anyone own a uscutter plotter?

[RakerTooth]

Here's my situation: 30 years in the trade, I'm no newby. I started with hand lettering, and I'm going back to it. Well, away from vinyl anyway. I paint big stuff, heavy equipment, commercial buildings, etc. On some of them I still do lettering. I use plotters about twice a month, if that. I have some -really- tough old equipment. A 24" Roland that's had a handle break and replaced with a small vice grip. Just a couple weeks ago, the kids knocked it over, the case cracked and separated, but it still cuts perfectly. Ancient but goody. I also have a mid '80's pen plotter I use. It has outlasted several computers. I was just about to get another PC ( has to be about 10 years old to be compatible with HP's proprietary #9 pin issue) but I realized I really don't like the pen plotter, it's rather inconvenient for several reasons. So rather than get another used XP machine, I'm looking at a different plotter. An old 36" Japanese cutter would be perfect, but when I see one at a good price, it's gone. So I'm looking for people who actually use (or try to) the cheap UScutter plotters. It will only get very light use, much of it for drawing, not cutting. Are you satisfied with your purchase? Spare me the flames for considering the cheap machine. At my rate, I don't know that I would ever recover the cost of something expensive.

 

[Zx360]

When I first started in the industry as a hobby just out of college all I could afford was one of the 24" us cutter pcut machines. It worked fine for what I used it for. Low volume not super detailed work. I just recently upgraded to a 24" graphtec only becaus my customers require more and more small detail work that the pcut just couldn't handle. From a hobby standpoint it worked fine. Now I also work in a professional shop, it would never cut it in that situation. But for small runs or very light use, I'd have no issue using one.

 

[binki]

I started with the LP24 and used it for 5 years and sold it for about half of what I paid for it. Made several hundred thousand with it. Not bad for a $400 purchase. It had several issues. Small elements wouldn't cut well and tracking was an issue on large designs but overall for the day-to-day stuff it did it's job. It was replaced with a Graphtec and a Versacamm.

Don't know if they still do this but when I purchased I got it on Ebay for less than if I contacted them. With that you get no support. But there was a forum out there that was really good on helping fix issues with the cutter.

Now, for the extra bux getting the graphtec might be worth it. Certainly the aggravation factor for me made it worth doing.