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Using die-cut letters, it takes a half hour to make a double-sided road name sign. This time will vary depending on the length of the legend on the sign. Using TAPCO’s software and plotter, a sign can be fabricated within 7-10 minutes (both sides) at a labor cost of approximately $3.33/sign, 1/3 of the cost we are currently paying for road name signs we are making in-house.With TAPCO’s software and plotter we are now able to produce six road name signs per hour instead of just two per hour. That’s producing three times the amount of signs we used to be able to produce in the same amount of time.

We are averaging two orders per year for cut-out letters at approximately $500.00/order. At this rate, we will save $1,000 per year with TAPCO’s software and plotter because all the different styles and sizes of letters we purchase are included with the software package.

We took materials price quotes needed to make road signs with high-intensity grade sheeting. The quotes were as follows:

• 15" x 50 yards – white high-intensity sheeting @ $832.50
• 15" x 50 yards – green engineer grade overlay film @ $288.00
• .080 gauge aluminum sign blank @ $1.47/sq. f

With these quotes I calculated the cost of making high-intensity road name signs in-house using TAPCO’s software and plotter and compared them to the prices of high-intensity road signs purchased from an outside source. The results show that using the TAPCO software in-house saves 34-37% off the cost of purchasing the signs from an outside source. With the money saved from the reduction in man hours and the savings from not having to purchase die cut letters, the software would pay for itself in a year’s time.