Christian @ 2CT Media
Active Member
Fully configured with 6 heads we are at $175,000.
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Does Speed Kill?
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Notarealsignguy
Arial - it's almost helvetica
175k is a lot of ching. If someone demands higher quality why not run it through your roll printer, the added expense would be a wash and keep the 750 for UV prints. There are a lot of those 500/550 700/750 flatbeds out there and haven't seen many or anyone really dogging the output. I always thought most people bought the faster flatbeds for production speed and not to increase quality.
Christian @ 2CT Media
Active Member
We have made our purchase price back already and it has opened new avenues that mounting roll prints would not allow.
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Notarealsignguy
Arial - it's almost helvetica
I guess I don't see the value without the production demand. If you used the FB750, you'd have $175k in your pocket rather than another machine in the garage. We all have different ways to do things though.
Christian @ 2CT Media
Active Member
It all depends on your use case and needs. On the HP we could have never been profitable running the 11,000+ yard signs we just did, or be able to charge $50/sqft for textured tactile Printing. We also had to sacrifice print quality for the ability to print white.
For what you don't see value in we are making money now. This printer was just installed in January, so going forward our margins all increase as our costs go down.
For what you don't see value in we are making money now. This printer was just installed in January, so going forward our margins all increase as our costs go down.
Notarealsignguy
Arial - it's almost helvetica
I guess what I don't understand is on 1 or 2 jobs why wouldn't you just sub it out and make money the entire time rather than drop $175k to end up at $0 4 months later? I'm struggling to see the disadvantage of the old machine on all but a few things unless it was just balls out and couldn't keep up all of the time.
Lets say 11k coro signs are 55k? If you never took the job you'd have 175k in your pocket plus the other flatbed plus whatever work that it could produce in that time frame.
I assume they are projecting many more big jobs to come.
bannertime
Active Member
This is very odd to me. If I had $175k to drop on a machine and be even in 4 months, I'd buy another one. Cause in 8 months I'll have $175k in my pocket plus two great machines. You don't buy a machine to complete a job. You use a job to buy a machine to increase your profitability on future jobs.
Or lower your labour costs. If you can automate a process and eliminate paying wages, you could also be money ahead. Paying wages is the biggest expense with no warranty of performance. (You have to pay them if they do a good job or a bad job. If they do a bad job you have to pay them again to fix it and buy new materials.)
Notarealsignguy
Arial - it's almost helvetica
I agree with you 100% but I don't buy it. How can you have 1 machine that was virtually never used and then justify replacing it with another that costs 2x the money? Then immediately make $175k which would be pushing $400k gross on 1 machine in 4 months on random jobs? If that's the case, why was the other one not having the snot ran out of it?
iPrintStuff
Prints stuff
You don’t splash 175k on a printer if you don’t plan on having the jobs to feed it. Assuming the upgrade was made for the same reason everyone else upgrades - to save time, operation costs, add new avenues increase output etc.
If I had a lemon printer that I didn’t trust, I definitely wouldn’t be pushing the type of jobs I can output on that machine. Maybe by switching to the vanguard they can push a certain type of job now, or feel comfortable enough with the output to advertise the new products.
There’s always the chance that they bought the printer to fulfil certain contracts, we’ve done it a few times. Had a giant job, bought in the machine to do the job, made profit overall and now I have an extra machine that I can do a certain job on which will help me in the long run.
That was partly the reason we bought the Colorado, we’d just been awarded a contract for ~60 rolls of decals, one roll took about 8 hours each on the mimaki, that went down to about 1.5 hours on the Colorado (though we did run a few of the b/w decals on max speed at about 30 mins a roll). That job paid for a huge chunk of the printer and now we have the Colorado, a huge capacity for extra work and reduced a lot of our costs (especially ink!) and saved a small fortune on all the saved overtime costs of someone watching the mimaki literally 24/7 for 20 full days.
If I had a lemon printer that I didn’t trust, I definitely wouldn’t be pushing the type of jobs I can output on that machine. Maybe by switching to the vanguard they can push a certain type of job now, or feel comfortable enough with the output to advertise the new products.
