’s nothing to show the people involved or give anything else useful 🙁

Fortunately its not having a big impact due to the jobs currently in hand, we’ve hired a van and we have multiples of the tools and scaffold lost. Totting the latter up looks to be £3-£4k worth of contents, possibly more. We seem to be covered but you never know with insurance!

Biggest pain is we’d CNC our own racking and storage system which we’ll have to do again.

I’m sure it will all be in parts by now but please keep looking for us! I need an address to call round with baseball bats and give them the good news.

Cheers Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi Erdy

Off hand I can’t remember the exact settings, possibly 12-pass with 170 / 180 ink and highest curing temp.

It’s looks better on the MDT600 than on clear

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi Erdy

We’ve done this once and it wasn’t a huge improvement – we included reg marks to align to the 4 corners of the Opal acrylic so was very simple to get registration both sides. We just created a high pass, high saturation profile and it works well HP560 with Metamark MDT600. I suppose it depends on the design but we’ve been happy and customers have been happy staying single sided since

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi All

I’m listing the CNC on that auction site next week but would prefer to sell to someone on the boards, just to say I’m open to offers and will be dropping my minimum ‘reserve’ mentioned previously.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi mate, Preston plywood LTD ?

Have helped us with some tough to obtain sheets in the past.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi John- we’re still deciding, have narrowed down my options and will update in due course. We do need to build a bigger print room so just getting everything ready in advance.

Hi Graham – highest offer above £16k + VAT (plus the move costs as described above to the support company), if someone got it for £16k they’d be getting a real bargain.

Hi Steff – 6-years approx, it’s been well looked after, and although we’ve done a huge amount of signage on it and it’s paid for itself many many times and lots of profit, that only equates to 1-2 hours a day running time at most. Very light use in comparison to its full capacity.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Assorted signs produced using the above CNC

[David McDonald]

Assorted signs produced using the above CNC

+10 More Photos

[David McDonald]

Assorted signs produced using the above CNC

+10 More Photos

[David McDonald]

We used to do a really long run on the front glass fascia of a theatre, we made something like the last one that was supported on the corner of the Boss scaffold at the right height and used to push the scaffold along 8ft, paste it down, then push it along a bit more. We had plenty of bleed as it did waver a bit but the for the designs they had it didn’t matter. So I’ve now copyrighted the scaffold attachment that goes with it! 😆

[David McDonald]

What’s on the other side of the wall?

We once had to move a huge and heavy ancient hardwood carved shield with smaller silver plaques and shields on it. The new destination wall was stud and plaster board and we had the same weight and fixing concerns. We just built a separate support structure on the rear (in a storage area) and used long fixings to go through to it, just an idea

Also is there a plug socket bottom right – will the wires run up from this?

Good luck

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi Jamie

They look like solid block acrylic with embedded LEDs and vinyl wrapped edges. We’ve made a few in the past but don’t really trade supply. I think applelec might do them? They are just thick Opal acrylic (led grade to make the glow more even), CNC router cut and with a channel in the back to put the leds in, we then filled the channel with clear resin dome liquid to fully waterproof the leds. We could leave ours underwater all day.

The block acrylic is quite expensive and they take a while to CNC but they do look great.

I’m sure others will list alternative manufacturers

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi Rob

We put a single drop over these areas, cut dead centre on the high sides of the boxes and dropped into the low panels, coming 1 – 2cm forward onto the returns depending on how thick the weld lines were. We did the same again the opposite way – covering the faces of the boxes and back enough on the side returns to give a 1cm overlap. We didn’t print another full drop just the individual fronts of each box, so yes a double print.

There is another discussion thread on the go from David Hammond at the moment about the profitability of bigger wraps against multiple non-wrap / part wrap jobs. We made money on this job but I’d want to add a considerable amount more if a repeat of this job came in from a different customer. Good for the portfolio and this was from valued long term customers but always much harder work than you think – I need to be more when installing times!! Multiple smaller jobs are nearly always more profitable than large wraps if you have time/resources to do both.

Martin Cole – thanks for the comment mate, much appreciated, puts a spring in my step. I’ll get round to posting some more soon.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi all, thanks for the kind comments.

Rob, its just the light the cab is self coloured and everything else is printed cast.

Karen, there’s 6-7 days of total effort invested in this one.

