Summa DC5 just in. No support

[Versus]

Hi everybody

We just got our Summa DC5 and will start setting it up next week. The problem is, that here in Denmark there has only been sold 1 of these before and theres no technical support for these because they dont have any experience. And the other company who has one does not want to be identified for unknow reasons so we cant spare with them.
Anywho. I´m 100% sure that we will face major difficulties while trying to get this thing dialed in. I´m worried that we will have a hard time making it run perfect without banding, (or just run at all for that matter).


I just wanted to get a heads up if theres any Summa DC5 genius´ on here that might be able to answer a few questions?

I will be using CorelDraw X8 and i am actually wondering if anyone has a colorpallette to match the DC5? i´ve read that there is one, but cant find any that works.

My collegue works in Illustrator and it seems like its a bit easier to find whats needed there.

 

[FrankW]

The DC5 isn't very different to the DC4, so they should not have any problems with supporting you about the basic features, IF they experienced with the DC-Printers at all. And they should if they sell the machines.

You will install the colour palettes together with the Summa Printer Tools available on an attached CD that comes with the printer, or can be downloaded at www.summa.be. There are a collection of Duospot-Colours (mixed colours out of 2 spot colour ribbons) shown in a catalogue delivered with the printer, but this colours can't be added to a colour palette of Corel or Illustrator. I have created one for FlexiSIGN-PRO sometimes, and SAi have added that palette too to their default set.

 

[ProColorGraphics]

Can I ask why you bought it if there is no support and you think you will have major issues?

 

[Versus]

FrankW: They have zero experience with DC series printers. unfortunately. i´m installing the palettes from your link as i write this, thanks

ProColor: Good question.. We only recently found out the machine excisted and we have been looking for an faster alternative for the Gerber edge. The edge has been killing us because its too slow and we have to manually operate it and also the prints are way too small as we are in the Motocross graphics business and there is a huge demand for gold, chrome and other special colors. the major problems i´m expecting is pretty much just to ready myself for the worst

 

[Versus]

Hope someone out there got experience. We got it running. But we cant find the optimal settings. We have trouble with some lines in the print. cant figure out if its density settings or what it is. because its not a overlap issue with the ribbons.

does anyone have an idea or tip?

 

[SlikGRFX]

Hi Versus,

I'm interested to hear how you are getting on with your Summa?

We are a decal company located in Sweden and we are interested in the DC5, but I think the situation with support is similar here. I received samples from the supplier. The chrome, white and spot colours are amazing but on the larger prints there are thin lines/banding every 97mm (I assume this is the width of the head). Did you overcome this problem?

 

[signgirl]

Lots of info here! digital-graphica.com • Index page

 

[SlikGRFX]

Thanks for the link, although there isn't much about the DC5 on there. I understand that it's basically a repackaged DC4 but I want to hear from someone who is using a DC5 with consistent output for large format prints.

 

[Versus]

Hi SilkGRFX

We are having some pretty irritating problems with the lines every 97mm. We cant seem to get it going great consistantly. But the stuff it actually does print prefect looks great. Theres a few other really crappy stuff. for example there is no green that matches a Kawasaki green and theres no blue that matches a Yamaha. The yamaha can be made by mixing two colors. But the green we want is impossible to make and that is a pretty huge problem. The White on clear vinyl is great . I see you guys make alot of bicycle decals. So we´re pretty much in the same business and i think you would be really pleased with the machine in general, IF you can succeed in getting it to run consistantly. We havent really done much more tuning the last 3 weeks because we dont have the time, so we throw about 25-35% of the stuff we print away.
We dont use the Summa for cutting as we have a flatbed cutter, so i cant tell you much about that.

Its extremely annoying that there is close to zero support on this thing.

 

[SlikGRFX]

Hey thanks for the reply. I was totally convinced that this printer would be perfect for us, but now I'm not so sure. We too are extremely busy and don't have hours of time to spend setting this up. We don't offer any motocross decals, so the lack of those colours isn't too much of an issue for us, but our decals are detailed and have to be perfect. Spot bright orange, spot gloss, and chrome are the main interests for us.

The lack of support is a concern. If the dealer can't print without those lines, what chance have we got? Are the lines there on different materials, or are the results better on certain types of vinyl?

Honestly, the chrome and white looks amazing, but I just don't know. Time is precious. I'm still considering that it might be worth the risk, but it would be nice to know that somebody can actually print consistently on one of these printers.

A used Edge FX is starting to look more appealing by the day.

 

[Versus]

the machine should be ideal for what we both do, but its just so extremely time consuming to set it up just right.
The spot orange and spots in general is really good.

We pretty much only print og one specific vinyl and then the clear counterpart to that vinyl and run the same profile. as i remember it, Summa recommends a few specific vinyls and i dont know if using some of those would make things better
I have no idea what to do to make it run smoothly as there is pretty much only a few basic settings. We just had to get the thing running ASAP because we packed our Gerber Edge away.

We got the Summa because the Edge was one big headache with the manual color change and it also had problems with white stripes. But the main thing was the time it took to manually change colors everytime.

Don´t you print on a Edge now? i would have guessed, looking at your facebook.

 

[SlikGRFX]

We have an edge that we bought used but I never got it running...no time We actually produce everything on Roland printers at the moment with white and metallic inks. We have a lot of work arounds for printing certain colours such as neon, chrome etc. Although the white ink isn't very dense, there are things you can do to improve the output. A lot of poeple aren't too impressed with the metallic either, but if you stick to shades of silver, the speed is acceptable, and it definitely adds something extra to the final product. I really think it's great.

I'm so used to reliable, hassle free printing with the Rolands that I'm reluctant to even try anything else. They are such workhorses and get the job done. I considered buying another Roland and running it with aftermarket orange ink instead of white. That would solve half of our problems. Then we could get this edge up and running for the single colour chrome or white on transparent jobs.

