Graphtec FC8000 purchase? perf cut

[tsgstl]

A majority of my business is decals. And my current plotter is about to get thrown out. I have been looking at plotters and I always come back to Graphtec. I owned a Graphtec 24" CE series from 2002 til I unfortunately sold it a couple of years ago. Never had one problem with it. I really like just about every feature of the FC8000. We are finally making a decent profit around here and it stinks I have to replace a 4 year old plotter.

My question:
I am really Interested in the perf cut feature. If you have one do you use this feature? Is it time consuming on the plot side or the production side? I assume it just cuts once?

My Mutoh ultima is junk, it reminds me of my old Chevy Silverado each time I fire it up I have another problem. I have pretty much every panel off so I can fix it without hassle.
My problems:
Belt is roached on the bottom, steel belts protruding making horrible grinding sound. ($400 to fix are you kidding me?)
Spool the the belt goes around has the bottom lip broke off. ($100)
Sheet off not working (wont even let me select it in menu)
Takes a enormous amount of extra material to do a print cut (18" in front and 24" in back, 8" around the sides.
Bottom right of contour cuts unusable do to a 45 degree 8" cut.
Can't send to much info or it gets confused.
Blades wear in weeks not months like it used to.
Its just junk.

Not sure what I want to do with it, possibly sell it for parts, possibly fix it and sell or keep it in my basement for longer jobs.

 

[royster13]

Never used one.....But have you looked at the re-branded Graphtecs Sign Warehouse sell?

 

[tsgstl]

I'm guessing its the Q Series? Thanks I just went to check it out.

If so its the same price I was quoted from a local supplier for the Graphtec and it would include a extra 3rd year warranty. They also have a 54" in stock ready to bring over.

 

[royster13]

Yes the Q-Series.....I hear from time to time you can get Package 4 for the same price as Package 1....That includes LXI Master Plus which I understand is a full version of Flexi...

 

[jfiscus]

I am very happy with my FC8000. Never used the perf-cut feature though.

 

[amw]

I am very happy with my FC8000. Never used the perf-cut feature though.

We are also...and also never use the perf cut.
But we do plan on trying to use it...just havent had a chance to play around with it. We have had it for about 3 years with no issues though.

Marsha

 

[boxerbay]

FC8000-160 rocks. most people just kiss cut or die cut. you have to set up a cut profile in cm2 to tell it how much cut and how big of a hop. once this is set up on the front end you build your cut path and then a perf path using a different spot color. then in cm2 you tell it to cut by color and select which color you want to cut or perf.

 

[Jim Doggett]

A majority of my business is decals. And my current plotter is about to get thrown out. I have been looking at plotters and I always come back to Graphtec. I owned a Graphtec 24" CE series from 2002 til I unfortunately sold it a couple of years ago. Never had one problem with it. I really like just about every feature of the FC8000. We are finally making a decent profit around here and it stinks I have to replace a 4 year old plotter.

My question:
I am really Interested in the perf cut feature. If you have one do you use this feature? Is it time consuming on the plot side or the production side? I assume it just cuts once?

My Mutoh ultima is junk, it reminds me of my old Chevy Silverado each time I fire it up I have another problem. I have pretty much every panel off so I can fix it without hassle.
My problems:
Belt is roached on the bottom, steel belts protruding making horrible grinding sound. ($400 to fix are you kidding me?)
Spool the the belt goes around has the bottom lip broke off. ($100)
Sheet off not working (wont even let me select it in menu)
Takes a enormous amount of extra material to do a print cut (18" in front and 24" in back, 8" around the sides.
Bottom right of contour cuts unusable do to a 45 degree 8" cut.
Can't send to much info or it gets confused.
Blades wear in weeks not months like it used to.
Its just junk.

Not sure what I want to do with it, possibly sell it for parts, possibly fix it and sell or keep it in my basement for longer jobs.

Hi tsgstl,

Perf-cutting is pretty easy, since it's just like normal cutting, but in a different mode.

The only tweaking, which is easy to get the hang of, is pressure and depth depending on what you're cutting through. Also, the frequency, aka size of the perfs and distance between them, is adjustable as well. But typically you'll find one that suits you if the default setting is not ideal, which it is most of the time.

