Your thoughts on unconventional yard sign production...

[Gino]

It doesn't appear to be what the OP is asking at all. He already knows the results and time frame of doing it by hand and in-house. He merely wanted to know if it was a superior product.

• Money-wise, not at all.
• Quality-wise, not at all.
• Time-wise, not at all.

Not if it can be done for certain quantities, other than maybe 100 at a time.

 

[bulldozer]

Don't do it. It takes way too much labor and when you get an order for 100 double sided, do you know how long that will take to print and apply? Nearly a week, you would be so backed up, not to mention errors/reprinting. But the cost of materials is higher. You would get backed up and start telling people you are 3 weeks behind.

a week? yea, just one person, it shouldn't take 2-3 people more than a day to pump out 100 double-sided signs.

 

[Tom Dalton]

a week? yea, just one person, it shouldn't take 2-3 people more than a day to pump out 100 double-sided signs.

100 double-sided signs (printed at the highest quality) takes 1 person about 3 hours in our shop. That is on a new 5'x10' $300k high end flatbed (our 3rd flatbed upgrade). We can print twelve 18"x24" signs on each 4'x9' sheet. It takes about 7 minutes per side (for the full sheet) on high quality mode. We use a wall mounted fletcher cutter for the cut-down. We've got a few big repeat customers and the machine stays busy all day every day and we really need to run it multiple shifts. Our biggest two repeat customers have us printing products and not signs (think printed cell phone case, but they're not cell phone cases).

Then, going up from there, you've got multi-million dollar machines like this....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dha90ao2e2E
Printing on corrugated plastic that is purchased wholesale direct from the manufacturer ...or from China.

I've worked in small shops and big shops. To me, you're just keeping people busy, but not making any more money by not using subs wherever you can. There are less headaches with reliable outsourcing partners. They smooth out the ups and down's of your business. In other words, you don't loose sleep when you get slammed and you don't have to send people home when you're slow simply because you built a bigger crew to handle your busy times.

-Tom
SignsDirect.com

PS: We offer printed coro with wholesale pricing to the trade.

 

[Kentucky Wraps]

Every once in a while I do exactly that. I print, laminate, and mount decals to coro and cut them down. I charge $26 each for double sided and this happens when they need them yesterday and don't mind paying.
Other than that, sub them out flatbed printed.

 

[Pixels Are Bad Mmmkay?]

Every once in a while I do exactly that. I print, laminate, and mount decals to coro and cut them down. I charge $26 each for double sided and this happens when they need them yesterday and don't mind paying.
Other than that, sub them out flatbed printed.

We don't bother laminating prints that go on coroplast. Seems like a waste of laminate and I just don't see much of a point in doing it.

 

[ams]

a week? yea, just one person, it shouldn't take 2-3 people more than a day to pump out 100 double-sided signs.

I am talking about printing on an eco-solvent, letting it dry for two hours, cutting an 18 X 24 out and applying it. Between the printing, curing, cutting and applying per piece, it is expensive and if you don't have shop space you can only print a couple dozen while you are waiting for curing.

If you apply it as a full sheet, it's quicker, if you have a flatbed it's even faster. But doing one sign at a time takes forever.

 

[CanuckSigns]

I am talking about printing on an eco-solvent, letting it dry for two hours, cutting an 18 X 24 out and applying it. Between the printing, curing, cutting and applying per piece, it is expensive and if you don't have shop space you can only print a couple dozen while you are waiting for curing.

If you apply it as a full sheet, it's quicker, if you have a flatbed it's even faster. But doing one sign at a time takes forever.

If you are doing 100 signs like in your example, you would not be mounting them individually. you would print them as 4x8 sheets, mount to both sides and trim them out. We have a rolls roller so we can do them pretty quick, I would estimate 100 double sided coroplast signs 24"x16" would take one person about 4-6 hours to mount & trim. The printer would take about 6-7 hours to print them all, but I don't count that in my time as I don't pay the printer by the hour.

 

[dypinc]

If you are doing 100 signs like in your example, you would not be mounting them individually. you would print them as 4x8 sheets, mount to both sides and trim them out. We have a rolls roller so we can do them pretty quick, I would estimate 100 double sided coroplast signs 24"x16" would take one person about 4-6 hours to mount & trim. The printer would take about 6-7 hours to print them all, but I don't count that in my time as I don't pay the printer by the hour.

For 100 2 sided signs vinyl to coro, I would print (with timing/stop marks for the laminator) roll to roll and then laminate roll to 18 x 24 precut coro. 2 guys 3 hours. Trimming after laminating takes the most time. If you can spare 2 people to trim you can feed the coro into the laminator almost continuously. Release liner to the take-up roll, stop at marks, place coro in guides and way faster than than any flatbed laminator could ever be.

 

[CanuckSigns]

For 100 2 sided signs vinyl to coro, I would print (with timing/stop marks for the laminator) roll to roll and then laminate roll to 18 x 24 precut coro. 2 guys 3 hours. Trimming after laminating takes the most time. If you can spare 2 people to trim you can feed the coro into the laminator almost continuously. Release liner to the take-up roll, stop at marks, place coro in guides and way faster than than any flatbed laminator could ever be.

Can you clarify this, i'm not sure I follow...

 

[dypinc]

Not sure how to make it more clear. For larger quantity jobs I always print roll to roll, if it needs an over-laminate then again roll to roll on the laminator. Then roll to substrate on the laminator. Any quantity over 6 I usually do this way although with with 4 x 8 or larger sheets I will do it for 3 or more. Just need to print laminator stop marks and put feed guides on the laminator fence for the substrate. Just did 16 - 57" x 116" ultra board panels this way. Since they had precise margins I just set the print job up for the full 60" x 120" sheets and did final trim later.

