What equipment can you not live without? When to buy it

[kcollinsdesign]

1. Comfortable chair, desk, and drawing table that supports good posture
2. Fast Mac computer
3. Decent internet connection
4. Adobe Creative Suite
5. Large wide gamut monitor

I can do without anything else, but I will admit having a small shop and a truck is nice.

 

[netsol]

RPM,
I am about to buy a sewing machine
i was thinking a used/refurb juki on ebay
good choice?

 

[TimToad]

This bad boy is saving our bacon this weekend on a 485 character, studded dimensional letter install into stucco and dryvit.

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

This is all you need to put letters into dryvit ... predrilling is for pansies.

 

[netsol]

tim toad
a good hammer drill may be the besrpt investment i ever made as well.
bought a black and decker commercial,line hammer drill in 1982. it has drilled 10's of thousnds of holes. it's just nicely broken in. i tell bobby i am leaving it to him in my will

although my weka drill is a hell of a piece of equipment as well

 

[fresh]

This bad boy is saving our bacon this weekend on a 485 character, studded dimensional letter install into stucco and dryvit.

We have the same one. My partner didn't think we needed it, but when I finally just bought it anyway he FINALLY agreed that it is not an optional piece of equipment.

 

[TimToad]

We have the same one. My partner didn't think we needed it, but when I finally just bought it anyway he FINALLY agreed that it is not an optional piece of equipment.

We've muscled our way through many a job with a standard 1/2" hammer drill and paid the physical price afterwards. Buying this tool was long overdue and it paid for itself in the first couple hours of use.

 

[Gino]

We've had our SDS drill for quite a few years, now. Don't know how we got by without one prior. Much the same, it has saved arm fatigue, like you wouldn't believe. I actually find excuses to use ours. Lotta 'around the house' jobs to name a bunch.

 

[equippaint]

Our compressor is probably our key piece here. We bought a 10hp rotary screw compressor about 8 years ago to replace our reciprocating unit, best thing we did. The recip would run pretty much all day long and it was a matter of time before we burnt it up - plus it made an ungodly amount of water compared to the screw. I plan on replacing it soon with either a 15hp or get another 10 and duplex them with the old one coming online second when demand requires it. It's just hard to pull the trigger on it, there is absolutely nothing exciting about a new compressor showing up. We have 7 diesel tow behinds that can be used as a backup of if needed so it makes that purchase even less appealing. Second thing that we can not live without for much more than 1 day is our forklift. We bought a ragged out backup a couple years ago just to have in a pinch or when our main lift is downed for servicing.
What about flatbed printers, flatbed cutters, lasers and CNC machines? Did anyone put off those to later wish that they had not?

 

[sign girl]

I work with a lot of specialty films so I'd say my Gerber edge setup. Most of these films are a huge headache to feed through a latex machine. No overlays and you can cut super long runs on the plotter without issues. The only thing that I'm noticing more and more though is that 15" punched material is becoming less and less available.

Are there any other plotters besides the Gerber plotter that will work with the Edge FX? If not, any used Gerber plotters out there?

 

[TimToad]

Are there any other plotters besides the Gerber plotter that will work with the Edge FX? If not, any use Gerber plotters out there?

I'm pretty sure the sprocket hole pattern is universal. We run 15" Oracal, Helix and 3M though our EDGE but our Gerber P2C plotter is a friction feed, so it's more important to us which brands work on the EDGE itself.

 

[Joe House]

Are there any other plotters besides the Gerber plotter that will work with the Edge FX? If not, any used Gerber plotters out there?

You'll have an easier time with a sprocket plotter, but Gerber software should work with both Summa and Graphtec as they both made friction plotters for Gerber at some point and were working with the print/cut workflow. Check to see which drivers you have listed in the "Add Plotter/Router" dialog box. You'll see other brands there, but I don't think they were ever qualified with their print/cut workflow.

Good luck.

Joe

 

[rydods]

Bought one of these a few months back. I wish I would have done it a long time ago!

 

[Bevets]

This bad boy is saving our bacon this weekend on a 485 character, studded dimensional letter install into stucco and dryvit.

I just bought a cordless Makita and it's terrific!

 

[Ldireprophil]

As a production guy... The rolls roller is the best. A lot of shops can't justify the cost for a "table", but until you use one.. you don't know how great it is./QUOTE]

Which model and do you have a sales contact? I’d like to get one of these.

 

[Ldireprophil]

I could not agree more with everything you've mentioned.

Do you guys till use a roll-to-roll laminator for vinyl that may come off a latex printer or do you do everything on the rolls roller?

 

[WildWestDesigns]

1. Comfortable chair, desk, and drawing table that supports good posture
2. Fast Mac computer
3. Decent internet connection
4. Adobe Creative Suite
5. Large wide gamut monitor

Close to above, but with a few changes.

1. Same, but add lightbox with animation disk
2. Fast Linux computer
3. Decent Internet Connection
4. Adobe Suite would be replaced by others, some obvious, some not so obvious and an IDE to add functionality that would be specific to me to those alternative programs.
5. 3 monitors: 2 Viewsonic 27" and 27QHD

RPM,
I am about to buy a sewing machine
i was thinking a used/refurb juki on ebay
good choice?

Juki is very good, just make sure that you are getting the commercial Juki and not the splinter from Juki that mainly does home versions. Although the older home versions are not that bad. Have a home overlock Juki that's older then I am and it's still going strong. But just make sure that it's the commercial version.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

There is NO WAY I would give up my Summa F! It has easily been the equivalent to 1-2 employees!!

I agree, we have been without a digital finishing Cutter for the last month and it has been a struggle. Hopefully we can get our Celero 7 up soon. Just wish government employees didn't drag their feet on everything.

 

[Pixels Are Bad Mmmkay?]

Do you guys till use a roll-to-roll laminator for vinyl that may come off a latex printer or do you do everything on the rolls roller?

In our case, we've never owned a traditional laminator and we do everything with the RollsRoller. You really only need about 4 inches of extra material at the end of your print to apply laminate so there's not much waste and it's fast and easy. But mounting prints is so insanely easy and that's where it really shines. You can apply cut vinyl to panels as well, but long thin decals not so much as they do have a tendency to walk on you.

 

[iPrintStuff]

We’re not quite at the stage of needing a flat bed cutter but are awaiting delivery of an XY cutter for roll stock. Can’t wait. Looking forward to never manually chopping a poster job ever again!

Based on the rough speed of an employee cutting posters vs the XY, this thing will be like having a whole new employee that cuts posters 10-15x as fast and doesn’t take holidays!