Hi all,
I am a complete newbie, and have no idea what I am doing. In fact, I am not even trying to print out signs. I will describe in detail what I am trying to do, and maybe somebody out there can tell me what setup would work best for me.
I own a cell phon accessories cart at the mall. We only sell the cases and chargers and stuff, no the phones themselves. The newest wave in cell phone accessories is the "Skin". Basically a vinyl decal cut to fit your phone. It allows you to change the color, add photos, or custom designs without taking your phone apart (which the old style face plates required). There are a number of companies selling these on the web, and they can be ordered.
However, we would like to set up a system at our store where somebody can walk in with a cell phone, and on the spot we can print out a custom skin for them.
Here is what I have figured out already -
1. I have played with coreldraw, and figured out how to make the cutting lines we would need to make the decals fit the phones.
2. We have two options - a 2 in 1 printer cutter that does everything at once. or to seperate the to parts. In that case we would make blank vinyl templates on a larger capacity cutter at home, and have them all on file at the store. Then we would need a small eco-solvent or thermal printer so that the approximatly 6X8 templates could be run through to print the design the customer has selected.
3. We definatly need to use the eco-solvent technology, because the print has to be water resistant, hand oil resistant - and scratch resistant.
The product would ideally last 1-2 months.
I have also tracked down digital vinyl media that has the right kind of adhesive for our purposes.
So what am I missing:
The only machine I can find that is small enough for us is the PC-12. However, I have read a lot of negative reviews of this machine as well. And of course, you can really only get them used on ebay at this point.
We had for a short while considered using the ALPS printer, but now that is discontinued as well.
I cannot for the life of me find a small scale vinyl printer anywhere - do they exist. Even if we had to laminate after we printed, that might work. The whole problem though with seperating the different parts of the process is that we would have to cut before we printed - and everything seems aimed at people doing it the other way around - print than cut.
Help - if you have any ideas.
Thanks so much.
I am a complete newbie, and have no idea what I am doing. In fact, I am not even trying to print out signs. I will describe in detail what I am trying to do, and maybe somebody out there can tell me what setup would work best for me.
I own a cell phon accessories cart at the mall. We only sell the cases and chargers and stuff, no the phones themselves. The newest wave in cell phone accessories is the "Skin". Basically a vinyl decal cut to fit your phone. It allows you to change the color, add photos, or custom designs without taking your phone apart (which the old style face plates required). There are a number of companies selling these on the web, and they can be ordered.
However, we would like to set up a system at our store where somebody can walk in with a cell phone, and on the spot we can print out a custom skin for them.
Here is what I have figured out already -
1. I have played with coreldraw, and figured out how to make the cutting lines we would need to make the decals fit the phones.
2. We have two options - a 2 in 1 printer cutter that does everything at once. or to seperate the to parts. In that case we would make blank vinyl templates on a larger capacity cutter at home, and have them all on file at the store. Then we would need a small eco-solvent or thermal printer so that the approximatly 6X8 templates could be run through to print the design the customer has selected.
3. We definatly need to use the eco-solvent technology, because the print has to be water resistant, hand oil resistant - and scratch resistant.
The product would ideally last 1-2 months.
I have also tracked down digital vinyl media that has the right kind of adhesive for our purposes.
So what am I missing:
The only machine I can find that is small enough for us is the PC-12. However, I have read a lot of negative reviews of this machine as well. And of course, you can really only get them used on ebay at this point.
We had for a short while considered using the ALPS printer, but now that is discontinued as well.
I cannot for the life of me find a small scale vinyl printer anywhere - do they exist. Even if we had to laminate after we printed, that might work. The whole problem though with seperating the different parts of the process is that we would have to cut before we printed - and everything seems aimed at people doing it the other way around - print than cut.
Help - if you have any ideas.
Thanks so much.
