Summa s3 or graphtec

[bigben]

I'm looking to change my summa d160r for a new cutter that will mostly be used to make diecut stickers. Since I already have a summa, my instinct was to go with the new s3t with maybe the camera and take-up. The graphtec seems to be a good option too.

So what do you recommend and why?

 

[Graphic Extremes]

I have the Summa S2 Tangential with the take up reel. I love the cutter and would love to trade up to the S3. I never really use the take up reel when doing stickers. I have someone stand there and collect the stickers as the come of the cutter. I can try using the take up reel and let you know how it goes with the stickers.

 

[Saturn]

I can't compare the two since I've never been around a Graphtec, but my S2T's crank through roll after roll of barcoded die-cut sticker jobs like champs.

I get the sense that Summa takes a little more time to master, but I've never been tempted to go with anopther brand. My accuracy is great, speed is great, quality of the cut is great. Only thing that stinks is the cost of the OEM blades.

I think they're both built to last, so my advice to anyone that already has a Graphtec or Summa would be to stick with what you already know as long as you're content with the output.

 

[bigben]

I have the Summa S2 Tangential with the take up reel. I love the cutter and would love to trade up to the S3. I never really use the take up reel when doing stickers. I have someone stand there and collect the stickers as the come of the cutter. I can try using the take up reel and let you know how it goes with the stickers.

If you don't mind sending me a quick video of your workflow with diecut (I want to see the speed and final result) and a video of the take-up, I would appreciate it.

I can't compare the two since I've never been around a Graphtec, but my S2T's crank through roll after roll of barcoded die-cut sticker jobs like champs.

I get the sense that Summa takes a little more time to master, but I've never been tempted to go with anopther brand. My accuracy is great, speed is great, quality of the cut is great. Only thing that stinks is the cost of the OEM blades.

I think they're both built to last, so my advice to anyone that already has a Graphtec or Summa would be to stick with what you already know as long as you're content with the output.

I use the cleancut blades for years now and really like it. If you have absolutely no problems doing diecut, I think I will stick with Summa.

I'm wondering if the camera is a good value for diecut stickers.

 

[Saturn]

I like the 45° tangential blades, and I've only found those as full price OEM. I get around 30k-70k stickers per blade, so even breaking them prematurely now and then isn't a huge deal. I still cry a bit though...

If you're just doing small/medium white vinyl stickers, then no, the camera is not a good value. If you ARE doing lots of holo or hard to read stuff, the camera would be very desireable. This is one case where I might not try to future proof my hardware choice though, as the camera brings it's own bag of variables—versus the simplicity of the non-camera model. One of the tech's on here also mentioned that while great for hard to read material/print, they believe the non-camera one has it beat on accuracy just slightly (despite where the marketing might lead you.) I do great not offering holo, so I'm definitely biased at the moment.

For plain Jane stickers, the S2T should you offer you identical results to the S3T, if you can find one cheaper.

 

[bigben]

No camera then. I have white ink capability. So I can print white for the mark if needed to.

The take-up seems a good feature tho. I don't have time to stay in front of the cutter to pop the vinyl.

 

[Saturn]

I'd never pop at the cutter. I let it automatically cut between sheets and either take those as they come off, or let a few stack in the catch basket before putting them on a table to be popped/QC'd. Using a take-up means dealing with potential jams, and also not being able to pop until it's compltely finished. Which, if you're doing whole rolls, can means waiting quite a while and wasting production time. Every shop is different though!

Not all RIPs/workflow's are going to be able to print white under the regmarks, so do your homework before making assumptions. Lots of posts on here about the trials and tribulations of white ink.

 

[cornholio]

I just installed a S3 with camera last Friday. The mark recognition is really fast. (Compared to a standard Opos, or Graphtec, Mimaki, Roland)
If you intend to do die cutting and have a decent Rip software, Summa is the way to go.

This customer uses a somewhat clumsy workflow. Design and mark creation in illustrator on a Mac, then printing on a Roland via Versaworks on parallels desktop and then cutting with Gosign.

 

[bigben]

I just installed a S3 with camera last Friday. The mark recognition is really fast. (Compared to a standard Opos, or Graphtec, Mimaki, Roland)
If you intend to do die cutting and have a decent Rip software, Summa is the way to go.

This customer uses a somewhat clumsy workflow. Design and mark creation in illustrator on a Mac, then printing on a Roland via Versaworks on parallels desktop and then cutting with Gosign.

I use caldera. Workflow with my current summa d160r is perfect. I was told few years ago the camera was not compatible with mac/caldera. I'don't know if it's true.

 

[ikarasu]

You can't go wrong with either. Summa and graphtec are great, both with their flaws / pros... But overall they're the same. If you're workflow is setup for summa, I'd stick to it.

Personally I'd go with the s3 with camera though... Isn't it way faster at reading marks than the regular way? Not just for stubborn material, but I thought overall it was 40ish percent faster at reading marks and cutting?


Nevermind, I just looked it up... Summa claims 10x faster mark reading. As well as the ability to put marks not in a bounding box for better accuracy. I didn't know summa didn't allow that on the regular model though!


