Anyone else went from crazy slow to crazy busy?

[iPrintStuff]

Don’t know about you guys but I think this is the busiest we’ve been. Only down side is everybody wants all their stuff yesterday, as per usual!

We went from printing about 600sqm in the whole of February to printing 600sqm (6500sqft) a day currently. All I can say is our Colorado doesn’t know what’s hit it!

Also dont know how many of you have seen a few of my recent posts but I can’t praise the XY cutter we got recently enough. Would highly recommend to anybody. Got it just before the **** hit the fan and it’s been an absolute life saver. Currently done 15k lengthwise cuts so far (we print most stuff 2-3 up) so it’s easily cut 30-45k posters/banners/vinyls/signs so far. Don’t know about some of your employees but it sure has all of ours beat lol

 

[bannertime]

We were sorta slow for about a week and then we've nearly been behind ever since.

I've been interested in the XY. I'm seriously debating between it or a Summa F1612. We don't have a flatbed printer, but we could still do a lot with the Summa, but the XY would also do a LOT that we'd do on the Summa.

 

[rjssigns]

Sign side ramping up slowly for me. Did a concrete grinding job this morning for a neighbor.

 

[Bobby H]

Our company has stayed pretty busy throughout the COVID-19 crisis. We had a few big projects already deep into production. A lot of regular work slowed down a good bit, but we were routing and assembling lots and lots of custom sneeze guards for local businesses. Thankfully Oklahoma hasn't been hit as bad with SARS-CoV-2 infections as other places around the US. Although we did get a fairly big uptick in new cases reported today. Locally we've had just over 300 confirmed cases, 3 deaths and 279 recoveries. With the situation trending in the right direction we're seeing a good increase in regular business activity.

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

Well, Trump said there would be pent up demand it we will come back strong and quick.

Yes, it was super slow for about 2 weeks right when the lockdowns too place, but it started picking up and now there are orders and work out the ying yang. It's good!

 

[iPrintStuff]

We were sorta slow for about a week and then we've nearly been behind ever since.

I've been interested in the XY. I'm seriously debating between it or a Summa F1612. We don't have a flatbed printer, but we could still do a lot with the Summa, but the XY would also do a LOT that we'd do on the Summa.

We looked at a fotoba and honestly the price wasn’t much different to a summa F1612 which put us off. Did some digging around and got one for 1/3 of the price of the fotoba. Doesn’t come with all the bells and whistles but does exactly what we need and has been a workhorse. Cuts a roll of 20 8x4’ banners in about 7 minutes!

Think we’ll go for a flatbed printer before we get the cutter, a part of our company has a CNC so we use that when we need stuff cut. 90% of the flatbed work would just be me playing though lol

 

[Notarealsignguy]

We looked at a fotoba and honestly the price wasn’t much different to a summa F1612 which put us off. Did some digging around and got one for 1/3 of the price of the fotoba. Doesn’t come with all the bells and whistles but does exactly what we need and has been a workhorse. Cuts a roll of 20 8x4’ banners in about 7 minutes!

Think we’ll go for a flatbed printer before we get the cutter, a part of our company has a CNC so we use that when we need stuff cut. 90% of the flatbed work would just be me playing though lol

What cutter did you get?

 

[iPrintStuff]

What cutter did you get?

We got a Flexa Miura II, it’s a bit more manual than the fotoba and you literally have to set all your blades in position then manually adjust the blade pressure but once you’ve done 5-6 rolls you can judge it pretty easy.

Tracking isn’t an issue at all either, stays within ~1mm over a whole roll (not sure if that’s helped by the Colorado cutting a straight edge on every roll and having excellent tracking also though).

With regards to speed, I’d say we average about a roll every ten minutes. Naturally the larger signs/banners cut quicker and a roll of 12” by 16” vinyls took about 15-20 mins. Considering it takes about 2 hours to print then about 25 mins to laminate I’d say that’s not bad lol

Ours came with three single blades (one each the edges of the roll and one down the middle for jobs without bleeds) and one double cutter (for cutting jobs two up with bleeds).

We’ve since added extra double cutters but they’re fairly cheap and you can just buy replacement blades eventually that cost ~£50, though I can’t see us needing them for at least a year.

They gave us two days for install and training but install took about an hour and we were pretty much fully trained a couple hours after that. Very easy workflow in onyx too.

