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[cbsuperduty]

I see that the Bengal is a servo motor with good cutting force. Just curious if anybody has experience with both and could share. I would like to upgrade again sometime in the next year or so and would like this to be my last cutter for a while. I know that the graphtec is good at small cuts but what about the gcc?

Is servo a lot quieter?

[roxanneupnorth]

I have a Cut-3000 (AKA GCC Bengal) and it works just fine...Much quieter than a stepper motor driven plotter....But I think it would be better to compare a GCC Puma III to a Graphtec CE-5000-60...

Not sure if you need contour cut, but the Bengal does not have it...A Puma III is about 1400.00 with stand and a Bengal is about 900.00 with no stand...Also, I get the feeling that the Bengal is being phased out in favour of the GCC Expert Pro...

Another option is a Zencut Black which is also GCC based but does not come with Great Cut software...That would be the deal breaker for me...

[cbsuperduty]

Why do you say that it compares to the Puma? I didn't think that all Graphtec's had an eye.

[roxanneupnorth]

No idea what an eye is or what it does.....But both the CE5000-60 and Puma III do contour cutting and are about the same price...GCC has been making private label plotters for many years so their name is not as familiar as Graphtec...

[charles95405]

an optic eye is what enables the cutter to do contour cutting by 'reading' registration marks on an printer transfer..useful when you are doing a transfer for darks and have to trim around the image

[cbsuperduty]

I guess that I was mis-informed I though not all Graphtec's had the system to contour cut.

[heatpressvinyl]

I have a Cut-3000 (AKA GCC Bengal) and it works just fine...Much quieter than a stepper motor driven plotter....But I think it would be better to compare a GCC Puma III to a Graphtec CE-5000-60...

Not sure if you need contour cut, but the Bengal does not have it...A Puma III is about 1400.00 with stand and a Bengal is about 900.00 with no stand...Also, I get the feeling that the Bengal is being phased out in favour of the GCC Expert Pro...

Another option is a Zencut Black which is also GCC based but does not come with Great Cut software...That would be the deal breaker for me...

I have not heard the expert pro is replacing the Bengal and I doubt if it will,, the Expert pro is just a Puma II, it is basically the Puma III without a optical eye,, comes with a stand and has only a one year warranty.

The Puma III as it stands now with a stand is $1340.00, this is because they replaced the Puma stand with a universal stand that fits several models and is a lot less money than the original Puma stand.

The Zencut is a spec GCC,, in other words they had them built and had them built with less expensive parts in areas so they could get the price down,, at least with GCC you always have factory supplied service and parts available.

Spec wise the Puma III has better specs then the Graphtec,, They are both great machines.... If I were to purchase my last machine it would be the Jaguar IV,, just blows them all away.

[charles95405]

Echo Roger's comment... I have a Puma III and a Jaguar IV...and the Jaguar is quieter/faster and more robust

[cbsuperduty]

Thanks for the incite all. I will look into the Puma too. I just like to keep advancing my stuff but I only want stuff that can/will pay for itself.