 

[CanuckSigns]

Still not following, what is a laminator stop mark? are you using some type of laminator that i've never heard of? I had someone else in our shop read your explanation and he couldn't figure it out either.

I would be interested to see a video or something of this process.

 

[eahicks]

For 100 2 sided signs vinyl to coro, I would print (with timing/stop marks for the laminator) roll to roll and then laminate roll to 18 x 24 precut coro. 2 guys 3 hours. Trimming after laminating takes the most time. If you can spare 2 people to trim you can feed the coro into the laminator almost continuously. Release liner to the take-up roll, stop at marks, place coro in guides and way faster than than any flatbed laminator could ever be.

? This sounds horrible.

Lay 10 up, edges touching, on a full sheet of coro; slice with coro slicer down the middle, cut the 2 halves into your individual signs. Done. Knock out 10 in about 5 minutes. No vinyl trimming or aligning substrates. Could do 100 single sided in an hour. Double sided takes longer, obviously due to aligning back side to front before slicing. Still could do 100 in less than 2 hours. BY MYSELF.

 

[Kentucky Wraps]

We don't bother laminating prints that go on coroplast. Seems like a waste of laminate and I just don't see much of a point in doing it.

We do it for several reasons.
1. We usually lump their signs in with other jobs...that get laminated anyway
2. Trying to mount unlaminated vinyl onto coro is not fun
3. The customer will likely stick the faces together and they'll be ruined.
So we just add the extra for lam and it makes everyone's life easier and makes us more money.

 

[Pat Whatley]

My .02, I think it's fine to do but will never compete volume wise with a flat bed.

The cheapest we can do a 4x8 is Unlaminated with Arlon 510 and 2 pass on our 360. Cost is roughly $13.12 per side for materials / ink and it takes 5mins on a mounter so another $5 per panel per side in labor. We are at $18 per side when a Flatbed would be around $6.

It also takes 5mins to load the printer, about 7mins of printing. A Flatbed depending on settings is done in about 5-7 mins total.

Just food for thought on your decision.

You're leaving the cost of purchasing the flatbed out of the equation.

 

[player]

You're leaving the cost of purchasing the flatbed out of the equation.

Flatbed with autoloader= $150K?

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

You're leaving the cost of purchasing the flatbed out of the equation.

Hybrid Flatbeds from Mutoh, Roland, and Mimaki are only $20,000 more than Roll to Roll only printers now and you can still print roll to roll. It's still significantly cheaper due to lower cost uv inks and less labor.

If you go with a industrial flatbed you can get in to them for $80,000 but your production rates increase exponentially.

The whole point is that it's just as good quality wise and it is always cheaper to do those signs on a flatbed or hybrid.

 

[Gino]

If someone wants to be or act like a broker, then investing in equipment is somewhat foolish. I agree. However, when one has deadlines coming out the whazoo and needs to be confident of quality control, turnarounds and control your costs..... whether you invest in roll to roll, die-cut machines or flatbeds.... it is the only way to go.

The subject here, seems to be about roll to roll outperforming a flatbed. Can't be done. Not at all. You can do it, but it is not a cost effective way to do what the OP has in mind. You cannot compete with those two methods.

The main reason most people invest in themselves or their business, is because they have a really good business going and need faster, less expensive and better quality than someone doing it it for them. When timeframes put a damper on getting work out, then we must farm it out.

The wholesalers we use are great, but I'd rather be doing it all. Just not enough hours in a day.

 

[BALLPARK]

I would suggest to subout the prints. Use the time you would have spent producing the prints, laying the vinyl, and trimming the coro on other aspects of your company. Perhaps use that time to help generate new sales leads or working on more profitable jobs, when possible.

The wholesale pricing plans are really good and easy to markup the product to a point that will leave you asking why did I ever spend all that time working on doing it using vinyl as the prints.

We used to do them by printing 4x8 sheet size vinyl and applying them. Then we found a couple wholesalers that offered good rates and could produce the quality we require for our clients. We then had more time to work on our sales kits which helped us grow much faster. Couple years later we purchased a used flatbed. Best thing we have done for the growth of our company.

Now we can print 3 to 4 single sided in under 3 min or a full sheet in 7.5 min per printer. Look for wholesalers that use Vutek QS or GS series. They have a feature called heavy smoothing. It allows you to print in production mode but it does not band!

If anyone ever wants coro signs just let me know. We can produce about 1000 single sided or 500 double sided in a day and still do our normal work. We print using Vutek printers and every file is ripped with heavy smoothing to avoid banding!

 

[T_K]

Another thing you can try is offering your customers 2 quotes. One for a faster, in-house printing with vinyl on coro, and one for the slower, outsourced direct print.

At my last job, we did tons of coro signs with vinyl. Our customers wanted 2-10 signs "right now". We couldn't farm those out in a reasonable timeframe for our customers, and we didn't see it as economical to lose profit on outsourcing the one-offs. But when they would ask for larger orders, we'd offer them the choice. Did they want to pay a premium for faster turn around, or wait for the outsourcing with a lower price point. A lot of times, they'd still rather pay the higher price for the faster service, because they wouldn't plan in advance of their needs. It would make a busy 1-2 days, but it kept us open and profitable.

In instances like this, I prefer to let the customer make the call. I can make money either way. One gives me a ton of work, one gives me more time. Both make profit. Depending on the other jobs we have going, I might try to persuade them one way or the other - like if we're dead and I've got guys not doing anything, I'd lean towards in-house. But it varies from day to day.