Hi , I was tring to find someone with a color camm.And if you are happy with it or not , you know, pros and cons.I plan to do some heat transfers along with my usual sign stuff. Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Garret
Posted by Glenn Taylor (Member # 162) on :
They're great if you don't intend to make much money and you enjoy frustration.
Posted by Laura Butler (Member # 1830) on :
I would have wanted to get an Edge so for the price I paid for my PC-60, I can't complain. I just printed an 7.5' circle graphic that was mounted on an 8' round sign. I also had a trucker stop in to see if I could print up a pic of a wolf howling at the moon. He had had someone else do it in Arkansas and it must have been on an Edge because he was telling me about the seams. He was a very happy cutomer when I told him that I could do the pic with no seams.
A PC-60 costs about $2. a sq ft to print, so its not very cheap but I have mine running almost all of the time.
Posted by Bruce Evans (Member # 44) on :
Laura, I believe your $2/sq. ft. is way off. I believe it's closer to $2 per color, per sq. ft. The Edge doesn't even print at $2.00/sq.ft. using 4-color process.
Posted by Jeffrey Vrstal (Member # 2271) on :
I purchased a PC-60 this summer. I got a pretty good deal on it (I keep telling myself)... and I think that there is a lot of potential.
There's a lot of info on the pros and cons on this site - PC-60, PC-600, The Edge...
I am charging $25.00 per square foot for 4 color prints. I'd like to see how everyone else figures their price or at least (with the PC-60) what are your basic charges. I also throw on a design fee when needed.
Small stickers and labels seem to be a good way to go. I have not tried the heat transfer stuff yet but the possibility is there if I need it.
Ok, I'm rambling on so I might as well throw out a couple other observations. I had used an edge, I think the original version for about a year at a place I was doing consultant work for. I liked it. It was much faster than the (MY PC-60) Roland.
With the Edge you did have to change to the next color every time, you don't with the PC-60 unless you run out of that ribbon. I like the way the PC-60 works when you change the ribbon... picks up right where it left off. The edge seemed to leave you a mark on your print.
This is a tool in your shop just the same as your brush, a roller, your computer, or anything else that you use to make your work more efficient and economical. You have to think about it that way. There are many applications where the PC-60 or the edge or any other printing device is great, but sometimes you should use only certain elements of the device to produce the exact same sign without the cost you might experience if you were to print the entire thing.
Here's an example: I had a milk truck last week that had a main line of copy with the city and a few license numbers. All of the copy had to have a drop shadow. This was all to be done in a hurry as the truck was in between getting the tank put on and some other modifications... outside and I had about 1 hour to have it ready to go. Anyway, I printed a gradient blend on the main copy, the rest of the text was one color. Everything was then overlaid on the black drop shadow. Had I printed the entire thing, and I could have,it would have cost ME more to produce. This way, they get a custom job that I can charge more for than if I had done it with a single color. You get the idea.
Think about how eveything goes together and what works best for you.
[ November 25, 2001: Message edited by: Jeffrey Vrstal ]
Posted by Buddy Norris (Member # 49) on :
mine does a good job when it's calibrated right. I don't use it anywhere close to as much as I thought I would. Really good on very small stuff, clean. It's for sale right now. 3900.00. Noisy.
Posted by Lettercraft (Member # 268) on :
My PC60 is a good money-maker for me. It shouldn't be compared with an EDGE, or any of the others. The ROLAND is the only one that does just what it was meant to do....print AND cut 22.5" X whatever. It's meant to do small jobs in full-color....jobs that are too intricate for vinyl cutting, plus the addition of fills and gradients. Truck doors are the best....and small signs combining cut vinyl and process-print logos. Yeah, you can print stickers and such, but the money is in the custom one-off stuff, like logos (where you get lots of "design" $$$) and reproduction antique labels, and whatever other custom applications you can think of. Since the PC-60 comes with a windows driver, you can print and cut in any of the sign programs, Coreldraw, etc. A real handy machine for the small shop, with an initial outlay 1/4 that of a Gerber. They're both great machines, but each has it's place.
Posted by Ian Wilson (Member # 177) on :
I concur with bob they both have their place
Posted by Ron Percell (Member # 399) on :
We produce graphics on a daily basis with our pc-60, no problems. $50.00 a sq ft. I dont care about the per ft cost because it gets the job done, and the customer is paying for the materials.
We use Corel 8, & prefer to print at 600 dpi.
We produce full wraps, presentation labels, and everything inbetween, it prints up to 22.5".
