Contour Cut Pricing

[FatCat]

NOOOOOOOOOO. I paid $7,000 for my plotter and $20,000 for my printer. I can make the same sign with either one and both signs are the same price. The price should reflect the product produced, not the machine used to produce it.

YESSSSSSSS, lol. Look, I didn't say it to justify the OP's price, just a guess for the price difference. And trust me the billable rate is the same for that type of machine no matter what you are cutting on it - just like a CNC router.

Look at it this way, you can certainly level out your own gravel driveway with a shovel and rake yourself for free in a day or two, or you can call the neighbor down the road who has small blade attachment on his john deer mower who can smooth it in a few hours for $100 and a 12 pack of beer, or you could call a professional excavator who brings a $100,000 bulldozer on a $100,000 semi truck and can do it in 15 minutes and will charge you $500 just to show up. The choice is ultimately yours, the job gets done the same any way you slice it, but the problem is not the fault of the person doing the job, its the person who chooses the way in which the job is done.

 

[Jester1167]

My guess is that the OP is having the same company print, and cut the decals and backing to shape. Those flatbeds are pretty quick and efficient have good optical registration. I bet if you forget the hourly rate an look at the per piece cost it's pretty good.

If the price is affecting the margins maybe you need to look at a company like Strouse or Gill. They are geared to produce hundreds to hundreds of thousands of the same decals.

 

[T_K]

I was under the impression that a vinyl cuttter is a good option when it is short run - Also I was told that size of the finished product will play an important role. Currently, we are cutting anything from 3x3" ovals to 18x36 contour cut. These are not kiss cut - so a tangential blade is an absolute and the guys at summa said you really dont want to run more than 20 feet at a time and you only want to cut smaller items if you are needing tangential cutting becasue they will tend to fall out prematurely. Is this incorrect? Right now we are outsourcing to a shop with a Zund cutter.

If you can do it in-house with your own equipment and save money, is it a problem to run the job in shorter segments? At my previous shop we had a Roland VersaCamm and a small 30" graphtec plotter - used both for contour cut jobs. We did need to keep the segments down to 20 feet on the graphtec, but we'd just cut if off and keep going with minimal delay.

 

[TopFliteGraphics]

I use signs365.com for contour cut vinyl. Their prices are very fair and since I do not do it everyday, it costs a lot less to outsource than pay for idle equipment