Letterbox Mike
New Member
The answer to your question all depends on what you're selling these for. I tend to ride the fence on this subject, sometimes it makes more sense to outsource, other times it makes more sense to do it in house. If the numbers add up, I'll usually lean towards doing it in house. Larger volume jobs like this can be mind numbing and can be a huge interruption to your other work, but if the price is right, they can also be extremely profitable.
If you were to add equipment to do the entire job in house and you want to stick with equipment you already have, realistically you should be considering adding two additional JV33s and two plotters. If you can squeeze these out at around 200 sq. ft. per hour, you're looking at roughly 150 hours of print time on the job. With two printers dedicated to this, you can do all the printing in about 9-10 days printing just 8 hours per day, and that can probably be cut almost in half if you can also send full rolls to print overnight as well (which makes a lot of sense).
Someone else brought up finishing being the bigger issue on this and they're right. If you can streamline printing down to less than a week you still have a monumental hurdle to overcome with laminating, plotting, weeding, cutting into individuals, and packaging. 2 plotters dedicated to the job will get it done, but it's going to require organization and efficiency in your operation, and you would probably be wise to add a few extra people to the staff specifically for the job.
If you were to buy two new JV33s, two decent plotters (at say $6500 ea.), maybe one additional laminator (ballpark that at $10k), plus a dedicated RIP and new RIP station, you're looking at an investment of close to $60k. If you're getting $150k+ for the job or at very least have a contract in hand for future orders, personally I'd say invest in the equipment and do it in house. I don't see you being able to produce this job in house in 30 days with less equipment. Buying one printer that's faster than the JV33 wouldn't really make sense unless you're buying one that's hugely faster and in a different league, two JV33s can crank out some work, they'e only $15k, and having three of them side-by-side gives you redundancy in case one goes down, which is pretty valuable.
If you were to add equipment to do the entire job in house and you want to stick with equipment you already have, realistically you should be considering adding two additional JV33s and two plotters. If you can squeeze these out at around 200 sq. ft. per hour, you're looking at roughly 150 hours of print time on the job. With two printers dedicated to this, you can do all the printing in about 9-10 days printing just 8 hours per day, and that can probably be cut almost in half if you can also send full rolls to print overnight as well (which makes a lot of sense).
Someone else brought up finishing being the bigger issue on this and they're right. If you can streamline printing down to less than a week you still have a monumental hurdle to overcome with laminating, plotting, weeding, cutting into individuals, and packaging. 2 plotters dedicated to the job will get it done, but it's going to require organization and efficiency in your operation, and you would probably be wise to add a few extra people to the staff specifically for the job.
If you were to buy two new JV33s, two decent plotters (at say $6500 ea.), maybe one additional laminator (ballpark that at $10k), plus a dedicated RIP and new RIP station, you're looking at an investment of close to $60k. If you're getting $150k+ for the job or at very least have a contract in hand for future orders, personally I'd say invest in the equipment and do it in house. I don't see you being able to produce this job in house in 30 days with less equipment. Buying one printer that's faster than the JV33 wouldn't really make sense unless you're buying one that's hugely faster and in a different league, two JV33s can crank out some work, they'e only $15k, and having three of them side-by-side gives you redundancy in case one goes down, which is pretty valuable.
Realistically, most would sub this out but some of us ain't raking in the millions every month so we try to save as much as possible and if we have to work overtime...that's just the way it goes.
