New Printer

[Scott Shepherd]

We finally broke down and bought a new wide format printer. Tired of not having a source to make decals, bumper stickers, real estate signs, and everything in between.

It's a HP Latex machine and it prints beautifully. I thought getting into lasers was expensive. Bought Onyx Production House software to run it. It was $5,000 just for the software to make it print (I know there are other RIP's out there, but we weren't happy with any of the demos we saw on those).

61" wide, it'll print double sided, paper, vinyl, banner, fabric, backlit films, and other things that I don't even know what they are :) Prints about 125 sq. ft per hour at fairly high resolution. No solvent based ink, so the prints are dry when they come off the machine and you can laminate it immediately. No outgassing to deal with.

Can't wait to get some time with it and some ink run through it. So far it's done great, but we've only had it a week or so.

Here's a video of it before they changed the model number this year.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBWAyu7MuHc

[Joe Pelonio]

Big investment, but should pay back very well for you. Hopefully you can get into the very profitable vehicle wraps. Congratulations!

[Keith Outten]

Steve,

I guess business has been good in your area this year :)

Your new printer is a real beauty, I hope I can swing some work your way this year.
.

[Scott Shepherd]

Thanks Guys! That means a lot coming from both of you. Without Joe's help 6-7 years ago, we wouldn't have a sign business.

Keith, business has been good. Best year in the history of our company. Really tired of not being able to find anyone that wants to work with you on wholesale stuff. Everyone says they are giving you the wholesale price but it's almost always much closer to retail pricing. Since no one wanted to build that relationship, we now have a printer and we'll do it ourselves. When we didn't have one, we weren't a threat to anyone's wide format printing business. Now we are. Self inflicted business wound by them, if you ask me :)

Can't wait to do some wall murals or custom wallpaper.

[AL Ursich]

Sweet !!!!!

[Mike Null]

Steve

Congratulations! Shrewd move--I'm sure you'll do well with it.

[Wes Mitchell]

My mother-in-law has a smaller version of that printer. Very versatile with the latex inks, I'm sure you'll like it.

[Paul Phillips]

Congratulations Steve, I'm sure you'll have lot's of fun with that, we have the older version of that and love it. We got suckered into a deal at a sign show back in 2001 and bought an Arizona solvent printer, it was so bad it actually cost more to make a print than what we could sell it for, finally sold it for scrap a few years ago. Vehicle wraps can be good money makers but it seems like there is a lot more competition than there used to be with printer prices being so much cheaper now, we don't do them much anymore, too many 1 man shops that only do wraps.
Paul