Wanted - Jumbo CMC + boxmaker

[JamesC]

I have a wallmounted mountcutter already and a sheet material cutter.

Quite new to in-house picture framing but being doing large-format printing and canvases for years. Mainly online or for others online so 90% of products need packaging, and a vast array of sizes.

My premises are small and I keep stock to a minimum. Don't want to be buying hundreds of cardboard boxes in 10s of sizes. Telescopic boxes, etc. seem too expensive or flimsy where the fit must be near perfect.

I usually make boxes from strips of cardboard and sheets all made on my sheetcutter. I use a fingernail or screwdriver to score the sheets in the grooves and fould round the strips which make the remaining ends too.

It works really well and get virtually no returns, but I'd quite like to see if a large CMC with interchangeable head such as the Valiani would make boxes too and could save me time as well as a nicer looking, stronger, squarer, box. With the added bonus of expanding the possibilities for mounts and new sales avenues (though my immediate focus only really requires single aperture on standard thickness board and the odd times I've done complex multis the rule and handcutter comes out which I use for jumbo mounts too).

I have heard stories from a framing suppliers delivery driver of £16k CMC machines going for £3k nearly new between businesses (though one hand was snapped off in the deal I think). That's the sort of money I would be willing to risk and I'm just using this forum to see if anybody out there is desperate to offload one (in the North/Midlands hopefully) or can give any advice as to which machines would be best for this job and if it is likely worthwhile doing. My mount volume is quite low at the moment and doesn't justify one alone. I do now employ a 20 years exprienced framer but he's never owned one and doubts it will save much time for boxes either.

I have thought about getting a more basic CNC machine purely for making boxes, but from quick web research at large sizes they don't seem to be much more economical than CMCs and I would like to save the space by not having two machines.

Thanks!

James

www.fruitart.co.uk
www.theframedpicturecompany.co.uk

[Merlin]

James
Your best bet would be to go to the Spring Fair 2010 and look at the CMCs that are being demonstrated.

You say that your premises are small, yet you are looking for a Jumbo CMC. They are not small beasts.
I own a MatPro CMC-ix 120. (for sale). the footprint size is some 63 inches wide x 44 inches deep. Working area is 48 inches x 32 inches.

The Valiani has the optional extra of the M3 Box Making software, yet that would cost iro £1000 extra on top of the CMC.

From my trials, the Valiani is certainly capable of making boxes. NOT with mountboard though. but with E flute corrugated board less than 2mm thick. You do not say what volume of boxes you will be making or how sturdy you want the boxes.

I also think that a £16k machine going for £3k would be a very very rare and lucky find.

Good luck in your hunt.

[Dermot]

I have researched just about every CMC, CAD and Cutter Plotters available in the world, even the box making Cutter Plotter/Creasers machine been produced in China which is quite impressive, unfortunately they have no plans to export it in the near future as they cannot keep up with demand on their home market never mind exporting to a small place like Ireland.

A CMC is as far as I can gather the only way you will get a machine that will make boxes sub 20K and as far as I can gather Valiani are the only CMC maker with dedicated box making software and I do expect that the Valiani machine will be able to handle B fluted board in the not to distant future in fact I cannot see any reason why it cannot do it right now.

The general price range for Cutter Plotters/Creasing Machines for box making is in the order about 25K to 250K depending on what you might need and what size of board you will be working with, which puts Valiani in a very unique position in this market segment.

I have the Valiani CMC ix 150 which will take 60” x 40” board.

If you are in the market Merlin’s (John’s) machine would be great value, he is upgrading to a much faster Valiani which will suit his need much better and you will have the benefit of his ongoing support, John did my training and has been very quick to respond to any queries I have had since.

That said if you want to continue in the well respected traditional way of making custom size boxes by cutting the shape by hand CxD have this very interesting machine for creasing the cardboard cut our for the box http://www.conservation-by-design.co.uk ... easer.html

BTW welcome to the forum

[GUNNAR]

Just a quick note. Gunnar won the FATG Innovation Award in 2007 for their box making and de-bossing TI tool head and software. It’s available for all current machines except the F1 Hybrid. That comes complete with box making software etc at no extra charge.

