 desay plotter
I have been in business for almost 5 years now mainly doing inddor sign and vehicle work. I have lurked here for several years without posting anything and figured since I am going to start doing some t-shirt work I should probably start helping the forum with my experiences.
When I started I bought a 24" master cutter from desay. They have come down in price so much since 5 years ago. I think I paid $800 for it. I ran the heck out that machine for a full year. I really enjoyed the ability of the machine to cut all the sizes of scrap that are produced while doing business. Yes it was loud and slow, but it got the job done. I mainly use oracal 651 with outdoor jobs getting a higher grade vinyl. That machine ran strong for a more than 1 yr. (1 yr warranty) At that point it started having problems cutting letters straight. It would vary the thickness of the letters. Desay worked with me a little to try to fix it, but in the end it was going to be cheaper to buy a new desay achine than to fix the old one.
At the time of the breakdown I had other more priority $ issues in my business. I looked at several professional machines, but still could not justify the costs so I bought a new 32" machine from Desay. I paid far less for the larger machine than I did for the 24" a year earlier. I really wanted a 48" machine, but at the time space was an issue and I had no real need for the large machine.
That 32" machine has been going strong ever since. I take that back, after two years it started doing the same thing that the 24" machine had been doing. It did it for about 2 weeks and has been fine ever since.
During that 2 week period I figured it was time to buy another machine. This time money was a little better so I decided to go with a name brand. After trying several I ended up with a Graphtec FC7000-75. It's a good machine and has given us few problems. It is soo much quiter and faster than the Desay chinese cutter. It will also do smaller detail.
I bought it at the end of the year through Signwarehouse.com. I called them at the beginning of December and told the sales guy to give me a call at the end of the month with a sharp pencil if he needed to make sales goals. Sure enough, a few days before the last day of the month I got the call with a pretty good deal. I let him stew on it for a few more days and called him on the last business day of the year and asked him to sweeten the deal. He dropped another $500 off the cutter, threw in their best software and almost every image cd they had. Free shipping to boot!
In the end I would recomend the desay machines as long as you are willing to accept that they are like dixie cups- use them for a year or so and throw them away. I was more than happy with mine, esecially for starting a business to get it off the ground. We still use our 32" machine when the Graphtec is busy with jobs. Its shocking how often both machines are running at the same time. | 