Our tech folks are pretty helpful, too. Info on that is at www.signwarehouse.com/support

Best regards,

Jim Doggett
SignWarehouse

 

[BIG EASY DOES IT]

We have a fc8000-160 we cut and perf all the time. Also to what the other poster said that you have to set up certain colors for cut and perf not true. When you make your cut and perf lines you set them each on different layers in illustrator and change the names of the layer to cut and perf. Then cutting master automatically recognizes those layers and assigns either the cut or the perf to them. I was not however happy with the original perf spacing that cm2 came with. But they are easily changeable. We have got it down now to where you pop them out and you can barely even tell it was perf cut. I do have a few issues with the fc8000 though.

One- I cut all my signs from flexi. and all my stickers from illustrator. Illustrator is on a mac and flexi on the pc. Whenever I use the PC it changes the language option on the plotter from auto to HPGL. Then I have to go in and reset my plotter everytime I want to switch to illustrator.

Two- Every once and awhile the buffer gets too overloaded and the plotter just freaks out. It will try to read the reg. marks, have and issue and then randomly start CUTTING up and accross the media. Very pricey sometimes.

Three- The sensor sucks on anything reflective. Graphtec swears up and down that it will work with reflective materials. I get it to cut reflective 5 out of 10 trys. Never with the printed reg. marks. I always have to go and masking tape the reg and then redraw them. This works but is a pain in the a$$.

Four- The way the designed how the pressure rollers are clamped down sucks. If you get a little curl at the end of the media and it goes to check the reg mark. the lip of the media hits the clamps and now your media is loose.

Never tried anything else and may never. Once you get the little qwirks messed around with it's a great machine.

 

[BIG EASY DOES IT]

Also really happy with the Graphtec service. Came out took a look at the machine and told me it was flexi's fault and left. Called Flexi they tell me it's graphtecs fault.

 

[tsgstl]

Wow great info guys, what more could I expect from s101 members.

The duel eye was appealing but I can't say I cut much printed reflective.

I can't stand how software blames hardware and vice versa but it's the norm. Luckily being in St. Louis I have at least 3 different techs so far that I know of. My Mutoh plotter is not so ez to get support.

I talked over my purchase with my customer that I do most of my decals through hoping the perf feature would increase sales. He said the backing being cut rough has never been an issue. And maybe once or twice a year he gets a request for the decal to be completely trimmed to the edges. So I guess it would only be beneficial for labor purposes and having a cleaner overall look.

Buffeting larger files now is a issue. Not so much for 9-5 but as I mentioned we do a very large amount of decals. The ones that are cut colored vinyl it is nice to send large amounts when I go home. Now if I have for example 4"x6" 3 lines of copy, I can only send comfortably around 50 of them or it "freaks out" like you (cts) describe.

As far as sign warehouse goes, I really didn't consider it much because the price was pretty much right on with my supplier locally. But then the "what do I do with my Mutoh" comes into play. Many weekends I drive to my shop sometimes 5-10 times just to send batches of small decals. Having another setup in my basement with flexi or something similar and my old plotter could be awesome. It's something to think about.

Thanks again guys

 

[tsgstl]

CTS, one more thing your 4 I have had a lot of issue with curling. It is strangely usually with red or black Arlon calendared. I seem to have more problems now at my new shop then I did at my last 2 shops. Poor placement of the pinch rollers I could see would be frustrating.

 

[LittleSnakey]

Also really happy with the Graphtec service. Came out took a look at the machine and told me it was flexi's fault and left. Called Flexi they tell me it's graphtecs fault.

I got the same answer from graphtec support. We could never get our fc8000 to consistently find the crop marks so we sent it back.

Do yourself a favor and look at the Summa! Its built better, easier user imput and it finds the crop marks.

 

[Bigdawg]

I got the same answer from graphtec support. We could never get our fc8000 to consistently find the crop marks so we sent it back.

Do yourself a favor and look at the Summa! Its built better, easier user imput and it finds the crop marks.

It really is all in the line up on a Graphtec. They have problems cutting when I'm not in the shop and I can take the same print, line it up and get the crop marks to read with no problem.