David, the rear sides were the hardest part of the whole job, all the ‘box sections’ are fully wrapped, albeit many of the returns are pieced as the depth/angles were too much to work in – we took a lot of design time to make sure there was still good registration even through all these patched areas.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Thanks Jamie

Very useful input.

We do print on 200 microns embossed PVC on an existing latex roll printer and its tricky but we’ve managed to tweak everything so it works but requires extra cooling fans and a dehumidifier – so yes a tricky one with heat. That printer staying though and I can’t see we’d want to print the media again apart from this one project so not a worry. However, 3mm, a big surprise. I’ll be asking questions on that if we continue looking at it.

Also interesting comment about short runs – we have loads of those.

Thanks again

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi rob

We’ve had an Arizona for 5 years and HP latex roll printers longer. We’d be getting rid of the flatbed as it’s getting on a bit and too slow and can’t take 10ft sheets, The R2000 might be beyond our reach and it might be we look at something else.

Cheers

[David McDonald]

Hi Rob, they seem incredibly impressive pieces of kit. I’m just weighing up investment options and the direction we want to move the company in, and we’re used to latex and are happy with its benefits and accept some minor limitations.

Jamie that would be great if you can obtain any more feedback. I’m all ears. This would be a big step for us if we went down this route and we couldn’t risk getting something that didn’t earn its keep from day one.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

We paid around £350+VAT for the body and 2x 9ah batteries.

http://www.bigredpowertools.co.uk

[David McDonald]

Hi Jeff

We’ve got the Milwauke version.

Overall we are glad we got it – its saved us a few times when we’ve been remote from power and the location prevented us from using the generator for a corded gun. We sometimes use it in the workshop on vans when the power cable is getting in the way.

We have 9 amp hour batteries and these last 18 minutes continual use. Unless you wanted to bake in a wrap then you wouldn’t be using them continuously anyway and the batteries seem to last a decent amount of time doing ad-hoc heating. The maximum heat and and the airstream force aren’t as good as a corded version but if you are realistic about what they can do then they are good.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi mate

What unit cost is he after and what quantity?

Give or take a few mm’s these are residential estate agent board sizes. You can find sources online, 6mm correx, digitally printed, double sided as low as £6 each + vat. Unless you print very large volumes all day long on very fast large scale uv printers you are never going to get close on price and it be worthwhile doing them in house.

Hopefully the price your customer is requesting is above this level by a margin and he’s unaware of any online, as mentioned just buy them in. Only problem is the ones I’d come across online weren’t even trade suppliers and were available to anyone.

We have a reasonable uv flatbed and a new Kongsberg cutter but £36 for an 8×4 6mm correx board – nope we’ve got better things to be doing!

Generally for volume discounts we work out the absolute cost price for production and add increasing margin on as quantities get smaller. If it’s something is very large then we’ll do some online benchmarking first but as Dave mentions we can’t go below our costs / minimum margin level regardless of what others are offering.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

As Pane mentions so many things that can go wrong, as with all printing, and then clean and start again, likewise durability would be a huge worry.

I cant see a wide market for these as surely they will be very very expensive. The only big advantage being the corrugated bodies that would take an age to wrap (or just couldn’t be wrapped) and I don’t think I’ve ever come across one . I reckon we can wrap a clean flat sided trailer body faster than it prints them and strip them again faster than cleaning with solvent – how many trucks would you have to do before the saving in vinyl and laminate justified the investment. Also what about using the system where the truck sides have a perimeter frame that a banner is tensioned in place (cant remember the name) – surely these are a much better solution and have an even better economy when designs on the sides need changing often and quickly.

Its got “I wish we’d never invested in this” written all over it.

To be fair there was an earlier video doing the round many years back where some other company had created the same type of printer for vehicle sides – it looked really really poor, whereas this version does seem like proper kit, albeit the overall concept seems so obviously flawed.

[David McDonald]

Hi Steve

Have done it many times as you describe with no issues – mounted prints on correx, PVC, ACM, and acrylic. Works equally well knife cutting or routing without damaging the vinyl. On ACM we’d normally use reg marks and edge detection, flip the board over, edge detection again and then rout with an upcut bit. The reg mark / edge detection process is quick and simple and it will account for you mounting prints at a crooked angle.

