easy ways to save money without sacrificing quality.

[rob402]

anyone know easy ways to save money without sacrificing quality or making life harder on yourselves?

example one, the swabs that are $66 on grimco are $9.40 on ebay. things like this.

i'll post another tomorrow tomorrow about blades

 

[equippaint]

being penny wise and pound foolish is a big common mistake in business. Youre not doing yourself any favors chasing inconsequential savings. Spend your extra time and effort on marketing, workflow improvements etc and not saving a few bucks on q-tips. Im saying this from my own experience

 

[rob402]

i'm not really trying to pinch pennies. it just bug me to pay 6x what something costs elsewhere. we've been in business since 1976, i have experience(although we admittedly need to get with the times in a few ways).

okay, different example. i tend to snap the tips of my xacto blades pretty much instantly when scoring max metal, or dulling them in1 or 2 cuts when cutting magnetic. i've found that by dragging the back of the blade on sandpaper for a few quick swipes, i can back-cut the tip of the blade. it then has a sturdier tip that won't crack off, and is as sharp as new again. i actually like using the blades i've modified better than fresh blades. i highly recommend trying this

 

[ChicagoGraphics]

Use a utility blade for cutting maxmetal, one blade last a long time, as for the cotton swabs I pay $2.50 per 100

 

[Johnny Best]

Or take that money you saved and buy yourself a good track saw to cut that MaxMetal. And like above says, "use a utility blade".
You can also wear the same clothes for a week or two to save on laundry soap.

 

[equippaint]

Im not saying to not be price concious and wasnt directing this at the OP. Some people just get consumed by trying to save money on things that dont matter to be point that it becomes a waste of time. Im sure we all know people like this. Ive worked for people that try and manage their business on the expense side way more than the revenue side rather than having a healthy balance.
Example in the painting business. Taking stacks of free newspapers for masking paper when Masking paper is $1.79/ roll. Then having your employees have to cut the newspaper to fit or piece it together at $15/hr

 

[Active Sign]

I try to remind myself to focus 95% of my time on generating income and 5% of my time on saving. It is easy to get stuck trying to save and end up spending $50 to save $5. Happened to me Friday trying to see who has the better price on IJ35. I realized I could have made 5 follow up calls in that time.

I do use eBay swabs and STS aftermarket ink. Got a panel saw for cutting rigid substrates on Craigslist. Save money if it's simple. If will help you be a better shop spend whatever it costs.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[ikarasu]

Im not saying to not be price concious and wasnt directing this at the OP. Some people just get consumed by trying to save money on things that dont matter to be point that it becomes a waste of time. Im sure we all know people like this. Ive worked for people that try and manage their business on the expense side way more than the revenue side rather than having a healthy balance.
Example in the painting business. Taking stacks of free newspapers for masking paper when Masking paper is $1.79/ roll. Then having your employees have to cut the newspaper to fit or piece it together at $15/hr

A guy that used to work with me was a painter as a second job. He'd take empty rolls of laminate backing home to use for painting. I thought it was genius, until I had to paint something and tried it .The paper slid eveverywhere.... I spent more time taping it down than I would have saved buying some real tarps or masking paper.

This is the same guy who opened his locker when I was walking by, and I found thousands of scrap vinyl pieces in his locker .were talking pieces under a sqft in length... He kept them "just incase". I'm talking a 5 ft locker just filled to the brim of it...

Some people are cheap .being cheap and being money smart is different though.

Over here it's $30 per cb09 blade, $100+ per cb15 prismatic blades...and $100+ per blade holder.

I bought 30 15° cb09s, 30 DG cb15 blades, a cb09 holder and a cb15 holder for about $30 Canadian from China .I priced it out via our supplier... And it would have been close to $2000. We've been using the cheap blades for about a year now... We flip out blades once a month vs once every 6 months, but our quality is way better and finer detailed now... Since the blades are so cheap we just throw them out at the beginning of every month as routine maintenance, so the blade is always sharp.

Sometimes it's more about the convenience also, I like having a fresh blade. Or being able to just throw something away without thinking about how much it's worth.

I priced out the consumables for our printer before... It costs us about $45 a month just in cleaning supplies for it. Let alone all the vinyl / ink for cleanings and nozzle prints. I can see why smaller shops want to cut that price in half.

 

[equippaint]

Funny you say that, I had an employee hoarding the liner for paint masking at my shop. Used to irritate me. He would dig it out of the trash so it wasnt so wasteful. I had to hide it like he was some sort of addict. Its terrible paint mask but a decent liner between signs.
For knife blades, My preference is to use regular razors (except tight trimming) Pack of 100 is $3.00, they dont gouge my table so bad, i can lose them all i want and the tips dont bend. Much harder to stick yourself with them too.

 

[rob402]

Over here it's $30 per cb09 blade, $100+ per cb15 prismatic blades...and $100+ per blade holder.

I bought 30 15° cb09s, 30 DG cb15 blades, a cb09 holder and a cb15 holder for about $30 Canadian from China .I priced it out via our supplier... And it would have been close to $2000. We've been using the cheap blades for about a year now... We flip out blades once a month vs once every 6 months, but our quality is way better and finer detailed now... Since the blades are so cheap we just throw them out at the beginning of every month as routine maintenance, so the blade is always sharp.

Sometimes it's more about the convenience also, I like having a fresh blade. Or being able to just throw something away without thinking about how much it's worth.

we had about 20+ used blades sitting here and for our older gerber plotter, they are around $45/ea with shipping and they're getting harder to find. i sent them to bits n bits for sharpening. for $5/ea they came back great. i actually had to reduce the cutting force a little. i was so impressed i sent them a thank you letter.
we tried the $6 house brand blades from a local supplier in my new roland SG540. i went through two in a week and switched back to the real roland blades, which last well over a month. i'll probably send them in for sharpening as well once they start to accumulate.

we have a panel saw here that we purchased from a cabinet maker which is used to cut plywood and aluminum, but the edge it left on maxmetal wasn't up to my standards, i'd end up spending extra time sanding it. ..which is why i use the razor. for indoor stuff, i even run a torch around the edges so they turn black.

 

[rob402]

my mother (i'm 37, slowly taking over)had a weird paranoia that she'd need a little bit more of a color than what she has, or an oddball scrap of a specific color to change a date or something on a sign. I understood that it's dumb to buy a ten yard roll to use 6" of vinyl, so i lived with it as long as i could. I’d been trying to get her to go through them for about a year, but it never happened. she'd get angry if I'd start to do it. tells me she’ll do it. GRR.. well, she went out of town. vinyl scraps were taking over my shelves, my bench, my shop, my life. always in the darn way. i threw a LOT away and spent 5 hours re-rolling like colors together to fit everything inside a single milk crate. there was enough of these stupid little tubes to cover my 30' of bench space end to end plus the tubes you see horizontal on the top. this isn't the nice fresh vinyl we use, this is just the scraps. most of it well past its shelf life. so now we're both happy. no saving paper or tape here. big pet peeve of mine to see a 2' piece of masking tape stuck on the bench with 15 slices through it.

pic is from about 4 years ago. i saved it though, because SHEESH. although we have been around since 1976, we did not have a digital printer at the time, so this "need" to save scraps is finally in the past. i think that's why i finally signed up on this site. since getting the printer, every time i search for help, this is the site i seem to find it on.