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Hey, those are nice! Good use of your brain and your materials! You are a smart art fart!

So you didn't get Sawgrass ink for the Ricoh? Did you get CMYK-4 colors? So glad you found a solution! : )

I used to have racks of garments - which took up about 500 square feet in my shop. However, my current shop is much smaller than my previous shop. No room for those racks! So I no longer keep the inventory I used to keep, only a couple boxes of basic hoodies for my biggest Customer. That Customer is a Construction Company, and they request a lot of hoodies in Safety Orange, Safety Yellow, Black and Royal Blue. So, those are the colors I keep in stock. Again, just basic hoodies, Construction Worker sizes! (L, XL, XXL)

Yes, pics please! Sounds like a fun venture!

Great job!

Oh, thanks for explaining that. Yes, I have seen the marks that the Roland plotters use. The Summa has square registration marks. They are applied all along the left and the right sides of the print, and another set about every 12 inches. Works pretty well. The machine lines up all the marks through the entire piece before the cutting begins. Very precise. Also, with the Summa I picked, I liked the 30" option. It is just a good size for me. I didn't want a to be limited to 24" and many of the rolls of materials I use are 30" for printable/adhesive backed. Again, just made sense. If I need a roll of 30" material in a hurry and find my suppliers do not have it in stock, I can get a 54" roll and have it slit to (2) rolls measuring 30" and 24" - both sizes I can use. Have had to do that a few times already!

Dakota, Sorry, just saw your message. I think you were asking me why not a Roland? Well, that was one of the ones I considered, but I have a close relative who worked at a large Aircraft Co. who told me they were using Latex printed wallpapers on the interiors of the airplanes. Much of the work I was doing had to do with the Aerospace Industry, so it made sense to get a large format printer that was approved by this Aircraft Company! However, I ended up not doing wallpapers for them in the end. Decided that I didn't like the way they always chipped away at my profit by wanting cheap prices, and that they had a habit of always rushing me at the same time, which made it not such a desirable prospect for me. To be rushed and underpaid, no thanks! Sometimes I do question my decision, wonder if I should have went with the Roland instead. But there is no looking back now!

JBurns and Wildgoos, thank you for your comments. Yeah, I think it's a great cutter! The USCutter model machines I have used got me through a lot of jobs, but I could never do the contour cuts around my printed graphics. I had to sub out that stuff, which was not cost effective for me and I was at the mercy of another shop as far as their timeline went. I did have to justify the expense with a buying Customer, otherwise I would not have made the investment. I think to my big advantage, Summa is within driving distance to me.So I am pretty lucky in that regard. Thanks for the support!

Side note"Wildgoose" has the D75R Cutter, I have the D75 Cutter. I believe these are the same cutter? From what I could find available online, the "R" in D75R stands for "Refined" and it appears they started using that description about 2007. "Refined" means the cutter includes the OPOS x technology. I have the OPOS on my cutter, but they have since dropped the "R" from the model description. Looks like the same cutter to me. Just mentioning this to help anyone who might be making the same comparison that I was making, as I had considered purchasing a used machine as well. In the end, I had to buy a new one due to the Emergency situation I was in... broken down cad cut machine. I just had to replace it to stick to my deadline for my Customer. Only wish I was able to purchase the Summa earlier, it sure would have saved me a lot of time messing around!

To Wildgoose and all those here who have shared their knowledge about Summacutters, I went ahead and bought one a few days ago!!! My MH721 cutter gave up the ghost, and although I did have a backup cutter (same one)... I decided to just bite the bullet and get a new Summa! So, I chose the Summacut D75. I called Summa to see if they had one in stock, and they did. Asked them to hold for me because I was coming down to buy it. So I drove down there and bought it minutes before they closed for the day. We packed it into my car and drove it back to my shop. We set it up that evening and loaded up the software to my computer. In the morning, we called Tech Support at Summa and they walked me through the first sample cut over the phone. That same morning, I was able to begin doing very close tolerance contour cuts on a very large order of car decals printed off on my HP Latex printer. The decals were also laminated. We did a kiss cut and most of the sheets were about 5' long on 30" wide material. There were absolutely no issues with registration and the job turned out fantastic! We were applying decals to vehicles early the following morning. Job done! Happy Customers! I now have about 6 dozen more vehicles to do for the same Customer! Yay! Thank you all!

Thanks David!

Good question! I have a Cameo too and want to know the same. Did you ever find anything that would work David?

cool beans, i mean lights!

Cardudenc, Yeah trying a few samples first is a great way to find out what works or doesn't work. Takes more time to try them first, but in the long run, it's best because then you know (usually) what your results will be. I got such a range of materials in when I ordered samples for paint mask. Was a bit shocked at how some of them didn't stick at all to vehicles, but were recommended to me by Companies selling them. To me, some of them were more suitable as a frisket film for airbrushing on more porous materials, not for vehicles at all. I think for me, the most important factor about how the stencils were going to be used by my Customer who painted aircraft and vehicles, was finding a stencil that could survive the baking process the paint had to undergo.

Wildgoose, You know, I did read your posts and that was encouraging for me. So thank you for that. I'm glad you chimed in here too, just exactly what I needed to hear. I am so glad to have my L25500 paid off, so I can actually look at a decent cutter now. Good equipment/tools are my goal. But hey, you have to start somewhere! I'm really glad to hear that you feel the D75 and the D120 have the quality I'm looking for. I really don't need to cut anything thicker, like you mentioned. But if I do, I have a friend that has a 25 foot long tangiential flatbed cutter, over 10 years ago I ran that machine for her,making patterns and cutting huge Sunbrella fabric patterns. It will also cut vinyl and other thicker materials. So I do have the ability to do heavier work without purchasing the equipment. Her shop is a few miles from mine and we help eachother out quite a bit. I'll keep you updated on my decision to buy the Summa. Here is some information that may help U.S. Cutter about HP Latex and the Summa cutters... My Salesperson did tell me that he thought the HP Latex Printer was the best printer I could get to work with their cutters! I told him I did want to explore the possibility of getting one machine that will do it all and was thinking about their Thermal Cutters. Before he realized I already had an HP Latex, he did start to tell me about the Summa Thermal machines with cutting ability. Then when he knew what printer I had, he recommended I stick with it (since it's better than what he could offer me at Summa) and told me it would be best to just go for a Summacut, the largest one I could afford. But I don't want the largest, I'm only going to do door vehicles, not entire wraps. : ) Too easy to get tangled up in wrap material! Trust me, I've done it. Then when you get somebody helping you (and when you are a woman there is always someone standing around) who thinks they need to help you and then you are really tangled up because someone standing around doesn't always know how easy it is to get stuck! The stuff is like fly paper, LOL. I think smaller door decals are safer and easier for me since I work alone most of the time.