CMYUK have a really good demo set up – suggest giving them a call. We wanted to see lots of specific examples and they took time to work through everything we wanted to see. Ask for Sue Hayward and she’ll get it all organised for you.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Also we have the machine just a few metres away from a flatbed applicator table and flatbed printer and we have no issues with contamination when cutting acrylic, PVC or alicomp. That said if we want to cut MDF or ply we do that well away on the other CNC in another room. The vac dust extraction is very good but wouldn’t trust it with MDF dust near a printer. As mentioned the vacuum bed hold is really really good

[David McDonald]

Hi

We’ve had ours for around 11 months now and it is by far the most impressive piece of kit we’ve ever invested in. It is extremely accurate, just works perfectly time after time, every time.

Firstly a simple one in that the ability to cut through loose stickers is excellent, of kiss cut and cut through. Then when you stick a 50m roll on it and come back a short while later and all xxx thousand stickers, or xx drops of wallpaper are all in the collection basket then it puts a smile on you face every time.

Rob – the vacuum really is as good as the promotional videos, having used our other CNCs for years it’s great to almost not even have to worry about vacuum issues, masking things out etc.

We’ve knife cut some seriously tough stuff on the machine and it works with everything we’ve thrown at it, prismatics, foils etc. Tracking issues don’t exist.

The 1kw router is much better than the power rating would suggest, not as powerful as those on dedicated CNCs but great for trays, thick acrylics etc. We cut up to 24mm acrylic for LED block letters ( you need to take out the knives so it will fit), multi-pass of course but the sides of the letters are totally smooth without chatter patterns on them – that is very impressive.

The software suite is intuitive, easy to use, and the nesting tool is the best I’ve seen.

The v-cut knife is great for making correx bollard covers but Its a little fiddly to set up, the engraving bits work really well. Overall the Esko blades last ages and the router bits they sell are very balanced, precision bits. They aren’t cheap and we’re trying some others at the moment. The acrylic polishing bit cost a fortune but the finish is excellent.

We will get the reciprocating knife next, and possibly the Braille attachment down the line.

Any snags, no. Does it seem as fast as it once did, no. Can you speed it up, yes (seems too expensive to me to upgrade though). Can it do the work of 3 people faster and with higher quality, yes. Is it paying fir itself, yes easily. Would you recommend Sue and Nick at CMYUK, yes excellent team. Do you regret anything, yes didn’t get the 3.2m wide version!

Ask any more questions you want.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi rob

Mostly print and contour cut Vion 3000 high tack from Wm Smith.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi Karen

We’ve had a play with it some years back. It came in assorted sheet sizes and a small range of letter shapes and a few different colours. The sheet type we got wasn’t possible to cut – whether that applies to all sheet products i don’t know . Wasn’t hugely bright and the battery ‘controller / drivers’ made a very high pitched noise. It was possible to daisy chain the latter controllers so you could do simple effects of elements lighting up in sequence or flashing at different intervals. All the comments apply equally to the wire version but you could cut that to length – you can use it like a really small LED neon-flex. I didn’t feel it had much of a use in commercial signage but would be great for cosplay costumes, novelty uses, and in very dark environments.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi Richard

We have a template for this van and loads more. We have spent many many hours, costing us money, making these so they cut and fit perfectly and give us an edge over our competition who haven’t invested in the time and effort it takes to make them – we won’t give them out or sell them etc. Others may have done their own versions and choose to give them to you and that’s up to them. Why not ask questions on the best way to template a van, or search as its been discussed a fair few times.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Last time we remained fully open and will do so again – we are manufacturers and there is no legal requirement to close, whether the work we do is for essential services or key workers etc. (although we are doing large quantities). We have made sure our workplace is Covid safe and anyone who can do their job from home is doing so, we are making sure our customer contact is minimised and where needed is Covid safe.

We intend to continue all installations and ensure a Covid risk assessment is completed for each – this sets out what we will do but also what we need the customer to do. Installations are easier than ever at the moment – there’s no one around! Not as quiet as last March though – I drove from Southport to the centre of Manchester mid-morning and saw only 3 other cars on the road, did it in 45 minutes when usually more like 90-120 and bumper to bumper.

My view is that Installations are part of the manufacturing process and clearly cannot be done from home. I have tried hard to find any formal comment/decision on this but there doesn’t appear to be anything out there – so off installing we go.