There’s always the chance that they bought the printer to fulfil certain contracts, we’ve done it a few times. Had a giant job, bought in the machine to do the job, made profit overall and now I have an extra machine that I can do a certain job on which will help me in the long run.
That was partly the reason we bought the Colorado, we’d just been awarded a contract for ~60 rolls of decals, one roll took about 8 hours each on the mimaki, that went down to about 1.5 hours on the Colorado (though we did run a few of the b/w decals on max speed at about 30 mins a roll). That job paid for a huge chunk of the printer and now we have the Colorado, a huge capacity for extra work and reduced a lot of our costs (especially ink!) and saved a small fortune on all the saved overtime costs of someone watching the mimaki literally 24/7 for 20 full days.
I hate our fb500. We never use it now. Even for most real estate signs we just print on cheap media and apply it. I'd kill for a true flatbed... And I dread everytime I have to boot up the fb500.
We deal with mainly larger clients. One client could pay off a 170k flatbed in less than a year. We've been lucky enough that all our bigger orders are screen prints... But if we had a job that needed us to run 1000 coro signs on a regular basis, we'd be buying a flatbed. After resear hung the vanguard Wed go with that... It looks awesome.
I can easily see why the fb750 got no use and the vanguard does. They both may be "flatbed" but they're for different uses. The hp is slow.... The quality isn't too good. And it needs a ton of babysitting. The vanguard can print a 4x8 in really high quality in one minute..... It opens doors to a lot of jobs that just aren't possible on the scitex machines.
Tbh, I'm not find of non true flatbed now. Even the new latex flatbed... I originally wanted one.... But I can see a true flatbed suiting us more. Especially now that we're moving away from real estate and more into high quality / high quantity items.
We deal with mainly larger clients. One client could pay off a 170k flatbed in less than a year. We've been lucky enough that all our bigger orders are screen prints... But if we had a job that needed us to run 1000 coro signs on a regular basis, we'd be buying a flatbed. After resear hung the vanguard Wed go with that... It looks awesome.
I can easily see why the fb750 got no use and the vanguard does. They both may be "flatbed" but they're for different uses. The hp is slow.... The quality isn't too good. And it needs a ton of babysitting. The vanguard can print a 4x8 in really high quality in one minute..... It opens doors to a lot of jobs that just aren't possible on the scitex machines.
Tbh, I'm not find of non true flatbed now. Even the new latex flatbed... I originally wanted one.... But I can see a true flatbed suiting us more. Especially now that we're moving away from real estate and more into high quality / high quantity items.
Christian @ 2CT Media
Active Member
We do over $500k/yr in flatbed printing and that was pre vanguard, we are already to $220k in 4 months because of our vanguard and have 3 pending jobs over $100k. We prefer to do most things in house when possible.
Christian @ 2CT Media
Active Member
Because it was down more than up for 22 months.
We buy things based on the work we do. We were outsourcing or mounting a ton of our work, it finally became too much so we searched for a solution and we are winning now.
Christian @ 2CT Media
Active Member
Bingo on all accounts. If you want to compete you have to take risks and build a business that can take it.
rydods
Member for quite some time.
No sorry, I didn't give enough info. We have 2 eco solvent printers and we film laminate. I was just stating that dry time as a quite a hold up for us. I'd imagine Latex or UV has no dry time involved.
Christian @ 2CT Media
Active Member
Little to no Outgas, both techs are fully cured out of the machine
Johnny Best
Active Member
What is the learning curve on your Vanguard machine.
While I 100% there is a balance, the litmus test is " is the investment in equipment likely to offset the monthly payment by savings in delays, labor, tech repairs, & consumables?"
Companies who never replace equipment until it absolutely necessary, quickly get themselves in a bind when multiple of their equipment become obsolete and/or start breaking down (printers, computers, software, ect.)
and the investment is more than they're able to handle.
White Haus
Not a Newbie
I guess there's a reason he's "notarealsignguy" if he doesn't understand the concept up upgrading equipment on a regular basis.
*Shrug*
*Shrug*