Hello theCount,
I bought the US equivalent of the Summa cutter you are evaluating a few months ago. The model I have is the Summacut D75-R and I'm very pleased! I use 36 degree blades for most heat applied materials, decal & sign vinyl. I use the 60 deg blade for material such as Flock. I only use Summa OEM knives and will not use anything else.
My D75-R can cut 30.7 inches wide, up to 30 mils in thickness and can also perform contour cuts. The Summacut model you are considering can perform contour cuts also, will cut up to 24.8 inches wide and accepts media up to 26 inches wide. The knives for the Summa work just as great as the knives for Roland (see more
here).
I opted for Summa because of the overall feature set, speed & power, the metal build quality and praise it's received from other Summa users. I did not mind paying slightly more because I got a high quality product with a standard 2 year parts & labor warranty and 90-day replacement. The only thing that shipped with my cutter I did not like was the plug-in software. I use it, but want something more robust. I've tried SignCut-X2 which works well and now considering a Flexi Mac product.
I purchased directly from Summa and get my support directly from them as well. There is a special tech that has partnered with me from Summa who is extremely knowledgeable & customer-service driven. I am excited to actually meet my Summa salesperson in about 3 weeks at SGIA Atlanta who took care of me with my purchase. At SGIA, I will also evaluate the Summa thermal printer-cutter-in-one models as a potential future upgrade.
The Roland is a popular product and does well for many. I'm even going to throw in the often talked about Graphtec CE5000 which falls between the GX24 and Summacut-R D60. However, if you're truly seeking flexibility, top speed and gram/force power in a starter cutter, the Summacut-R will provide you that.
The differences you mentioned are not common for what I believe most people are looking for in a cutter. But, to touch on two of them: Both the Roland GX24 and Summacut-R can perform contour cuts with ease. I have cut tiny, and I mean tiny letters and numbers on my Summa perfectly with the 36 deg & 60 deg blades. The details of the cuts were great so there should be no worries about this. I'm not sure about small cuts with Roland blades.
The Summacut-R and Roland GX24
is not a true apples-to-apples comparison actually. See specs of both below, noting the features in red that many people look for in cutters.
Good luck with your decision and purchase!
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Summacut-R D60
SPEED
Up to 1131 mm/sec (
44 in./sec) diagonal
ACCELERATION
Up to 3 g diagonal
KNIFE PRESSURE
0-
400 grams, in 5-gram increments
RESOLUTION
0.025 mm, 0.1 mm selectable (Metric)
0.001 in., 0.005 in. selectable (English)
REPEATABILITY
Within +/- 0.1 mm (0.004 in.) on plots:
up to 8 m (26 ft.) long on rolls up to 760 mm (30 in.) wide; up to 4 m (13 ft.) long on rolls over 760 mm (30 in.) wide
TOOL COMPATIBILITY
Standard D-Series knife for vinyl, reflective and fluorescent films
Thick material D-Series knife for sandblast resist and other thick films
Pen for plotting on paper
Pounce tool (optional) for pouncing on paper
MEDIA WIDTH
Roll: 7 to 67 cm (2.8 to
26.4 in.)
Sheet: 7 to 67 cm (2.8 to
26.4 in.)
MEDIA LENGTH
50 m (
164 ft.) maximum
MEDIA THICKNESS
Up to 0.25 mm (0.01 in.) with standard knife
up to 0.8 mm (0.03 in.) with thick material knife
CUTTING AREA
63 cm x 50 m (
24.8 in. x 164 ft.)
MEMORY
16 MB
INTERFACE
USB 1.1 and Serial RS-232C
LANGUAGES
Summa DM/PL, HP-GL or HP-GL2 (with selectable origin HP7475 and HP 7580/7585)
OPOS X optical alignment system - The world’s most advanced optical sensor comes to the SummaCut-R. OPOS X features a more advanced optical scanner that’s capable of reading registration marks on an even wider range of output.
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Roland CAMM-1 Servo GX-24
Acceptable media width
2” to 27.5” (50 to 700mm)
Maximum cutting area
Width: 22.9” (584mm); Length: 984” (82 ft) or (25m)
Acceptable tool
Special blade for CAMM-1 series
Cutting speed
4 to 20ips (10 to 500mm/sec)
Blade force
30 to 250gf
Mechanical resolution
0.000492” (0.0125mm)
Software resolution
0.000984” (0.025mm)
Distance accuracy(1)
Error of less than +/- 0.2% of distance traveled, or +/- 0.004” (+/- 0.1mm), whichever is greater
Repetition accuracy (1)(2)
+/- 0.004” (+/- 0.1mm) or less
Interface
USB interface (compliant with Universal Serial Bus Specification Revision 1.1)
Re-plot memory
800KByte
Optical Registration: Recognizes crop marks produced by a variety of print-only devices and automatically aligns media so that printed graphics can be accurately contour cut.