The price was right, it was just under $8000.00 us, and the edge was qouted at $24,000.00 us, and they also said I'd need a spocket feed plotter for just an additional $20,000.
I dont know, you do the math, besides, if the job gets much bigger, we send it out @ $7.00 a sq ft.
One last comment, some friends of mine at another signs shop have had to fill thier shop up with filing cabinets to store the large print ribbons, mine fit into the desk drawer.
Good luck
Posted by Glenn Taylor (Member # 162) on :
$20k for a plotter??
As for the math, anybody interested? I'll be glad to post it if anybody wants.
Posted by Doug Allan (Member # 2247) on :
Just a clarification on Edge prices. My Edge 2, bought last November, cost $24,000 for the whole package INCL. Omega software, & the sproket fed plotter. Their are a lot of critiques on the software, but I bring my files into Omega just to run the jobs (rather then design them there)& it is handy that of the many materials available to print/cut, whatever is specified in the plot file will automatically set the heat & pressure on the edge, & the force, and speed on the plotter.
With a $10 wire shelf mounted 14" below the ceiling, my cartridges are right above my Edge using space I never needed before. With a 12" coverage instead of 1/4" there is less banding on the print, and about 48 times less cartridges to buy, ship, & throw away.
A lot of people are getting marketable results from their Roland Color Camm's, and making money too. That's great, but it is not a better product, & it is more expensive to produce. (even if the customer pays for it) The only thing better about it is the initial price difference.
I just sold 125 eight foot prints at $125 each. The profit on this one job will pay for half the entire system. I had a Color Camm, and the quality of that image would not have met the clients demands. The price would not have been approved either. Also I wonder how much more time it takes for a little thermal head to go back & forth 48 times more often on a 1000 square foot job?
Different tools, both have their place. IMO the Roland is a good place to start out if you absolutely cannot afford a better machine.
Garret, I just printed 30 shirt transfers using 1 sq. foot each. At $25 each not everyone will like the price, but my cost was about $6 ea. so it was a good job for 2-1/2 hours work. To screen print them with the film, screen, & set-up charges would have been cheaper, but I could rush them out in a weekend, & they would match the colors of the Edge graphics I sold them, so I got the job. For around a dozen shirts the film & screen charges make the Edge the cheaper option, so I usually get smaller orders like that. Good luck going digital.
Posted by Santo (Member # 411) on :
I'm with the guys saying there is no 1 machine to do it all. Use the right tool for the job. The Edge guys like to tout there lower $/sq ft and forget about the time that they are utilizing another machine to cut. Sure it's not much time but it does cost. There's been a lot negative said about the PC's but look at the people that have mastered its use and they seem happy with it. If I could shake the customers outta the trees, I've have 1 of each working.
Posted by Glenn Taylor (Member # 162) on :
quote: The Edge guys like to tout there lower $/sq ft and forget about the time that they are utilizing another machine to cut. Sure it's not much time but it does cost.
Actually, that's not accurate. I've owned both machines - ColorCamm & Edge.
When I had my ColorCamm (and it was running), my entire system - printer, cutter and computer were tied up when running only a single job. If the printer was running, I was unable to be busy cutting another job. If the cutter was running, I was unable to be printing another job at the same time either. And, when either the printer or cutter portion of my ColorCamm was running, I was unable to do work on the computer because it was tying up too many resources.
With my Edge system, I could be printing one job, cutting an entirely different job, and prepping another job all at the same time.
Also, as we all know - Time is Money. It took either one of my ColorCamms (I had two at one time) 8 minutes to print just one 12"x12" area one color. It took my Edge-1 just 43 seconds and my Edge-2 14 seconds to do the same job. Even with my Edge-1, I could print and cut a job, even though I had to change ribbons and move the vinyl to the plotter for cutting, in a fraction of the time it took the ColorCamm to do it.
Posted by Jeff Christopherson (Member # 2197) on :
Here is my opinion. I own a color camm PC-60. I have never owned an edge so I cann't say anything about that. The PC-60 is a pain in the butt almost every time I use it. The regestration is off half of the time. The quality is never as good as it should be. We constatly have banding problems. When the ribbon runs out, sometimes they break. When your 3/4 of the way though a job and the ribbon breaks you have to start over. Like some of the others said it works great for small intricate logos and stickers. It's ok for larger jobs but the machine is very slow. One thing that someone else said is that they could not have two things going at once. I am able to run one thing on the color camm and another on our Ioline plotter at the same time. I am not a big fan of ours and we use it less and less because of quality issues and wasted time fighting with the machine. This is just my opion. Our machine came with the shop when we bought the business. The PC-60 was not taken care of by the previous owners. I might work better if it was a new machine and taken care of properly. Good luck.