Over the years CMC manufacturers have come and gone. Twelve or more years ago there was a box making machine manufacturer who decided it was a good idea to try and adapt their machines for mount cutting. Whilst these machines were excellent for box making they didn’t get to grips with the concept of bevel cutting. Few were ever sold. The manufacturer went bust not so long ago. Technical support and spares are still available but at an exorbitant charge. There have been a couple of these and other defunked CMC's floating around in recent years. I would urge anyone looking at buying a very cheap second CMC not to get involved with any brand that is not Wizard, Valiani, Trucut, Zund or Gunnar.

[Dermot]

Is the de-bossing TI tool head suitable for box making with fluted board!!!!!, such as E, B, E, and EB fluted board.

[Steve N]

I cut my packing on the wall cutter like JameC and then use a pizza cutter with a straightedge to do the creasing, takes about 5 minutes to pack up a consignment of mounts ready for dispatch. Does a great job I re-use most of packing from deliveries and there is less waste, I use one strip of cardboard to wrap around one way, turn the pack by 90 degrees and wrap the other strip that way round, ie if the package is 30x40cm I cut one strip at 30cm the other at 40cm, does that make sense

Steve

[GUNNAR]

Is the de-bossing TI tool head suitable for box making with fluted board!!!!!, such as E, B, E, and EB fluted board.

We tend to use A and B flutes, C is very soft and prone to crushing. We also use N flute in yellow or white for smaller decorative boxes. In general the mid density ones are best. Corri Cor for example is quite rigid and the surface paper tends to fracture on the outside of a fold much like mountboard

[JamesC]

Wow thanks to all for so much help. When I say small workshop it's about 1200 square feet plus storage above the offices and toilets to the 4m height. About half of it is dedicated to office, printers, part-time photo studio, reception and display, the other half workshop.

There's room for a jumbo CMC, just. Especially bearing in mind I can probably lose the existing wall mounted cutter and wall mount the cmc. It's not boxes for mounts I'm particularly worried about. 80% of my business is canvas prints and boxing these in a quick, efficient and professional way is my number one concern (but my current method is perhaps acceptable). Also framed prints though because they seem to take even longer to make a suitable box for and vary greatly in size. After using a lot of large bubble wrap folding the box to a nice square shape is also much harder (one reason we cut strips to make the box sides - something square to fold around). Maybe I should start with a strong square box and then fill the void, for which a CMC might be great. I have nice looking websites and I'm trying to keep that experience going for the customer and not disappoint them when their rhombus shaped parcel arrives - the product inside is good. I am only young and have limited budgets within which to work though.

Framing is growing. We just did two huge jumbo sized framed prints about 150 x 120cm all in for courier delivery. These are a regular thing for a trade customer e.g. 20 per year at this size. We could do with a bit more elbow room in the workshop, but these two prints took 1.5 hours to package between two people and large frames typically take up to half an hour each (maybe we overdo it but there's nothing worse than rework caused by a damaged package). Seems unbelievable when you think about the process but it tends to.

I'm considering trying some other things like foam edging for frames to cut down the time and maybe the volume of packaging. An old framer in my town had a £50k Zund CMC but I know went bust still owing most of it, I know because he tried to sell me the business. Don't want to go a similar route - only worthwhile investments, but the cheaper CMC with a dual purpose of better mounts seems like my next logical step.

Spring fair it probably is then now I know the Gunnar and Valiani are the things to look for, my framer has been telling me to go anyway. Might have to be a rental. I've seen Merlins thanks but it's too small to make box nets surely. Thanks again!

[Merlin]

My Valiani will take the Standard Board size. It is the 120 version.
Other option is to go for the 150, which will take the Jumbo boards.

One thing to think about- seriously - is wall mounting your CMC.

In all the time I have dealt with CMC's, this is one aspect that people believe can save space. Until that is. They have actually tried it and find out what a hassle it is, even more so if you should have a slightly bowed mountboard.

If you are handling multi apertures, you will probably need as many arms as an octupus to catch the fall outs. If you do not then they could get trapped in the moving cutting head and completely knacker both the board and the travelling head mechanism. This is easier on a wall mounted cutter where you manually control the speed of the cutting head with one hand and control the fall out with the other. Not so easy on a CMC which is motor controlled and moving at quite a high speed. If you still want to go this route then make sure that the 'emergency stop button' is within easy reach at all times - preferably on the travelling head itself. You will not be able to reach a keyboard and mouse to stop the machine in a timely manner should it all go wrong.

Some manufacturers get around this by having a vacuum bed which holds the board down whilst cutting. But what if you want to cut a double or even a triple mount as a stacked operation. The vacuum system does not hold the 2nd or 3rd layer of the board. Plus the bed/table is deeper to hold the vacuum system.