Keep safe

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi Simon

We’ve made and fitted lots of rear printed acrylic panels of at least this size and the only way we’ve had good success was with fixings through the face. Rear mounted print was prone to pulling away and pocketing where bonded, as was rear UV print prone to cracking off. That said we only ever bonded around the perimeter rather than whole area coverage of adhesive – as you say that could spread the load. If you do use mechanical fixings then take into account expansion of the acrylic with oversized fixing holes – a 200cm tall panel wants to be 200.5cm – 201cm tall on a hot day! (most likely the reason for the rear prints failing rather than the hanging weight).

How about using some clear acrylic barrel locators – not invisible but not as obvious as aluminium ones, or the mirror fixings that just wrap around the edges and come round the front edge only about 5mm

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

+1 for Keencut products

Very well engineered and durable. There are other manufacturers making similar products for almost all models in the Keencut range but anything you initially save is a false economy – stick with Keencut.

[David McDonald]

Hi Paddy

I’m not familiar with Composer, but every piece of sign or general design software I’ve used has had the ability to use almost any fonts installed in Windows? That might not be the case with the Gerber software but I’d be very surprised – just download the font from somewhere like dafont.com, install it and away you go. The software might need starting again as some only load fonts on start up. If you really are limited to Gerber fonts then there are many ways to convert a font to an outlines(vector) and surely you will be able to import this into the Gerber software. Corel or Illustrator are good for the conversion, or as a workaround do it in a text editor and print it to a PDF without embedding the font (you can get freebie software for both).

Maybe speaking out of turn but why not find another sign maker who has the ability and knowledge to help you, or ask the sign maker to hop onto the boards and ask?

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hello again

We generally find that white/colours need a slightly higher power/slower speed to get a smooth cut edge – albeit you can never get a polished style finish. Overall clear is easier to cut and is more forgiving if things aren’t set up correctly – might help explain why your clear is OK but doesn’t solve your problem with white.

Finally as you suggest try a different brand of acrylic ?

Good luck

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi Gary

We upgraded from the 300 series to the 500 series as the 5xx can print with greater colour saturation,

i.e. more vivid reds when required etc. The loading mechanism is better and overall has proven to be more reliable

(albeit didn’t have a particular reliability problem with the 300).

We’ve owned all 4 model series of HP latex 60″ and will probably upgrade again if they ever get round to launching an upgrade at 60″ width (with white ink?).

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi

I don’t believe any ACM manufacturer gives long term warranties / guarantees , rather just guidance on life expectancy – totally different. Coastal locations will accelerate weathering, salt air etc. And covering with edge wrapped vinyl will make it look good for longer – a decent self coloured vinyl finish will outlast a self coloured ACM, definitely a good idea. Ask your supplier to give you a data sheet / statement on life expectancy and pass that on to the customer and give them your own warranty of 12 months only,

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi All

How many customers ever clean their signs?

Never mind colour fading if they bought a brand new car and let it sit outside for 4 years without cleaning or washing it then it would accumulate a patina of environmental dirt that would begin damaging the paint (and they wouldn’t complain because they’d know it was their fault) – I reckon that’ll be the cause rather than any underlying problem with the vinyl. It might buff off to a gloss finish again , or it might not. You haven’t sold them a self cleaning sign! As a gesture of good will then give the sign its first ever clean but no more. Of course if you ask them they’ll tell you they’ve cleaned it every 5 minutes since the sign went up.

Just my grumpy thoughts.

Cheers
Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi

We purchased a Kongsberg X series a few months back and we can’t praise it enough, conveyor version with the 3-tool multicut head including the router. Dearer than the F-series 16/12 but bigger and more capabilities – highly recommend taking a look. Whichever model/brand you go for within 24-hours you’ll be thinking how on earth did you ever manage without it. The performance of the Kongsberg is faultless, perfect, fast, trouble free – it’s intuitive to use and the overall quality and engineering of the unit is something to marvel at! (you can tell we like it)

In the last month we’ve cut over 4000 square metres of vinyl on it, 100’s of boards of correx / PVC, rolls and rolls of banner and poster and we’ve only just changed a blade. We’d have been working round the clock otherwise.

