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HP 560 Latex vinyl waste

WYLDGFI

Merchant Member
Its not just roll to roll...but sheet stocks are even worse at times. Think about doing odd sizes on 48x96 or 60x120 sheets....makes you want to vomit the amount of waste at times. All of that has to be taken into account when pricing out.
 

ikarasu

Active Member
The waste is pretty big. Lets say you waste 2 FT of material every load... Depending on the material it could be more. Unless you print 20 FT at a time... You just added 10% waste onto your normal waste. So if you're printing a 36" x 36" print for instance...you're using 20 SQFT of material to print 9 SQFT of vinyl... Thats over a 50% waste.

That is of course a worst case scenario, it's usually not that bad. But there are a lot of times we dont print 20 FT of material, so the waste is still huge.

I love our 560, but unless you're printing 30-50 FT at a time, you're adding 10+% waste to your material. All of our one off jobs / specialty media is printed on our solvent, and we dont load a roll or begin printing on our latex until we have 50 FT worth to print... We're a decent sized shop, so we get that much in a day or two so it's not a problem, but I can imagine the smaller shops , or shops that print on a ton of different materials having an issue with it.
 

WYLDGFI

Merchant Member
I love our 560, but unless you're printing 30-50 FT at a time, you're adding 10+% waste to your material. All of our one off jobs / specialty media is printed on our solvent, and we dont load a roll or begin printing on our latex until we have 50 FT worth to print... We're a decent sized shop, so we get that much in a day or two so it's not a problem, but I can imagine the smaller shops , or shops that print on a ton of different materials having an issue with it.
Try one of the 1500 or 3000 latex....6ft of material Just to leader it up! Those have to run roll to roll...at least with the 560 or smaller format ones, you can get the vinyl just out of the heater door and clamp on some weight to avoid much waste. Stand by and attach to the take-up after printing the 20 inches or so to get it all taped on.
 

Grace Custom

New Member
Turn up your vacuum. We have done that and have no problems no at all. I no longer feed out any excess material. An it hasn't affected the prints
 

Geneva Olson

Expert Storyteller
Yes that's obviously what I meant...LOL. We run maybe $80k in digital print every month. Even with that throwing away that much wasted vinyl is a lot. Sure we have waste factored into our pricing, but maybe not enough after seeing these figures.
Why aren't you incorporating that into your pricing? That should be part of it. Pass the waste onto the customer. I have a bottom line per square foot. And if I add in the waste to my sale and I have my "bottom line per square foot", then I haven't lost anything.
 
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