What I have noticed it is picky. The line up has to be spot on.

As far as the perf cut, we use it a lot to make patterns for dimensional letters. Gemini's punchout patterns have become junk so we cut our own now. We also do stencils for a couple customers.

 

[LittleSnakey]

Thats cool you can get it to work, we just couldn't and we really tried.
The summa Never misses the marks so for us that just plain saves time.

It really is all in the line up on a Graphtec. They have problems cutting when I'm not in the shop and I can take the same print, line it up and get the crop marks to read with no problem.

What I have noticed it is picky. The line up has to be spot on.

As far as the perf cut, we use it a lot to make patterns for dimensional letters. Gemini's punchout patterns have become junk so we cut our own now. We also do stencils for a couple customers.

 

[Jim Doggett]

Thats cool you can get it to work, we just couldn't and we really tried.
The summa Never misses the marks so for us that just plain saves time.

Graphtec's ARMS should and does function similarly. Ironically, only the newer Summa OPOS X uses the white-light sensors that Graphtec used from the beginning. The earlier red light sensors Summa used were fine with their thermal transfer printers (no lamination) but for inkjet they were problematic since they didn't read well through lamination.

And it's pretty simple deal really: If the sensor is calibrated and the sensitivity is properly adjusted, bingo, they work beautifully. The only other potential problems are media loaded poorly (skewed too much) and on some longer jobs, calibrating the X-axis tracking when dealing with thicker media combinations that cause tracking to be longer ... in the same way the outside lane on a running track is longer.

So frankly, I'm surprised you had a problem that was not easily sleuthed -- and fixed. If the basics do not solve it quickly, it's usually a bad sensor, which happens on rare occasion, with every cutter. That's all I can think might have been an issue.

But great news that your working and happy with your Summa.

Best Regards,

Jim / SignWarehouse

 

[tsgstl]

I had a Mutoh plotter in the 90's that was great, it had a carasel that would hold 6 different blades and worked perfectly. The new Mutoh plotters do not seem the same quality.

I watched the video for the Graphtec registration system. It did seem like there is more user setup then my current Mutoh. The Mutoh prints a box around the entire job, so there is very little error. It looks like the original setup does take more time but I am sure it becomes second nature. I will miss throwing a roll of printed material and just sending jobs one after another. But then again maybe the Graphtec will be trusted with more than about 4' of material without it getting off track.

 

[tsgstl]

Graphtec's ARMS should and does function similarly. Ironically, only the newer Summa OPOS X uses the white-light sensors that Graphtec used from the beginning. The earlier red light sensors Summa used were fine with their thermal transfer printers (no lamination) but for inkjet they were problematic since they didn't read well through lamination.

And it's pretty simple deal really: If the sensor is calibrated and the sensitivity is properly adjusted, bingo, they work beautifully. The only other potential problems are media loaded poorly (skewed too much) and on some longer jobs, calibrating the X-axis tracking when dealing with thicker media combinations that cause tracking to be longer ... in the same way the outside lane on a running track is longer.

So frankly, I'm surprised you had a problem that was not easily sleuthed -- and fixed. If the basics do not solve it quickly, it's usually a bad sensor, which happens on rare occasion, with every cutter. That's all I can think might have been an issue.

But great news that your working and happy with your Summa.

Best Regards,

Jim / SignWarehouse

I obviously can't speek for the Graphtec but my Mutoh does read through the registration with glare. I have a lot of natural light so if I am contour cutting I usually leave my overheads off and it works perfect.

 

[401Graphics]

Four- The way the designed how the pressure rollers are clamped down sucks. If you get a little curl at the end of the media and it goes to check the reg mark. the lip of the media hits the clamps and now your media is loose.

This used to happen to me a lot, then i put zip ties on the back of the clamps. Problem solved.


I have a Q54. Best cutter IMO. I've used perf cut only once, its def something you need to dial in perfectly to get it to work good. Never had and big problems with it reading registration marks. I've printed on metallic gold vinyl before and it read registration marks with no problems.

 

[Circleville Signs]

Easiest fix for the Graphtec not reading reflective, or getting wonky is to put a piece of matte scotch tape over the printed reg mark. Works every time.