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Contour Cut Pricing

CMYKprnt

New Member
Unfortunately, we do not have a table top cutter and from time to time I need to outsource this service. The supplier I am using right now is charging $50 set up plus $100/hour run time to cut. I understand every shop is different when it comes to pricing but at the price I am paying now it is difficult to justify producing in-house especially on small quantities. I wanted to see if you guys could give me some ball parks of what you think is market rate?
 

Christian @ 2CT Media

Active Member
Wow... that's insane to me for vinyl cutting, well at least to me.

We charge our wholesale/trade clients. $0.30/sq + $0.50/sq to weed and mask if needed.
 

CMYKprnt

New Member
Wow... that's insane to me for vinyl cutting, well at least to me.

We charge our wholesale/trade clients. $0.30/sq + $0.50/sq to weed and mask if needed.

LOL - I wasn't sure but I was a little sore after receiving the bill. we do provide the cut contour file and generally, it's about 200-300 feet per job.
 

bjt140

New Member
If there was enough quantity and repeat business, I would be close to that to laser cut pieces. Not vinyl, but acrylic metal and wood etc.
 

Gino

Premium Subscriber
If you have 200' or 300' at a shot, why don't you just buy a cutter ?? And make it a sprocket fed type. Get a write-off with an in-house bonus to boot. :banghead:
 

TXFB.INS

New Member
WOW, yeah that very high for vinyl cutting.

like Gino stated, with this much material being cut and on a regular bases, buy your own equipment. or at the very least find a new vendor
 

CMYKprnt

New Member
If you have 200' or 300' at a shot, why don't you just buy a cutter ?? And make it a sprocket fed type. Get a write-off with an in-house bonus to boot. :banghead:


We have been talking to Colex and to be honest - we only have one client that is running that much stuff with us. The rest of our jobs are much smaller quantity jobs - we only have 1 solvent printer so we outsource a lot of flatbed work. I guess it would make sense but being a little cautious too because if we were to lose that 1 client then we couldn't justify the flatbed cutter at this time.
 

DirtyD

New Member
Get a Mimaki Vinyl cutter I have their lower cost machine in the CG series and do perfcut/diecut all the time with it - Graphtec's can do the same..No need for a flatbed cutter unless its magnetic or the really thick reflective - I don't use that so I'm not sure what it's called

And if your looking for just contour then the mimaki or Graphtec would be great too.. Save you lots of outsource money

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FatCat

New Member
One thing I'd like to mention is that perhaps the shop that is doing the OPs cutting is using a flatbed cutter like a Zund/Esko/Summa and not a roll fed vinyl cutter that most of us are used to. If this is the case I can understand the difference as a $100,000.00+ machine bills out a lot higher rate per hour vs. a $1000.00-$5,000.00 machine.
 
One thing I'd like to mention is that perhaps the shop that is doing the OPs cutting is using a flatbed cutter like a Zund/Esko/Summa and not a roll fed vinyl cutter that most of us are used to. If this is the case I can understand the difference as a $100,000.00+ machine bills out a lot higher rate per hour vs. a $1000.00-$5,000.00 machine.


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.
 

CMYKprnt

New Member
Im confused as to why you are cutting vinyl on a 'tabletop' (reading this as flatbed) cutter?
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.
 

Christian @ 2CT Media

Active Member
We cut 150' rolls on our Summa S2-160t all the time... and if you need to flex cut just set it up properly.

If you must have a digital flatbed cutter, you can get a Summa F1612 for roughly $50k
 
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