Posted by Great Lakes Graphics (Member # 169) on :
Thanks for all the great input.It sure did help.I'm a homebased shop doing strickly design and vehichle lettering.When it comes to spending the money on new hardware I like to get some opinions,THANKS Garret. Posted by Brian Snyder (Member # 41) on :
The Edge2, an Envision 375 cutter and Gerber software costs me less than $625/mo to lease for 4 years. At the end of the lease I own it. Thats $144/week. $28.80/day. Its not hard to cover $30 a day with the Edge. Even if I could have a Roland PC-whatever for $5/day it wouldn't be worth it.
Posted by Randy W. Robarge (Member # 2022) on :
I have to agree with Jeff. I bought a PC-60 a little over a year ago for printing and plotting. Now it is just a plotter (an overpriced plotter).
I too had to fight to keep the quality up to par. Banding problems were the worst. I used to stand there looking as it was printing hoping nothing was going to screw up. It would be printing fine one minute, then all of a sudden there was a white line running through it.
In less than a year, I was getting solid white lines running through every color, every print. Roland says it needs a new print head. Come to find out, I wasn't the only one who had to change print heads every year. I soon discovered that most owners of these machines were changing print heads just about every year. I wouldn't have minded so much if I had printed tons of work out of it. But I'm just a one-man shop that was looking to get into some digital printing, so I hadn't printed much work before the head was gone.
Needless to say, the head still isn't fixed. I can't see wasting any more money than I already have for quality that I don't consider great. Maybe I expected too much in digital printing. I'm not sure.
I did see Graphtec has an ink jet printer/plotter out, too. Has anyone ever worked with this? I thought quality would be better with an ink jet printer (seems the banding problem would go away, too).
Any hoo, I've rambled on way too long.
Randy
Posted by kevinlandry (Member # 1352) on :
Open Mouth/ Insert Foot. I wish to retract the the information that I posted here yesterday. It was incorrect to for me to fault someone for the way they conduct their business and for using information that I have as a conjecture of impropriety. For this I am sorry.
Kevin Landry KnL Signs and Imaging Halifax NS
[ November 28, 2001: Message edited by: kevinlandry ]
Posted by KEN SCOTT (Member # 2979) on :
I had a pc-60. Boy was I glad that someone wanted to buy it.. I was getting worried. It just cost to much to opperate. I have my edge 2 ordered. I think it will make a great addition to the shop.
We also screen print and embroider too. I think it will help us when our customer wants only 12 shirts with 5 colors. It will be cheaper for us to use the edge.
One of the reasons we are getting the edge is to produce a pre-printed line of trucker decals. We have guite a few truckers in and out of our shop. I think we can make the payment just by selling these graphics.
Ken
Posted by Bob Burns (Member # 268) on :
I KEEP HEARING THESE "HORROR STORIES"! ALL I KNOW IS THAT MY PC60 WORKS PERFECTLY.....HAS FOR 3-4 YEARS. IT MAKES ME $$$$$. I USE WIN 95 ONE ONE 'PUTER AND 98 ON ANOTHER. 512 MEM IN BOTH. I USE THE ROLAND PRINTER DRIVER AND THE INSPIRE PROGRAM FOR THE RIP. I GET EXCELLENT RESULTS EVERY TIME! SORRY TO BE SO POSITIVE!!!!!!
Posted by Laura Butler (Member # 1830) on :
Bruce, I know that this is an old post, but you are right. I forgot to say $2.00 a sq. ft PER color.
Posted by Rick Sacks (Member # 379) on :
I have never owned either machine.
Doug, you mentioned making transfers for shirts. Are they a better transfer than the ones I get color laser printed at the copy shop for $2 each?
Posted by Bruce Evans (Member # 44) on :
Gosh, this same topic seems to reappear over and over. All I can say is listen to the people who have BOTH machines!!
It's kinda like when you have that crappy fast food job as a teenager. You didn't really realize what a crappy job it was until you grew older and got a better job.
Posted by Chuck Gallagher (Member # 69) on :
I feel for ya! It's a hard one to figure out when you haven't had one yet. The price on the Roland gets my attention and the positive comments gets me on the Edge. If it wasn't for the huge difference in price it would be an easier decision. So, I settled for a little of both, a used Edge2................I think