Cheers
Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi Rob

Our model is similar to the one in the picture but a bit more compact. They are good machines and this is the first real fault its had after hemming countless 1000’s of banners. They have a very heavy duty build and give a really good strong welded hem. We have other attachments for pockets etc. but don’t use these as by the time you’ve got them just installed right its quicker to go with tape unless you have loads to do. It’s much faster than using tape, looks better, and doesn’t suffer as tape does when you roll it. The only down side is if the banner is larger than a few metres in length its not easy as a 1 person job unless you have something on the output side to stop it skewing – I’ve kept meaning to get some gravity rollers for the output side and put an angle along one edge so it comes out easy and stays straight. For now someone holds the end coming out and keeps it straight – still hugely faster than tape though. I might work on the rollers whilst we are quiet.

I’m sure our current fault will be a quick change over of the heated wedge whenever the supplier is back in work. So we are back onto tape full time for now.

Cheers
Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi

As mentioned above sometimes its what you get used to. We use 970 all the time and find the balance of price, performance, and handling to be very good and the overall finish looks great. For your run rate models of van the RA has always worked in any recess as long as you follow good practice installation methods. Every van we see that we’ve done in 970 still looks good and no issues.

Cheers
Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi

From our experience the current models of HP Latex printers allow a far longer life for the print heads than HP states but this was not the case on earlier models (we’ve had one from each model generation since they were introduced).

The issue of not changing the heads "on time" was colour consistency, i.e. if we needed to repair a wrap and the original print was done on heads some margin beyond the recommended life then the original print would have been off the intended colour and the new prints wouldn’t match (notwithstanding other factors like fading etc.). Further wallpaper drops could have slight variances in colour between them. We quickly learned that the problems were completely mitigated by sticking to HP’s recommended print head life (or not too far beyond)

With the 500 series, we benchmark print quality weekly and do image quality maintenance and calibrations regularly, we swap all heads by default when they get around 4.5k. Doing the latter has guaranteed 100% print quality and consistency. We might be able to get the same result by letting the heads go even longer but we just drew the line at that level and have no worries. That’s a fair amount of print sold per head and so the costs aren’t great.

If we were printing product that wasn’t critical in colour consistency then I’d be happy to let the heads keep on going and going and going and going!

We always have extra spare heads and carts in stock as we print a substantial amount and cant afford to lose print time if we get a faulty head/cart when replacing, its happened 3 times.

I’d strongly recommend the 560/570, excellent piece of kit.

Cheers
Dave

[David McDonald]

Our first tangible impact from Corona Virus was late Friday – an exhibition next month was cancelled and we will miss out on a reasonable order. The event is unlikely to be rescheduled this year.

I didn’t feel unwell before we got the phone call but I do now !!

Fortunately our profile of work shouldn’t be impacted by more of the same type of cancellation but I know for some companies the exhibition market is their bread and butter.

Not being pessimistic but I can see general demand being reduced for the remainder of the year

My son flies to New Zealand on Tuesday and they’ve just announced a 14-day quarantine, we’ve been debating all day to decide whether its still worth him going.

[David McDonald]

Hi Rob / John

It does look like a wheel but its a pair of rubber doorstops, one either side. It dampens the ‘clacker’ (not a phrase I’ve ever used before), We can tighten the bolt through to spread them out wider to adjust how fast the clacker (a hinge) bounces back down to make sure it doesn’t skip any of the pegs regardless of how fast or slow someone spins the wheel – worked really well. We could have used some type of springs to make the clacker self return to a central position in time for the next peg coming round but sometimes a more simple solution can be more reliable (and didn’t have any springs in the workshop but seemed to have loads of rubber doorstops floating around from some long forgotten project).

Thanks for the comments

Cheers
Dave

[David McDonald]

Cheers Martin, hope you are keeping well and busy.

Billy – if you make one this way then send me a photo.

Cheers
Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi Billy

Why not have the whole front panel of the stand made from a clear or opal sheet of acrylic. For this design then flood coat the face with 100% opaque black vinyl with a cut out for the text to be illuminated, or print onto some light box back lit media or use self coloured transparent film for other coloured colours etc. Bond a cheap LED ceiling light behind the cut out – the 600mm square ones for use in suspended ceilings, then build this face into your stand structure. You could always try resin doming into the cut out in the black vinyl, or contour cut clear vinyl and resin dome this before laying it into the cut out. This slight bevel effect would add to the look and illumination effect. All cheap and readily achievable with you usual tooling, plotter and printer. You could wire the LED driver to a ‘kettle plug’ socket on the side/rear of the stand so users can plug it in – or skip the driver and install a suitable Ah capacity 12v/24v battery that the customer can remove and charge separately – don’t think it would need to be a full size car battery but something a bit more modest. You can also get 1200mm x 600mm, 300mm x 300mm, and 1200mm x 300mm LED light panels for bigger or smaller areas of illumination.

