Recent content by FactorDesign

I've never hired anyone in the sign industry, but I've been a part of it for about 15 years as an employee. Here's my history and maybe a perspective from the other side. Shop #1 I started at a Fastsigns in FL making ~$8/hr, but wasn't there long as I found out I was just filler until the...

That’s a heck of a lot of custom dye sub print work on those banners, flags, jerseys, etc... Fess up, who just got a new boat?

Too close to home, My previous employer had an AOL email address for the main contact on a few of his businesses. I'd hear the AOL sign-in chime on his computer and laugh to myself. The main sign shop email would get thousands of spam messages weekly.

I convinced my retired parents to buy some Tesla at ~ $220... before the split. They also bought a loaded model 3 and the profits would pay off the car with some left over, but they'll likely ride it out until the bubble pops like they did with Yahoo way back in the day. If I had 2 nickels to...

Joe Rogan more likely. Hallucinogens won't just be legal, they will be mandatory.

Had no idea laminators got this cheap. Are they laminating with a 54" roll of packing tape in this video? It doesn't seem to have any backer. https://dmaisjd.en.made-in-china.com/product/qbNncGjofytH/China-Dmais-Newest-Design-Electric-Lamination-Machine.html

Race car people are the cheapest. At my previous shop we had a race car builder's shop behind us. We could have wrapped a couple cars a week if we were willing to do it for $300. All that missed business really hurts. /s

Depending on which BenQ monitor it is, it is possibly an AHVA panel which is related to IPS and does get vertical color shift, but is otherwise an exceptional monitor especially when calibrated. TFT Central is one of the best monitor review sites if you are interested in nerding out over monitor...

No, I sent the graphic again and it didn't have that text anymore, with zero changes on my part. The only thought I really ever had was maybe something to do with the dongle. I wonder if a usb driver crashes or whatever mid rip/print if it would overlay that text but not show it on screen or...

Graphtec Cutting Master plugin for Illustrator works perfectly. The problem we have is that any time there's even a tiny update to illustrator it breaks the plugins, so I often have to keep multiple copies installed or disable updates. When we want to update the 'safe' install to the latest...

I've had FlexiSign / Versaworks do some weird things in the past. One of the strangest was a car wrap I was printing for a rush install job - Literally on a Friday the customer dropped off 2 cars on a they used for delivery, said "make these look like race cars", and I had to have them done by...

Our last roll of 3651 clear has some random black specs embedded in it. 2 or 3 rolls of 3M IJ180c V3 ago, there was a whole intact fly trapped between the vinyl and the backer. Print, laminated, and installed it, and you couldn't even tell. I hate working with clear vinyl, its so hard to color...

I'm not sure if this applies to your own use case, but we've had problems with mounting blockout graphics 2nd surface on acrylic sheets that weren't perfectly flat, so we had to use a dense foam pad around 3/4" thick as a sled under the acrylic to help make up for the uneven pressure due to the...

I'm using Slice Mosquito hotends because I wanted a large range of material capability, but CF Nylons are as high as I've gone. I'd want to add a build chamber heater for the really high temp stuff.

The Prusa MK3s is excellent. I have 2 of them myself at home and 1 and work. I've got machines that print better, faster, larger, etc... but they all require so much more maintenance and tuning. The MK3s can sit for months (the one at work does), and I just turn it on and it'll lay down a nice...