• I want to thank all the members that have upgraded your accounts. I truly appreciate your support of the site monetarily. Supporting the site keeps this site up and running as a lot of work daily goes on behind the scenes. Click to Support Signs101 ...

Grimlite

MNT_Printhead

Working among the Corporate Lizard People
The rest of the inks arrived yesterday afternoon, I ordered them last Friday. I know I can't rely on Grimco anymore and am going to have to find alternatives to what I used them for.
 

Signarama Jockey

New Member
Tubelite was our Roland ink supplier. When they got gobbled up by Grimco I remember thinking that it might actually be a little more convenient for us (they are our vendor for ACM substrate and some media). But then, I couldn't get my inks anymore.

After some hand wringing we made the leap to a generic ink that we now get from Fellers. It's called SOLARIS Max Life Eco Sol II Ink and it comes in 500ML instead of 440MML for a lower price.

There was some concern about the switch, but it's gone off quite smoothly. I have no complaints.
 

jazzprinter

New Member
The rest of the inks arrived yesterday afternoon, I ordered them last Friday. I know I can't rely on Grimco anymore and am going to have to find alternatives to what I used them for.
We still use Grimco (unfortunately) for a large majority of our purchases, but we have started using Spandex out of Salt Lake City for our Roland inks. They have competitive pricing on almost everything.
 

chester215

Just call me Chester.
Grimliteston. My longtime and superb supplier Garston was bought out by Tubelite a couple months ago, now GRIMco is their owner. They delivered 4 days a week on their own trucks and carried a full line of sign supplies. This sucks.

They also stopped carrying the Arlon vinyl I use the most and was getting from Garston. Nepco carries Arlon and delivers using their own trucks to CT a few times a week.
 

Billct2

Active Member
Grimco obviously wasn’t up to speed for these acquisitions. I was never a big fan of theirs but they were ok. They’ve gotten worse instead of better
 

MelloImagingTechnologies

Many years in the Production Business
We are picking up many customers servicing Oki and Seiko ColorPainter M64 printers now formally that were sold and serviced by Tubelite.
As an Arlon dealer in the northeast we are also picking up Garsten customers!!
Grimco tried to buy Garsten for years but were declined so they came up with a new sneaky way of doing it by having Tubelite buy Garsten weeks before they bought Tubelite.
 

MNT_Printhead

Working among the Corporate Lizard People
There is no more two day deliveies, and they are using couriers now, so my rolls of banner arrive just as busted as from UPS and take a day longer.

GSG had been doing me right, but I was told my Sales Rep is gone with no explanation (I am guessing they thought he earned too much commission and they thought it would be cool with his customers dealing with a CSR being promoted. I am guessing my Grimco rep was let go, she used to call me at least every 2 weeks, and I had been ordering a lot from her recently.

Our suppliers are full on embracing Enshittiication (google it) and expecting us to tolerate the decline of service they once provided at the same cost.
 
Last edited:

MNT_Printhead

Working among the Corporate Lizard People
Software too
The best RIP support I ever had was with Caldera on Linux, Onyx just makes excuse for their issues, but at least it is stable, doesn't crash like it did for me on Linux AND Mac, and if you know this type of work, you learn the workarounds. I am very pissed with how Onyx has let itself degrade update after update, they don't fix shit and just introduce new features IDGAF about.
 

MelloImagingTechnologies

Many years in the Production Business
I have been installing and fine tuning Onyx over 30 years.
Started with Version 2 and it looked much like Photoshop.
The only times I sold updates was when we sold customers new printers and the older version wouldn’t drive it.
When a new version comes out I won’t install it until it comes out with a .1 or .2 on the new version.
The good thing is as a dealer, our customers know we handle rip problems with Onyx and printers.
We sold many Roland’s and Mimaki printers and always set them up with Onyx Rip so we could support it.
One of the things you need to do is disable Windows Auto Update on your rip pc.
Bruce
 

Notarealsignguy

Arial - it's almost helvetica
The best RIP support I ever had was with Caldera on Linux, Onyx just makes excuse for their issues, but at least it is stable, doesn't crash like it did for me on Linux AND Mac, and if you know this type of work, you learn the workarounds. I am very pissed with how Onyx has let itself degrade update after update, they don't fix shit and just introduce new features IDGAF about.
The RIPs are what I was eluding to. The power users will probably disagree but all of these RIPs seem so clunky and unintuitive. Versaworks was simple, 20 minutes of fooling with it and you got it licked. Rasterlink, despite what some say was almost as simple and as easy to learn as VW but will concede it is a bit more clunky. They all look like they stopped any development in 1992 except for adding a few stupid features. Surely they could simplify these things which would make training new employees on how to use them easier. To me. the learning curve is steep which makes it much more challenging to find capable employees.
 
Top