Just an idea…..

Cheers
Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi

We use Clarity as well. When we started using it years back (2012) it was the best option we’d assessed and that seemed to be the general consensus amongst nearly all members on the boards. It works well for us and I can still recall how much more difficult things were prior to installing it, that said I now get the general feeling that other alternatives have since become more viable options to anyone starting fresh with this type of system. Definitely look at Clarity though as it is a good solid system (Dave’s comments are true about charging for every extra or service but why shouldn’t they?)

It is an extremely important decision of which system to choose – the longer you stay with one system the more locked in you will become. If you wanted to migrate it becomes increasingly difficult, almost impossible to do this. Not that we are currently planning to move from Clarity, but if we did we’d have to pretty much run 2 systems in parallel (and for a considerable time), albeit just a single license for Clarity for access to all historical data.

From a production planning/scheduling point of view then as mentioned Trello is good and essentially free for almost anything you’d need it for.
https://www.trello.com

Or Microsoft Planner if you have Office 365 then that is also free. We use the latter.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/business/task-management-software

Hope that helps.

Cheers
Dave

microsoft-plannert-work-job-management-software.jpg 299 KB Image File - Click to view

• Copy Download Link

[David McDonald]

Seemingly can be used on the whole 300 series; 310, 330 and 360

[David McDonald]

Hi Gavin

We can sometimes get this problem when using our table to laminate prints – the prints won’t lie truly flat so you can get creases in the finished product due to the ‘bunching’ you describe. Likewise we don’t get an issue when mounting to boards. We don’t do this very often but more so for backing clear prints with white vinyl and we want to manually cut and put white vinyl down without covering the contour cut registration marks.

It can help to warm the vinyl on the bed with a heat gun, or tape it to the table stretching it slightly all round, or just roll over it backwards and forwards a few times to even it out (but that can also crease it).

I don’t think think this is just you table but what printing does to the vinyl, we’ve had the same issue with both solvent and latex prints. If we try and laminate a non printed vinyl then we don’t get the same level of ‘bunching’.

Cheers
Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi

Its gone now, Paul collecting it later today.

Cheers

[David McDonald]

Hi

If taken apart the max length of a single part is 2.2m, assembled the whole thing measures 2.2m x 2.15m.

We cant come in at the weekend

Its still available and could be collected late Friday.

Cheers
Dave

[David McDonald]

photo below

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Attachments:

[David McDonald]

Hi All

Thanks for the comments
Cheers
Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi David

Wow, small world !!! I didn’t know you guys were related. He’s moved onto Superwide now – he wanted a different type of role and its about a minute from where he lives! Still speak to him quite often though but don’t think we’ll ever tempt him back – we miss his dry sense of humour.

Cheers
Dave

[David McDonald]

We are users of MD3 and MD5, plus the matching MG laminates, and we’ve never had any real problems with either vinyl and continue to be very happy with them. Last month went through over 25 rolls and zero issues. Printed on HP Latex 560. Ten out of ten for us.

Cheers
Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi Rob

Thanks for your thoughts. We are getting to a stage where we regularly have too much vinyl, banners and boards to trim within ever shortening deadlines. We can recruit more staff or pay the same or less on finance for a unit to allow higher productivity (may be better reliability and accuracy at the same time). The unit would allow us to introduce new products but that’s not the main reason at the moment but its good to have to help continue growing the business.

Very good point about routing in what should be a clean production area.

Has anyone ever come across i-echo tables?

Cheers
Dave

[David McDonald]

Thanks John,

Yes I’ve heard Tekcel are really good routers and even though we do want a router on the flatbed plotter it will mostly be for vinyl, banners, correx and PVC, with limited acrylic and DiBond as we’ll cut most of the latter on other machines.

Look forward to hearing from anyone else with experience on Summa, Kongsberg, Dyss etc.

