NE1 have a DC4 and an Inkjet?

[ChiknNutz]

I'm curious if anyone has BOTH of these printers and what you primarily do with each. I've always been intrigued by the Summa thermals, but just didn't like some of the downfalls of the DC3. The DC4sx, primarily, has me really thinking about this more. I don't really turn much work away that calls for printing on clear (which the thermals shine at doing), but I'm wondering about entering into other markets with one that I currently am not in. TIA...

 

[PGSigns]

Chris
I have the DC4SX and still farm a few things out to be printed on an inkjet. There is a differant market for the thermal, But it was the market I was in so it works good for me. As far as the clear goes the 3M clear from Summa prints very nicily but I don't like the adheasive they use. It is not optically clear. It is not bad but not as good as other clear on the market. I have talked to the folks at Summa about going back to a clear they used to offer that was listed as optically clear. Sosome of my stuff still gets outsourced and printed on perferated. For smaller and midrange decals the have to hold up out doors it is great, as soon as they come off the printer they are ready to go.
Jimmy

 

[ChiknNutz]

Are you using the supplied RIP, Colorprint? I've heard it works good, but it also doesn't have the ability to do multiple copies of an image, so you have to set that up in your design program. For my 540, SoftRip has a lot of good features for doing that. So what do YOU do when you need to do a large run of small decals, like a few thousand? Seems like a PITA to set that up by hand in Corel or whatever.

 

[PGSigns]

The rip does do a good job and there are options for tiling and doing multable copies. One of the things I have done is set up the sheet with the way I want multable items layed out and then tell it in the rip how many copies I want. When doing large numbers of small decals I print enough to fill 5 ot 6 feet of media and let it contour cut that batch to ensure it is dead on and then repeat the job right from the front of the printer.
Jimmy