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Tonya.Nehren

New Member
Hello!
Very excited to have found this forum. I manage a small in-house print shop for a large school system. We don't profit from our services, our goal is to breakeven year over year. I'm new to the print world, I stumbled across this opportunity and very happy I did. Over the past year or so, I've been doing a lot of outsourcing of signs, yard signs, magnetic etc..enough that I'm starting to look into getting a flatbed printer. I've talked to a couple sales reps and have spent hours researching, but I'm not getting the information that I need and I'm sure someone on here has already gathered the information I'm looking for.

So far I've been looking at the Xante X33 and Mimaki UJF-6042

1) Cost comparisons of different flatbed options.
2) Break down of average operating cost per sq ft
3) Break down of average maintenance cost (monthly or yearly)

Ultimately, I just want to see if it would be worth the investment to bring this work in-house.

I appreciate any feedback!
Tonya
 

Pauly

Printrade.com.au
Welcome!

Those little flatbed printers are for promotional items etc. I wouldn't be printing any yard signs or signs in general on those.

As cost is a factor. Keeping UV printers maintained is a must. More printing you do, the better. You want them running daily or minimum once a week,
It would be honestly more cost effective outsourcing to someone like firesprint (members here)

If you want to do it yourself, better off buying a wide format machine and a laminating table and just stick self adhesive vinyl stickers onto the boards.
 

Tonya.Nehren

New Member
Welcome!

Those little flatbed printers are for promotional items etc. I wouldn't be printing any yard signs or signs in general on those.

As cost is a factor. Keeping UV printers maintained is a must. More printing you do, the better. You want them running daily or minimum once a week,
It would be honestly more cost effective outsourcing to someone like firesprint (members here)

If you want to do it yourself, better off buying a wide format machine and a laminating table and just stick self adhesive vinyl stickers onto the boards.
Yikes! Really? We really don't do a ton of yard signs or signs. For yard signs last year I order 5,000..orders were between 100 to 400 signs at a time. I can't imagine manually applying stickers to all of those. We do have a Canon 4000 for posters and banners. It's definitely a balancing act of trying to keep my small team (4 people) busy, but not too busy. I'll look into firesprint
 

Pauly

Printrade.com.au
Yikes! Really? We really don't do a ton of yard signs or signs. For yard signs last year I order 5,000..orders were between 100 to 400 signs at a time. I can't imagine manually applying stickers to all of those. We do have a Canon 4000 for posters and banners. It's definitely a balancing act of trying to keep my small team (4 people) busy, but not too busy. I'll look into firesprint

For those quantities, those little flatbeds wont keep up. No offence, but they're toys (just expensive)

I'd be looking at a proper flatbed in that case. Something that can handle a full size 1220mm x 2440mm sheet. and obviously somewhere to cut them up.
But sometimes, it's literally just easier to outsource this type of work.
 

Gino

Premium Subscriber
Ya know, if you did 5,000 average last year, that's a 100 signs a week on an average. That would be nice to keep it in-house, but really doesn't warrant buying an expensive machine. Plus, the real estate one of those things takes up is kinda big. Using a big squeegee or a laminator would make short work of applying a few hundred faces.
 

netsol

Premium Subscriber
tonya,
at that quantity, i would consider finding a used or off lease piece of equipment ASSUMING the school system would allow this sort of purchase (watch ebay/craigslist/offerup/facebook marketplace) IF YOU CAN THEN PLACE IT UNDER CONTRACT, with a servicing vendor, who can perhaps sell you your supplies (perhaps "per click")

we have had a lot of private sector clients go this route. you could start by finding out if your school system's copier vendor has a tech with wide format or flatbed experience. if they do you could get a pre sale inspection (it's much easier to write a contract on a piece of equipment your company has already inspected)

a more appropriate piece of equipment would make sense, since, we all know your 5000 sign requests did not come in, evenly spaced 100 per week.
 

Tonya.Nehren

New Member
tonya,
at that quantity, i would consider finding a used or off lease piece of equipment ASSUMING the school system would allow this sort of purchase (watch ebay/craigslist/offerup/facebook marketplace) IF YOU CAN THEN PLACE IT UNDER CONTRACT, with a servicing vendor, who can perhaps sell you your supplies (perhaps "per click")

we have had a lot of private sector clients go this route. you could start by finding out if your school system's copier vendor has a tech with wide format or flatbed experience. if they do you could get a pre sale inspection (it's much easier to write a contract on a piece of equipment your company has already inspected)

a more appropriate piece of equipment would make sense, since, we all know your 5000 sign requests did not come in, evenly spaced 100 per week.
Thank you for this. A service contract would be easier for me to manage for sure. I can buy used, but I have a ton of red tape to go through, which is fine. I have reached out to about 5-7 vendors to gather information. The ones who have responded don't offer service contracts for flatbeds. I will see if I can expand my search.
Tonya
 

