"He who marches out of step hears another drum." ~ Ken Kesey
I stretched up 3 sefar panels on Weds and I must say I really like them. I'm crunching the numbers and I have a price in mind where they need to be to make it cost effective to use the panels versus bolt mesh. The shurloc panels were 3 times the cost of a similar bolt mesh and according to my numbers it only makes sense to use panels if they are around 2 times the cost or slightly less. I took the 195/55's up to 40 newtons and then wrote down the tension levels every couple hours to see how well they held initial tension. They all settled in around 33-34 newtons after sitting around for 24 hours. From what I can tell, the corners are a little tighter than shurloc makes theres, and I was nervous getting the sefar panel up to 40 cause the corners were starting to scream.
You'll get a different answer from everyone and everyone is right when you think about it. I've always said you can pay yourself and/or your employees to load your mesh or you can pay shurloc to do it...choice is yours. If you have the time, start with bolt and learn it. Make a system you can train someone else to learn on and do it as well. No time to learn? Employees not going for this? Don't want to learn this junk, just want to print at higher tension? Go with panels. The only thing you give up with panels is control and then some extra cash out of your budget. Stretching a shur-loc on a roller master is deeeluxe, very easy to do and a low rate of failure.Stretching bolt mesh is easy too and, personally, I enjoy doing it.