Looking for another plotter

[spudstr]

So I am fed up with Graphtec, its damn near impossible to get a tech on the phone and have to wait 1-2 days for them to respond. Long story short our FC8000 front and rear media sensors are not working so we have to ship it out for repair, wait who knows how long and have them ship it back.

Reading reviews about summa and others, for mainly contour cutting who else is competitive? I have read great reviews about summa and their support and everyone has horrible issues with graphtec.

So looking for a backup and/alternative plotter what is everyones feedback?

We enjoy the network ability with the graphtec but no others seem to work with ethernet, only USB and serial.

 

[FrankW]

We enjoy the network ability with the graphtec but no others seem to work with ethernet, only USB and serial.

Summa S-Class 2 have an onboard 10/100-Network Port. S-Class 1 had optional wireless capabilities, but I was never successful to configure it in a way that it works reliable.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

Summa, is a few bucks more but is light years more advanced and accurate.

 

[nashvillesigns]

aftertwenty years of plotting to destroy vinyl and sometime sheets of poly .030, my observations:

1. nothing beats a 15" plotter from gerber. holy sh*t. i got over 300,000 in vinyl sales in one year out of that machine.

2. allen datagraph has a real nice tracking system. i was cutting overnight entire 150' logs.

3. my current choice, as the one that came with my shop is a mimaki cg fx 130. its a solid machine. its picky in the way you have to work it, like that pretty girl at the bar you know you don't want to take shopping, but you end up doing that anyways.
the only drawback is it teaches you REAL fast how to line up the material you are cutting. i have done print/cuts up to twenty feet long. don't ask me how, cuz i blacked out that night. i think it was cuz i was celebrating that it actually did it..
good luck!

 

[signgirl]

Wow, my graphtecs are workhorses and never 1 problem! I use my 15 inch daily for last 25 years' ( I need to find some wood to knock on)

 

[spudstr]

Wow, my graphtecs are workhorses and never 1 problem! I use my 15 inch daily for last 25 years' ( I need to find some wood to knock on)

Not sure wheres ours went south, bought it in september does die cuts fine for the most part just started doing contour cuts on it and its never worked/aligned correctly.. finally tracked down graphtec and they confirmed yeah its defunked.

 

[Mosh]

I have put this on here 1,001 times get a Roland... I have one that is 25 years old and is still working to this day...in fact I have another Roland that is 18 years old that is also still going....proof in the pudding, or in this case the plotter! BTW I go through 3-5 50 yard rolls a month on average in our shop, so they are not just sitting around.

 

[FrankW]

I have put this on here 1,001 times get a Roland... I have one that is 25 years old and is still working to this day...in fact I have another Roland that is 18 years old that is also still going....proof in the pudding, or in this case the plotter! BTW I go through 3-5 50 yard rolls a month on average in our shop, so they are not just sitting around.

Roland Cutters are not very enhanced with contour cutting. And they don't have an ethernet-port. And they don't plot true tangential. They are solid, thats true, bur not very innovative. The current Roland GX based on a design which is more than 10 years old.

 

[TresL]

Love my Summa 75T, hands down best one I've owned. But, I also cut a lot on my Roland.

99% of all vinyl is contour cut that we do.

Called Summa support yesterday on a setup Q.
Had a tech on the line less than 30 sec after hitting dial. He had me going in a few minutes.


Graphtec, I'm still waiting on a call back on cutter I sold 2 years ago.
They seem to be hit or miss, some have good luck, others not so much.

NEVER heard of an issue with Summa support. EVER!

 

[spudstr]

Ended up getting a 30" summa S2 for a secondary plotter arrives mid-next week.

On another note.. I have battled UScutter/graphtec on the repair. Graphtec wanted us to ship the plotter at our expense and package it.. ~400-600 dollars worth of time/resources. We pretty much refused this option

Then we went back to UScutter.. since we purchased it it from them they stated that we could ship it back to them and we would be responsible for shipping.. I said how so? They said it was in their terms of service.. So I investigated it. ... Under section C under equipment reutrn & exchange policy it states

C. REPLACEMENT UNDER WARRANTY - Customer has used/possessed the machine within the warranty period and had an issue that is not resolve-able over the phone:
* customer will pay $35.00 for a return label and will drop off the equipment off at a Fedex location in good condition and with care.

Well hell! This sounds great to me right? Nope.. USCutter said their policy doesn't apply to freight shipments.. .. ok.. but it doesn't state that on your policy.. you just can't create a policy on the fly.. this was the policy when i purchased it

Now their policy states:

Customer will pay $35.00 for a return label and will drop the equipment off at a FedEx location in good condition and with care. This does NOT apply to items that must be shipped freight because they are too big to ship via FedEx.

So now we were at a standstill with this piece of equipment, ok great. So I call up American Express and ask for a charge back they ask why, i said a vender is not honoring their return policy so they did the chargeback to put pressure on uscutter.

Yesterday US cutter called me up and told me that they are going to fly someone out to our shop and repair it on site.

The one thing i have to say about this whole adventure is .. be sure you check warranty information and guidelines. I don't think I exploited UScutters policy they just failed to back what they had written.