I've been offered opportunity to buy a "Euro Drop" doming machine...

[iSign]

I wondered if anyone here has any first hand experience with the Euro Drop Automatic Doming Mixer C80/E36.

The guy selling it bought it from Advanced Color Solutions for $2695 including a "starter kit of tray, cups, scale, 1 liter of T863 hardener & 1 liter of T823 Poly Resin

He also bought a C80 "color kit" with 10 color additives, plus white to modify the otherwise clear doming material.

You can see it HERE.

I don't know that I need a machine like this, but I do sell hundreds of decals every week... I consider myself to be one of the shops here that probably does as much or more decals then anyone else... & I find it to be one of the better items for handing off to my employees with a minimum of my own time required qouting, designing, or doing more complex setting up of cuts, or multicolor edge print files. It also brings us the most amount of brainless reorders... so I plan to allow this segment of my business to continue to grow as much as possible... so I thought doming might be a good, relatively inexpensive piece of equipment to try out if I get it at a good discount. It's not even a month old (long story... I'll post more on that later)

 

[Gino]

We got an Acu-Dome set a few years back. It was a much cheaper set up then what you’re thinking about, but we used the crap out of it at first. Turned out to be a novelty thing for us. We use it a few times a year and then the tubes go bad. It really doesn’t pay us to offer it. The package you’re looking into could be all together different and worth more than what we had. Wish I had more information for you.

 

[iSign]

yeah, I tried that kit. My (former) employee did a test batch for me, & he was usually just as careful with instructions as I, but many of the domed product had little bubbles... it seemed like a hassle, & I;m sure the shelf life of the remaining 90% of my $100 worth went bad about a year ago.

I believe the expensive system would still have the limitation of resin shelf life... but it gets programed to drop the exact amount of properly mixed product on each decal, based on the size calculation... so I assume it would streamline the process for serious volume orders & somewhat simplify the process, improving the quality.

I have so many hundreds of decal samples I could probably waste a "tube" on a whole slew of samples, & should know by the time that is done, how much to charge... then I would only offer it on decent sized orders & maybe the thing would pay for itself within a year & add another related product to something we already sell a lot of.

Hopefully someone will come along that knows if all my assumptions are correct or not.

 

[Just Another Sign Guy]

Doug, I do not have experience with that machine...however we purchased the accu-dome set for experimentation with doming...one of our customers saw the product who owned a multitude of car lots (you probably even know who it was from your time in oregon...he owned almost every car lot on McGloughlin Blvd in portland) and he had us make domed decals for his car lots and we were forced to buy a automated machine to meet the production requirements...or better yet to meet the production requirments and make a profit. the machine that we purchased was almost 3 times as much as this machine was new...so if you have the market or can create a market I know you can make money with the final products...especially in your market if you are still doing the volume of decals as you were and such for retail distribution, this would just be a higher end product that in that market i would imagine would have much more perceived value than a "plain decal".

we did have some "issues" but only from employee lacadazical (spl) behavior not cleaning properly at end of operation etc...that created unnecessary problems.

the shelf life of the resin as far as i know is unlimited until mixed with the catalyst...our system had two separate lines for resin and catylst and they did not mix until a tube somewhat similar to the acu-dome "mixer" where the materials were combined so all materials prior to that point are not in the curing stage. to eliminate the bubbles that were present we ran over the top of all of the domed decals with a propane torch, just a brief flash is all it took. we would make one product paying close attention to the amount of product dispersed and then set the machine to the amount of time that it took to dispense that material and from there it was completely brainless just required a employee who cared a little bit about the end product and was not entirely asleep at the wheel allowing product full of bubbles to cure before being hit with the torch....i really think this is a good addition for you and your market.

 

[Buddy]

Let me know if you're not interested in the epoxy machine....I might be.

thanks,
BUDDY

 

[Baz]

Seems like such a hassle to offer ... But domed decals look so cool!