DSF

Hi all, new to this so please bear with me. I already work from home and will soon find myself working from a garden office with the advantage of working in a bigger area. I want to capitalise on the space and spare time I have by doing some vinyl cutting work, small stuff to start with, wall art, vehicle signage etc. My budget isn't massive but is realistic, I'd be looking at secondhand equipment to start with say Graphtec etc. Now for those that only have a cutter and have to incorporate different colours into a decal they have to overlay different decals in effect to achieve one multi coloured decal. My question is would it be reasonable to invest in a second hand colour printer which will enable you to print off the decal in one go and then get your cutter to cut it out? If so what combination would work? Combination cutter printers are far too expensive for me for the time being!

many thanks ahead. Dickie.

Dickie
If you are looking at a colour printer for vinyls then it would need to be a solvent printer which if you say a printer/cutter is out of budget then a solvent printer on its own may well be out of budget as well. Of course this depends on your budget.

I guess I'm considering about £1,600 all up. Cutter wise thinking along the lines of a new Graphtec CE6000-40 which can be had for about Gb800 or similar priced secondhand cutter plus printer.

if you wish to buy a second hand solvent printer then use your own files to print to test prints, 3 or 4 files should do they dont need to be huge but should have a variety of colour in them this way you can judge the quality, speed and if there are any unusual or unexpected noises. Ask the seller when it was serviced, have the heads been replaced, have they had any problems with the printer and how long they have had it the last thing you want to do is spend a huge chunk of money on a solvent printer for it to breakdown when you get it home which brings me onto my next point shipping. Sometimes shipping can damage the printer and alot of companies wont ship them or will but accept no responsility for the condition they arrive in. Vinyl can be layered if you use clear app tape you should have no problems lining up the image, you could always sub out the printed vinyl stuff until you have enough interest off customers for solvent printing. Would save having an expensive solvent printer sitting around not doing much and using alot of expensive ink in its maintenance cycle

Thanks jonna, many thanks for the advise! Can you or anyone recomend a printer for about 800 quid? Would the cutter need to have an optical eye in order to align itself to the printed media? I'll take note of your recommendation in subbing the printing out though.
Richard

have a look on here http://www.theprintexchange.com/ you may find something you could even look on ebay or search for a repair service they may have one which they have taken in and repaired

personally i think you would be lucky to find a decent one for that price most second hand well used machines start at around £1500 and are wide format from what iv seen when i have done a quick search here is something i have found http://www.granthamsgt.co.uk/used/detai ... ld-as-seen this is £950 + vat and needs new heads just as an example

OK so maybe start off by overlaying to start with and or maybe subbing out when necessary.

I can recommend the Graphtec CE6000 range i have the Graphtec CE6000-60 excellent bit of kit. Started out with a GCC Expert 24 but wish i had gone straight for a better cutter. The Roland BN-20 solvent printer is good but just out of your budget but it is a print cut machine.

can you advise as to what things to look for when looking at a secondhand cutter and printer?