For the price of it, I'd go with the camera system....

We're looking into getting an f1612, and with the twin system being what it is we may replace our graphtec if we decide we need a roll cutter and a flatbed cutter.

 

[bigben]

Flatbed cutter is on my future list too. But I still wanted a roll cutter. For the flatbed, colex is on top of my list. But kongsburg seems interesting too. But that is for 2-3 years from now.

 

[ikarasu]

I've heard good and bad things about the summa flatbed cutter. Only reason we're going with it is there's about 5 techs in the area... Where as the other machines have none. We just spent 10k flying a tech out for our flatbed because there's no local techs... So we're sticking to the buy what's supported locally rule.

We have a multi an CNC, so we're only using it for true cutting, mainly 30-40 rolls of magnets a month. so I think the summa will be fine... Hopefully! Demo'd it at a few places and talked to a few people who have had it and it seems good.


We saw the summa roll cutter doing some kiss and perf cutting. Been in the graphtec family for 20ish years.... Wouldn't hesitate to switch to the summa. Both are comparable, I'd say with tangential if you need it, summas a bit ahead right now

 

[Saturn]

I get such good results without the camera, I'd be absolutely sick paying the extra $$ for even the tiniest drop in accuracy. There's several posts by users on here mentioning how much they love the camera, but there's also a couple techs mentioning that they feel like it's actually slightly less accurate overall.

Faster, yes! Looks like you might shave 10-30 minutes off a 150' roll depending on layout. I don't run at anywhere near max capacity or squeeze my prodution that tight, so regmark scanning probably isn't the first choke point I'd think of when streamlining. Having two/multiple machines is how I'd make things faster, while adding redundancy.

That said, there's a great chance I'd still look at an opos-cam S3 on my next upgrade too... So take everything I say with a grain of salt. ;p

 

[Pauly]

Graphtec if you want to just stick with roll cutters. Blades are cheap, and you can cut in the channel for perf cutting / thru cutting which wont damage the cutting strip.
Summa if you plan to getting a F1612 as you can pare them up. Kiss cut on the roll cutter, Thru cut on the flatbed cutter. speeds up the output.

 

[MarkSnelling]

Flatbed cutter is on my future list too. But I still wanted a roll cutter. For the flatbed, colex is on top of my list. But kongsburg seems interesting too. But that is for 2-3 years from now.

Look at the specs between the Graphtec and the Summa....especially the tangential series from Summa. Now that they dropped their prices (Summa) a few years ago, it is a far better investment than a Graphtec. You can get accurate cuts up to 50 feet on the Summa....on the others maybe 7 feet.

You should check out the Colex routers when you get ready for a bigger machine. Good price point with excellent performance.

 

[Pauly]

Look at the specs between the Graphtec and the Summa....especially the tangential series from Summa. Now that they dropped their prices (Summa) a few years ago, it is a far better investment than a Graphtec. You can get accurate cuts up to 50 feet on the Summa....on the others maybe 7 feet.

You should check out the Colex routers when you get ready for a bigger machine. Good price point with excellent performance.

would that be 50 ft with only 4 reg marks (4 corners) ?

 

[Notarealsignguy]

Have both, summa hands down. Not even in the same ballpark IMO.

 

[bigben]

Have both, summa hands down. Not even in the same ballpark IMO.

Summa if on top of my list since I'm already used to how they work. So I assume the learning curve will be simpler. Could you elaborate on why the summa is better since you have both of them?

 

[Notarealsignguy]

Summa if on top of my list since I'm already used to how they work. So I assume the learning curve will be simpler. Could you elaborate on why the summa is better since you have both of them?

I can approach this in many ways but in a nutshell, I think the Graphtec sucks. It feels cheaper, it doesn't track as well, it skews cut vinyl over a short distance on a regular basis, weird errors, have to reset it a lot to get it to work, reading barcodes is spotty at best, the menu is a disaster, it's slower, vacuum seems weak compared to Summa, the roll holder design looks like an afterthought, it doesn't slowly advance the material before cutting so it yanks the roll off of the roll holder unless you pull the right amount off before cutting, the USB (I know Burton) option doesn't always pick up all of the files that are on the thumb drive.... I'm sure there is more. I had a chinese cutter and honestly feel like it was more on par with the Graphtec than the Summa.
The Summa is fast, it is pretty consistent in cut accuracy, media never buckles (so far), it slowly unwinds what it is cutting so it's not jerking on the roll, the whole machine feels more robust, the menu is intuitive not some chinglish crap. I don't like gosign but there are other options and the setup videos from Summa suck, Graphtec has better online guides for setup and use. I like cutmaster better than gosign but both leave a lot to be desired so it's not really a factor IMO.
We don't do really use perf cut on either machine, it's too slow so can't offer an opinion on that. I think the Graphtec requires you to move the blade holder to perf which is stupid if thats the case, Summa will do it all in 1 go. The channel is a nice idea but the machine is lacking in too many other areas for it to be worthwhile.
Maybe it's just me? Operator error perhaps? Either way, that's my experience with the 2.