What’s it cost to produce these ten 18-by-24 site signs?

Often we have a client who wants a short run of site signs. We do them using the method you see here, particularly if a customer wants full-color. It’s fast and efficient.

These ten jobsite signs were printed on Avery intermediate film with air egress adhesive on our Roland VersaCAMM SP-540i printer, and applied to 4mm corrugated plastic sheeting. After it comes off the printer, we use our RollsRoller flatbed applicator to apply the film to the substrate.

For signs like these that are considered temporary, we’ll print then immediately mount to the substrate. If it’s a more permanent sign, we’ll use high performance film then add an extra step to laminate a UV stable clear film to the print. And we use the RollsRoller for that as well.

We had previously designed the logo for this client, so the design work was already done. We just sized the signs, added a phone number and a gradient to the background for a little extra interest. Then we ganged 10 of them up.

Once it comes off the printer, all that’s left is the application and cutting the signs to size. Efficiency is the key to making projects like this one profitable. By ganging before printing, then applying the print with the RollsRoller, we save a lot of time and material.

We’ve monitored our times for different jobs, and on a 4-by-8 sheet if we’re printing at a middle-of-the road resolution, it takes about 24 minutes to print. To laminate or apply takes about four minutes for each step for one person working at a normal pace. With two people you could probably do it a little quicker. But the beauty of the RollsRoller is that it enables one person to apply film or laminate to 4-by-8s or 4-by-10s with no wrinkles and no waste.

You might notice green masking tape on the table surface—we lifted the mat and added that. The roller stops before it gets all the way to the end, so there’s a dead space that we marked in order to avoid future mistakes. The tape on the side marks where a 4-by-8-ft. sheet is centered when aligned with the tape. The boards must be centered on the table to get your print to lay down straight.

When we first saw the RollsRoller at a trade show, we couldn’t believe how efficiently inexperienced users could operate it with just the most basic instruction. That’s what convinced me. There are about five of us here, which isn’t a big shop, so we have to be extremely efficient in order to be profitable.

I did some analysis to see how much labor I was wasting by using two people to apply prints like these, taking into consideration that some prints have to get thrown away and re-printed because of a wrinkle or other flaw. The RollsRoller saves us time and material, and I could see that in the long run the machine would pay for itself, and it has. It’s saved us time, and helps us to lay prints down easily, quickly and accurately.

Ray Sauder’s shop, Raynbow Signs, is in Teviotdale, Ontario, Canada.

Design and prepare to print: 20 minutes. We used the logo we had designed, added the phone number and a gradient to the background. We ganged them up two across and five up and down, then hit Print.

Produce the 4-by-8-ft. print: 24 minutes.

Apply the print: 4 minutes. On a 4-by-8, we start in the center and apply it half at a time to avoid any distortion. The table on our RollsRoller is lighted from below, which is a nice feature. The lights really make it nice when you’re laying down multiple colors on a backlit face.

Cut to size: 10 minutes at the most. A few slices on the Fletcher substrate cutter, and there you have it: ten full-color jobsite signs!

This article appeared in the March/April 2014 issue of SignCraft. While the prices have been adjusted for inflation as of 2025, they may not accurately reflect current pricing for such signage.

Ray Sauder