Tonya.Nehren

New Member
I appreciate this feedback, its helpful. I have other binding equipment on my dream list I'm just trying to figure out what makes the most sense.
 

petepaz

New Member
if you could find a roland LEJ, used in good condition in your price range that might be the way to go.
it's not fast but quality is good and easy to use. it's hybrid printer so you can print on rigid material up to 1/2" thick and also roll/flexible media.

another important point already brought up which ever print you go with make sure tech support is readily available locally would be best
 

netsol

Premium Subscriber
tonya,
depending on the level of cooperation in the school district, this can make a lot of sense

in the past, we have justified programs like this, purchasing a larger/faster piece of equipment & then you become a service bureau for that type of request for other schools in the district

a great way to work around budget constraints & make more of that wish list possible
 

Squared2002

New Member
Tonya, my first question would be “do you have an idea of what your budget might be”? We are a Print & Fabricating Company in Las Vegas and we currently have Roll to Roll Latex Printers and 2 Flatbed Printers, 1 is Latex and 1 is UV. If you could give me an idea of what you think your budget could possibly be I am sure you would probably get more recommendations?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

GC Decor

Super Printer
I would 100% contract your signs out to a B2b printer like Firesprint. Owning a flatbed is a nice though but they are a lot of work and require constant attention. Expect to pay well over $3k per year for a service contact (most likely more) they don’t cover print heads either, depending on the machine a simple head hit can cost over $10k.
You wouldn’t be saving much either on yard signs, might even cost more to make them yourself due to economy of scale. Buying a few sheets of coroplast would be expensive, you have to buy multi pallets to get the cost down and same goes for yard stakes (stakes are more than the signs now). Flatbeds can be great investments but from my experience yard signs have been beaten into the ground with pricing and the margin is low even for the large shops. Hopefully this is helpful.
 

FireSprint.com

Trade Only Screen & Digital Sign Printing
I made this spreadsheet for you to consider:


We also have a video on making large equipment purchases where we go into detail about something like this (Hint: We generally encourage people to buy their own equipment, but not to make yard signs specifically. There's good margin in larger and/or specialty signage and if you do a lot of this, a printer might be well worth the purchase)

 

FireSprint.com

Trade Only Screen & Digital Sign Printing
Also, to edit that spreadsheet as you see fit, you can make a copy to your own google account:

1638446052524.png
 

AGCharlotte

New Member
I had Xante demo the X33 here (not sure why my boss brought him in though). I would not recommend that machine for doing anything outside of promo work and the occasional one off yard sign. Machine is only big enough to run one at a time so it's really a time sink in labor if you're trying to churn out yards sign. Even doing what it's more suited for (promo work), it still seems very much of a toy.
 
Hello!
Very excited to have found this forum. I manage a small in-house print shop for a large school system. We don't profit from our services, our goal is to breakeven year over year. I'm new to the print world, I stumbled across this opportunity and very happy I did. Over the past year or so, I've been doing a lot of outsourcing of signs, yard signs, magnetic etc..enough that I'm starting to look into getting a flatbed printer. I've talked to a couple sales reps and have spent hours researching, but I'm not getting the information that I need and I'm sure someone on here has already gathered the information I'm looking for.

So far I've been looking at the Xante X33 and Mimaki UJF-6042

1) Cost comparisons of different flatbed options.
2) Break down of average operating cost per sq ft
3) Break down of average maintenance cost (monthly or yearly)

Ultimately, I just want to see if it would be worth the investment to bring this work in-house.

I appreciate any feedback!
Tonya
Please don’t buy Xante machine horrible customer service and equipments are no good. This is from personal experience
 

mjames

Premium Subscriber
Hello!
Very excited to have found this forum. I manage a small in-house print shop for a large school system. We don't profit from our services, our goal is to breakeven year over year. I'm new to the print world, I stumbled across this opportunity and very happy I did. Over the past year or so, I've been doing a lot of outsourcing of signs, yard signs, magnetic etc..enough that I'm starting to look into getting a flatbed printer. I've talked to a couple sales reps and have spent hours researching, but I'm not getting the information that I need and I'm sure someone on here has already gathered the information I'm looking for.

So far I've been looking at the Xante X33 and Mimaki UJF-6042

1) Cost comparisons of different flatbed options.
2) Break down of average operating cost per sq ft
3) Break down of average maintenance cost (monthly or yearly)

Ultimately, I just want to see if it would be worth the investment to bring this work in-house.

I appreciate any feedback!
Tonya
Your best bet is to outsource.
 
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