Did you cut your Edge prints on your flatbed? A flatbed cutter might be a better investment for us than a DC5 at this point.

 

[JoeRansom]

The company I use to work for had a DC5. And the main issue I had was media alignment.if the material wasn't perfectly aligned then after a few feet you would have a bleed over line or a white gap. I had to find my own setting that would work for the material and the foils because the Temps they gave me to try was to much and caused the ripple and you can tell by listing to the machine when it's getting to hot or to cold for the foil. But alignment of the material is crucial. And past that you may have to play with settings and testing to get it right.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk

 

[Versus]

We have an edge that we bought used but I never got it running...no time We actually produce everything on Roland printers at the moment with white and metallic inks. We have a lot of work arounds for printing certain colours such as neon, chrome etc. Although the white ink isn't very dense, there are things you can do to improve the output. A lot of poeple aren't too impressed with the metallic either, but if you stick to shades of silver, the speed is acceptable, and it definitely adds something extra to the final product. I really think it's great.

I'm so used to reliable, hassle free printing with the Rolands that I'm reluctant to even try anything else. They are such workhorses and get the job done. I considered buying another Roland and running it with aftermarket orange ink instead of white. That would solve half of our problems. Then we could get this edge up and running for the single colour chrome or white on transparent jobs.

Did you cut your Edge prints on your flatbed? A flatbed cutter might be a better investment for us than a DC5 at this point.

The Edge is great for whites on clear vinyl. Its in genreal a works horse if it runs good.
We also have a Roland VS540i that we use for the majority. the white on the roland we just gave up on early on as we had the gerber and the metallic pretty much totally dies when we use the thick MX laminate. When looking back, we should probably have gotten a EPSON with green and orange. I have had a roland running with aftermarket inks before and the OEM colors just works better in the long run in my opinion. but in general the Roland is an unbeliveble machine. It just goes and goes and theres actual support on it.

We cut everything on the flatbed, mainly because cutting on the roland takes too long and it can sometimes have problems cutting through the thick vinyl. our flatbed is an old, old machine but runs good. it does not cut as nicely as example a summa but its fine for MX decal.

JoeRansom is telling some interesting stuff. The medais alignment is pretty quick to tjeck so i´ll tripple tjeck that and look into the other stuff when there is time.
We are working on getting Gerber colors to work on the Summa so the color range is much bigger.

 

[SlikGRFX]

I just got a reply from the dealer here. He says it is impossible to totally get rid of the banding. But he also said that the 'big' version of the machine prints around 125mm in a single pass? First I've heard of that. I thought the DC5 is the biggest version? But anyway that's still not wide enough, or what I wanted to hear.

I remember looking at Epson a while back but I forgot all about their green and orange inks. I'll have to get some samples and go from there.

 

[JoeRansom]

Wow that's alot larger. Neat over all. I would look into the Epson pretty good. I have been told by a few that the last version before the S80600 had tons of problems. Supposedly the S80600 is alot better but research it.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk

 

[Versus]

There are two versions of the DC5. The DC5 that runs 8 colors at a time and the DC5sx that runs 5 i think. and the Ribbon size is the exact same. I think the supploer has something wrong, because there is nothing on Summa site about another machine. I think he might have mesured the ribbbons, because they are around 130mm but only about 85-95mm is actually used.

We are working on making our own Neon ribbons and hologram (since Summas own hologram has been taken out of production).

I would think that a gerber edge would acutally fit nicely for making bicycle graphics (of course its still way too slow to operate)? its a bit too small for MX graphics.

Oh and the Summa also waste ALOT of material. for example if theres only 2 dots of yellow on each side of the print it uses the whole lenght of the ribbon (127cm) instead of just stopping the ribbon from spinning. If that makes sense

 

[SlikGRFX]

I knew the info we got about the print width wasn't correct. It doesn't fill me with confidence if the dealer can't provide me with basic information.
Making your own foils sounds fiddly. Are you chopping up a gerber foil and putting it in a Summa cartridge? Any tips on where to get neon yellow foil for the Gerber in Europe?

One last question...would you buy the DC5 again?

A result of all this is that I actually felt motivated and got my Edge working last night. It has been in the garage for 2+ years since being shipped from the UK. It was in a couple of boxes with bits everywhere. At first I just thought it was a box of junk that would never work. Anyway, to my surprise, everything was there including Omega and the USB dongle, which I had no idea about until yesterday So I got the software installed, fired it up, and it printed perfectly. Theres a problem with the vinyl bunching up when it slews left to right but I'll start a new thread about that problem. Going to order some vinyl today...exciting times!

 

[Versus]

Exactly. Its incridible that a company as Summa has such bad support. The first company in Denmark that deals summa that we asked about it had no idea it existed and the guys we bought it from had never tried it out before.

if we would buy it again... Yes, because once you run out of patience with the gerber there is zero options other than the Summa. So the reason isent the best, its just that its the only option as far as we know.

Awesome with the Gerber. Hope you will be happy with it, ZeroNine makes neon gerber ribbons. We havent seen it in print yet, only on the rolls. So i cant tell youhow it actually looks once its on the vinyl.

If you need another Gerber we got one you could buy if you want
BTW. Can you tell me the height of the Front suspention sticker of a FOX 32 evolution series? i made template for it a few years ago from a picture on ebay and made it way too big when i finally got it printed yesterday on the summa in Metallic blue and forgot to take a new measure

 

[SlikGRFX]

I'm not sure exactly which year your decals are, but does 175mm sound about right?
I might be interested in your Gerber Please can you send over an email (owen at slikgraphics dot com)?

Cheers!