mac6986

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Posts posted by mac6986

  1. Posted

    ebay is starting to get frustrating... not just selling wise but now there is too much BS with them... wish there was another site that had their traffic.... its all money money for them and more headaches & fees for sellers... i like how when they were hacked, it took how many days for them to send out an email.... also seems like when i do decals auction style... about 25-30 percent dont pay and u cant even leave negative feedback on... but some buyers leave negative feedback too easily.... i had one guy put a hold on the paypal transaction cause he didnt have the decal right away... it was the 3rd day and was in the mail to him when he did it..

    But what you can do is set up your unpaid item reminders to be sent automatically. Mine go out 24 hours after they click buy now. if they don't pay within 5 days of that, they get an unpaid item strike on their account, and I get my selling fees back. I also have my store set up so that if you have ANY unpaid item strikes, you cant buy from me. I've had a few disgruntled customers message me, but I just say "If you can't pay when you purchase, why are you even shopping?" Nobody has a good answer for that, lol.

     

    I personally don't make the customer pay immediately because then they cant combine their purchases in my store to get free shipping after buying 2 or more items.

  2. Posted

    First he had me design based off his business card, thenafter doing that he changed his mind and wanted the same design he had done on his truck a few years ago so had to go off a shitty pic he sent me. So have about 2 hours into design time. 1 hour drive time. figure to cut, weed , tape, install 2.5 -3 hours so figure roughly about 6 hours all said. I was asking about vinyl prices more out of curiosity than anything. Emailed 2 shops that are over an hour away and they were $350-$380 with good vector artwork to work with.
    Extra work (creating 2 designs from scratch using crappy pictures) = higher price. I'd be in the $500 range especially if I had to wash the guys trailer on a job site.

    Consider what the other shops said. Almost 400 with basically cut-ready artwork. Are you going to give away the two hours you spent sitting at the computer designing for free?

    • Like 1

  3. Posted

    We'll your first problem is, you're buying vinyl from staples.

    Cost of material is always relative to the price of the finished product.

    Quality materials = quality product = premium price

  4. Posted

    It's actually a double-edged sword,

    The math and calculations in this setup is for a one man operation. The second you add employees, your billable hours multiplies by the number of employees you have. When your billable hours increase, your shop rate decreases. So some of the bigger companies can task it to one of the shop hands and can be comparable to any home based business, while completing other jobs at the same time. That is to say if the home based business isn't slashing their prices and de-valuing their work and the industry just to make barely over the cost of material.

    I always tell the customer that you get what you pay for. I get this in my shop at least twice a week " I know a guy who does this on the side, and you are more expensive than him" mind you they say this while standing in front of about $20k worth of equipment asking why mine is more expensive. My reply to this is always the same: "I'm sure you do, anyone with a computer can do this now-a-days. But is he using the right materials? If something goes wrong, will his insurance pay for damages? Will he guarantee his work for any length of time? Will he even install it?" After asking these questions and the customer looks at you with a blank stare, that's when I say " Thats why mine is more expensive." I'm not knocking the home based market, I'm just saying there are A LOT of hacks out there looking to make a quick buck and don't care about quality.

    • Like 2

  5. Posted

    I know this is a long shot, but does anyone happen to have or know someone who has a GX-300 that doesn't need or want their stand? I'm willing to pay for it. I got mine used and the previous owner cut down the original stand and used it for a table mount.

     

    I already tried to buy one through Roland directly, and they say that they only come with the new units and they don't have any extras.

     

  6. Posted

    Good, I'm glad its not just me. one major annoyance is that it wont pull the sheet size from the driver presets anymore. Especially when you had all your presets ready to go for everything you print, and now every time you print, you have to manually re-select everything.  :angry:    Ill be rolling back this driver.

  8. Posted

    I have had no experience with this company in particular, I use JPS or Conde and that's it.

    Just be weary of switching vendors you don't know anything about. Some vendors use the cheaper mugs with low quality coatings. A good idea with the mugs is to buy a sample mug, press an image with lots of color, and run it through the dishwasher 10-20 times. I thought about switching vendors last month, got a few sample products and used them for myself to test their durability. Cheap usually means lower quality. The phone cases, the coating chipped off along with the image, the mugs images ran like an inkjet image on a wet piece of paper, and the coasters warped even after putting weights on them out of the press so they would cool down flat.

    Test before you offer a product for sale.

    • Like 2

  15. Posted

    Why must you tempt me...

     

    imagine being able to do full color HTM . . . . oh the possibilities!

     

    im tempting you because i just moved up to the next step and bought a VS300i. no room for 2 printers in my shop. . .  yet . . . .

     

    and for a print sample, I just ran these off this morning

     

    10397211_230211777189329_524596431893650

    • Like 1

  16. Posted

    Majority are 24"x10yard rolls, wire rack was pulling away from wall, bought some small angle brackets from homedepot, smashed them into flat brackets and screwed into studs.

     

    Easy to hang stuff on the wall not so easy to create more floor space.

     

    I wouldn't leave that 50 yd roll on there much longer, looks like its already bending the wire. next thing you know, your buying a new computer monitor that the 30 lb roll just used as a trampoline.

  19. Posted

    If you are applying graphics to low energy plastics i.e. dirt bike fenders & go kart pannels, regular vinyl will not bond well at all. the plastic is smooth to a microscopic level so much so, that the regular glue on any standard sign vinyl can't "bite" into the surface.

     

    You need to use specific low-energy glue viny. Hexis VCR is an awesome product for that, but as far as I know it only comes in printable white.

  21. Posted

    Yes there is.....

    After nesting you can still change the position and mirror, rotate or resize each

    job, or you can ask VersaWorks to automatically rearrange jobs using the most 

     

    mark-s

     

    I read it as he is basically trying to take, for an example, a 4" x 4" circle and turn it into a 4" x 8" oval. Versaworks allows you to re-size in the program, but it will always maintain its original proportions from the saved file.

     

    so if you entered 8" in the width box under sizing, it will automatically scale the image and the height will change accordingly, in this case, it would scale it to an 8" x 8" circle.

     

    Is there a way to manually change the size of a job in versa works without it being proportional? For example, if I have something that measures 12x12...... but want to change it to 12x13...... is there a way to do that?? Thanks

  25. Posted

    Also, both of those printers you're looking at are dye/pigment combo (pigment ink for black, dye ink for CYM). So, the colors not UV protected and will fade quickly in the sun. At this point, you're better off saving your money and outsourcing your print jobs. Please also understand the cost of operating a printer before buying one.

    +1

     

    Although I would love to be able to sell my printer to you, make sure you know what you're getting into before you make a purchase, and then find out you cant afford to run it yet.

     

    Ink isnt cheap. to replace an entire set of CMYK carts on a roland printer is about $280.00. Then there is lamination. the eco-sol inks have some UV inhibitors in them and will last a year or two, but to get the full life out of a printed graphic, you need to laminate. Some do it with a B.S. but nothing beats an adjustable auto crank or hand crank laminator. The expenses add up quick in the print world.

    • Like 1