Cheers
Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi All

Some of the Arizona parts we have bought are no longer listed on their website which is a shame.

Toshiba CA4W prints heads previously around £850 – £900 each as opposed to OCE/Canon originals at £2600 each !

If anyone knows a source of these Toshiba print heads that would be most appreciated :smiles:

Cheers
Dave

[David McDonald]

Thanks

Thought there was only lite – black/black versions out there – customer was adamant they’d seen some black/mill

All have a good weekend.

Cheers
Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi

I’ve attached a document that might help – I’ve needed to crop some of the pages and content out as its a document from one of our customers.

Cheers
Dave

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Attachments:

Boat wrapping.pdf

[David McDonald]

Hi

Sorry to hear about your problems.

Years back when we had Roland eco-solvent machines we experimented with various 3rd party ink options and always had problems regardless of the brand used. The odd thing was that if we kept original Roland inks in the Magenta Channel and 3rd party in the others it did solve all the problems – regardless as to whether they were seemingly unrelated to Magenta in any conceivable anyway – very strange! An engineer did once give us a plausible explanation as to why that could be but I can’t remember now.

The other thing we learned was that of the many 10’s of 3rd party ink sellers out there the actual ink content in the carts came from a much smaller number of manufacturers – of course each re-seller has their own re branding but you are often buying the very same ink content. This is exactly the same for the 3rd party inks we buy for our flatbed UV today – we know who makes the ink content and could buy directly from them at the very same price (we use the re-seller though as they also service our machine).

Anyhow sorry non of this actually helps you but we’ve been there and have the T-shirt. We no longer have eco-solvent and are fully latex but I’ll I’ll never use 3rd party with them and will always have the printers under a decent warranty. I’ve learned my lesson.

Cheers
Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi

It’s "FS Albert", either bold or extra bold.

Cheers
Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi

We have used it and it is highly resistant to scuffing and scratches, quite a thick product as I recall and straightforward to put through the laminators. Not cheap but does exactly what it says, think we had to buy a full 50m roll and they dont do shorter roll lengths

Cheers
Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi

Where are you located?

Cheers
Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi Warren

Hope you are keeping well and busy.

Did you ever get anyone to successfully grind down that bit to fit the 6mm collet on the Kongsberg?

We have the same table and we really want to try the 2-piece neon flex.

Having made a few in 1-piece it just seems like the 2-piece will be so much easier.

If you’ve started doing the 2-piece in house how are you finding it?

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi Peter

Yes, think we’d still go for it. I can remember back to moving from spreadsheets and manual methods and it was a huge improvement, as we’ve grown it’s now a necessity now to have such a system. We’ve had an odd glitch over 10-years but we’ve never really been down, and they’ve just gone in and sorted it via TeamViewer almost instantly. Since we’ve started it looks and works in an almost identical fashion to day 1, its not the most modern looking user interface – but I guess it doesn’t need to be. They do an online/app version ‘Go’ which looks as you’d expect from an online version. We don’t need to use that as we always quote from a desk, and we’ll RemotePC into our office PC’s to access it when away from the office. Remember that the longer you use a system then the more value to the business of the data it holds increases – as Clarity has been around for a long time then that gives peace of mind for us.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Hi mate

Can’t comment on how good or bad that printer is but qualify their exact feet on the street engineering support ability at your location (forget unlimited phone support), service level lead time etc. Make that a massive part of your consideration on whether you go for it. That’s a very small price to pay for an 8*4 UV flatbed printer but large enough to be very painful when its not performing well, doing something unexpected, or the power light just doesn’t come on. Every flatbed UV I’ve used, all big brands, need everything to be ‘just so’ to give constant quality output – they are much more demanding and temperamental than roll to roll printers to maintain and keep going.

Let us know if you get one and how it performs.

Cheers

Dave

[David McDonald]

Also, have you got air assist on – this helps blowing smoke/vapour away from the cut edge so it gets less dirty, likewise your extraction switched on so get rid of smoke build up.

[David McDonald]

Hi

What bed are you cutting on – do you have the ‘honeycomb’ type with the smaller holes, or the type with the open slats / tines? We’ve always found that that on our laser the slats work better than the honeycomb on acrylic – any melted residue seems to flame less as it drips away or vaporises. Might be worth switching that if you have both bed types?

Cheers

Dave