I think with the cutter, install and training, then adding two extra double cutters, we’re about 17k all in. And we got quoted 42k for a fotoba and 12k for the table that comes with it lol

 

[GAC05]

Still a bit slow here. Things are just about all opened up but there is no telling when the tourists are going to start coming back.
I did manage to use the downtime to refresh my printer with a new head, dampers, and maintenance station. I was pretty happy when it came back on with no sparks, smoke, or ink spraying all over. Gold tech-star for me.
Local government is just now figuring out how to get unemployment checks out to everyone who applied, that will stir up a little business activity in the next few weeks. After that, who knows.

 

[iPrintStuff]

I was hoping all the down time would give me time to get all my media’s profiled and get a few extra print modes, alas I’m stuck with the 2/5 I’ve made for them all lol

 

[Bly]

Yep gone from staring at the clock to wondering how we'll get it all done.
Mostly covid stuff for businesses returning to work.

 

[iPrintStuff]

Yep gone from staring at the clock to wondering how we'll get it all done.
Mostly covid stuff for businesses returning to work.

Blessing and a curse of the Colorado is that it tells you when all those queue’d up jobs will finish if you were up for staying all night and loading rolls lol

 

[bannertime]

Blessing and a curse of the Colorado is that it tells you when all those queue’d up jobs will finish if you were up for staying all night and loading rolls lol

This is why I have upgraded my system so I could play games with friends after hours while still running print production. Perks of being single and no life outside of the digital world.

 

[Bly]

Blessing and a curse of the Colorado is that it tells you when all those queue’d up jobs will finish if you were up for staying all night and loading rolls lol

The speed it prints at means no later nighters for me any more.

 

[Bly]

I was hoping all the down time would give me time to get all my media’s profiled and get a few extra print modes, alas I’m stuck with the 2/5 I’ve made for them all lol

Don't forget to wait an hour before reading icc swatches. The shift in cyan is huge until it cures.

 

[sinclairgraphics1]

Don’t know about you guys but I think this is the busiest we’ve been. Only down side is everybody wants all their stuff yesterday, as per usual!

We went from printing about 600sqm in the whole of February to printing 600sqm (6500sqft) a day currently. All I can say is our Colorado doesn’t know what’s hit it!

Also dont know how many of you have seen a few of my recent posts but I can’t praise the XY cutter we got recently enough. Would highly recommend to anybody. Got it just before the **** hit the fan and it’s been an absolute life saver. Currently done 15k lengthwise cuts so far (we print most stuff 2-3 up) so it’s easily cut 30-45k posters/banners/vinyls/signs so far. Don’t know about some of your employees but it sure has all of ours beat lol

Hey, can you post the info about the XY cutter? I'm interested in this, so can you die-cut vinyl or is it just kiss cut? We have a Graphtec that we die-cut with but looking for an additional machine.

 

[Peachtree Signs]

not busy but it's picking up, wish we could find some clear acrylic

 

[MoultrieMade]

not busy but it's picking up, wish we could find some clear acrylic

I have a small supply of 1/4" clear extruded acrylic. I can supply you with cnc-routed blanks, sneeze guards, etc. - maybe even full sheets, if you don't mind a trip to South Ga. Shoot me a PM or email to james @ moultriemade.com, and I'll get you a quick quote. Thanks!

 

[bannertime]

Hey, can you post the info about the XY cutter? I'm interested in this, so can you die-cut vinyl or is it just kiss cut? We have a Graphtec that we die-cut with but looking for an additional machine.

The Flexa and the Fotoba are X or X/Y only cutters meaning they only cut in one or two directions. It would be "kiss" cut since the cut is butt against the art but not die cut since there's no die and it's not able to cut any other shapes besides square or rectangle.

 

[iPrintStuff]

Exactly what bannertime said, it just cuts squares/oblongs lol. I have managed to set it up before so that I can run a roll on the summa then loaded it on the xy and cut the kiss cut roll into singles. But you’d definitely need both a contour cutter and an xy cutter.

If you have any specific questions happy to help but probably worth just YouTubing it and seeing what they can do.

We do a lot of high intensity road signage and today we tried using the cutter to do blanks before we lay the films. Went great! Just load the empty roll, then select your length, put the blades at your desired width(s) and off it goes.