IMHO the best position for any CMC bed is horizontal or at the most 30 degrees.

I hope this will raise some discussion from other CMC users as well.

[Jonny2morsos]

We thought about vertical positioning of our Valiani but were put off by having to be there catching the drop outs. So we went for the conventional system with the angled (not sure how many degrees) stand. With this arrangement one board can be cutting while we prepare the next.

This works most the time except for those funny days when there has been a humidity change and the boards all bow a little.

[JamesC]

Thanks for the insights on wall mounting.

I got some foam cushion edging from rajapack 20mm thick on sample (the blue stuff for furniture) and this may be the way forward for framed prints. It works out 30-40p a metre I think in volume which may seem a lot for price led online sales, but If I don't have to go 4 times or more round the large prints with large bubble wrap it's probably going to work out saving me money with card and time (we were making special corners from bubble wrap too). I use high quality acrylic in the frames so as long as the edges are protected and I use good grade cardboard, puncture resistant, I should'nt need to keep wrapping things in rakes of bubble. To be honest the edging will create a nice air gap between the frame and any packaging in the centre which may mean fewer punctures or knocks are likely to press on the glazing - as is the worry even with heavily bubbled frames.

Maybe all in all the CMC won't prove worthwhile just yet and it would leave my tight for space though I know if I took the old mountcutter down I would have just about enough room for one still, maybe a few more shelves would be needed. Would undoubtedly help make nice boxes. I'm better informed now if my mountcutting demand suddenly increases. I would still risk a few grand if I learnt of an old suitable machine going for a song.

I always steered away from the foam edging for canvases because I was worried about indenting the face of the print. Also it's easy to make cardboard edge strips for canvas as they are all the same depth (usually the strips come from what would be waste so this continues to be my best option there).

As an aside I just got the Arqadia price list for 2010 and notice the 2mm acrylic in jumbo has gone up to nearly £26 quid a sheet now! Managed to get a discount before of 20% for 20 sheets or more but that only takes it close to last years full price.

Does anybody have a recommended supplier for 2mm clear acrylic? Reliable, unscratched, speck free, etc. I buy in quantities of 10 - 20 jumbo sheets preferably - not huge I know but helps cashflow. Target price £15 a sheet or less. I use glass for local work/collections but acrylic looks the same and better for courier, or public display.

[Vix]

Hi James

I have been reading the posts about purchasing a large format cmc / box maker. Unless you have a huge demand/turnover of boxes I feel you would not really be gaining anything and it would more than likely work out more expensive to produce them than you think. Raw materials ie. cardboard has recently had increases of over 9% in cost and of course on every box you manufacture you also have to take into consideration the amount of waste produced, the depreciation on the machine, the raw material costs, labour, running costs etc etc. I think that if you sat down and worked out the true figures you would probably find that it would be more cost effective for you to have boxes actually manufactured by a business already set up to do this job. Obviously these are just my observations, but boxes are something I know quite a bit about.

Vix

[JamesC]

Thanks,

I understand your point but set-up costs on box making machines I feel might kill the job and my sizes and depths of frame are so varied (I offer 27,000 pre-published prints with 30 different frames online + 20 or more canvas sizes). Then I have to store the boxes, find the right size one each time, predict demand for each size, re-order, etc. Small boxes are easy to buy I know but ones big enough and shaped for frames are hard to come by in small economical volumes. So often they arrive crumpled and damaged too which defeats the object.

If I got really adept with a CMC I envisaged beign able to adjust the length, depth and height really quickly to order. Especially if I make straight sides and sleeves on the CMC rather than traditional nets, I can cut down waste and get them perfectly square. With some care I could probably make nets where no board is wasted (with long tabs that fold inside the box to add more strength.

Don't forget I had the added bonus of a better mountcutter in the bargain.

I conversely think if I had huge demand for boxes at the same approximate size having them made outsourced would be better but I'm not there yet. If I had a huge demand I could also afford more storage space and neat racking. If I get a really old machine at a great price depreciation is not going to worry me too much either (which was my original hope).

Not trying to be argumentative here and you have made me think of a few new areas but I think long ago I realised many of the pitfalls/my own practical limitations or else I would be having them made by now (I reseacrhed the box market about 4 years ago before deciding making my own from sheets was the best idea).

Thanks again for your help.