Author Topic: Reel to Reel Transfers  (Read 3344 times)

Offline Atownsend

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Reel to Reel Transfers
« on: June 08, 2023, 03:37:11 PM »
So I went all YOLO today and picked up one of these machines at the Custom Ink auction (among other things).

https://altenamachines.com/products/p/arm-55-automatic-roll-machine

They had about a dozen similar machines of various makes. By the looks of it they were using them for neck labels. Has anyone used one of these before? It looks like a pretty solid machine for neck labels or small transfers on sleeves. Does anyone have a source for these crazy looking rolls of transfers? Not sure if I can just call up Sthals and order these or if there is a specific place that makes transfers by the roll.

thanks,

-Aaron


Offline blue moon

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Re: Reel to Reel Transfers
« Reply #1 on: June 09, 2023, 09:58:22 AM »
Sorry, dunno anything about those, but am curious what the pricing was like at the auction. How good or bad were the deals?
pj
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Offline zanegun08

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Re: Reel to Reel Transfers
« Reply #2 on: June 09, 2023, 11:39:31 AM »
I'd ask the MFG of who they recommend.

Notice how they show Under Armour and Adidas in their video?  That's because the Roll to Roll transfers have to have the black printed so it can sense how far to rotate the reel before stopping.

Custom Ink provides to their sub contractors labels on rolls or individually cut made by http://unimarkusa.com/ but in their instance they are just doing a transfer next to the existing tag, so no need for different size labels.

Hopefully you can find a vendor that can do low minimums but in my experience was hard to justify as the size runs didn't make sense to order rolls, as well as change rolls every few hundred pieces negates the speed increase over just placing a cut transfer by hand and you'd get a better productivity increase by having a dual station heat platen so you are loading while the other is pressing.

Hope you can make it work, where I worked previously the equipment end up just going to storage. 

Or hopefully you have a large customer that can pre-purchase the rolls, and only has limited colors, sizes, country of origins, fabric contents so you can make use of the press.  May still work with just manually placing a transfer too and not using the roll to roll feature.  Or could make it work with DTF if you could get someone who could cut you down rolls to size could be interesting.

What other equipment did you get?

Offline Atownsend

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Re: Reel to Reel Transfers
« Reply #3 on: June 09, 2023, 04:17:54 PM »
I'd ask the MFG of who they recommend.

Notice how they show Under Armour and Adidas in their video?  That's because the Roll to Roll transfers have to have the black printed so it can sense how far to rotate the reel before stopping.

Custom Ink provides to their sub contractors labels on rolls or individually cut made by http://unimarkusa.com/ but in their instance they are just doing a transfer next to the existing tag, so no need for different size labels.

Hopefully you can find a vendor that can do low minimums but in my experience was hard to justify as the size runs didn't make sense to order rolls, as well as change rolls every few hundred pieces negates the speed increase over just placing a cut transfer by hand and you'd get a better productivity increase by having a dual station heat platen so you are loading while the other is pressing.

Hope you can make it work, where I worked previously the equipment end up just going to storage. 

Or hopefully you have a large customer that can pre-purchase the rolls, and only has limited colors, sizes, country of origins, fabric contents so you can make use of the press.  May still work with just manually placing a transfer too and not using the roll to roll feature.  Or could make it work with DTF if you could get someone who could cut you down rolls to size could be interesting.

What other equipment did you get?



Thanks for the reply!! It looks like unmark makes another machine that is very similar, so im sure I could probably order transfers from them. I will also reach out to the manufacturer. It looks like the black dots / lines are there so the prox switch picks up the center mark of the label... smart! Looks like the machine also has a gripper for cut pieces. I haven't picked it up yet and it was a web auction so I really have no idea what the hell I just bought. For 1,000 bucks ill give it a shot. Seems like it could be a cool way to do some of this stuff.

We do have a dual transfer press and that has been a game changer. Got it on ali express... took 3 months and came without a ground wire. Also came with switch that would put it into "auto mode" without any safeties... thats freaking china for you. Added a ground and got rid of the crazy mode switch so an employee doesnt sue me. Great so far haha.

Custom ink had maybe 12 6 color diamondbacks, a ton of manual presses, 5-6 sprint 3000s. Tons of red chili d's. A ton of broken brother GTX's, brown dryers for DTG, 15 or so sketchy looking M&R CTS machines, auto reclaim, 20+ tiny air compressors... apparently they were running each press from a small 13 gallon air compressor smh. It was just wild. Cant for sure, but judging by the equipment, each press op was doing their own screens. Here is a link to he lot https://www.bidspotter.com/en-us/auction-catalogues/bscmy/catalogue-id-bscmy10762.

We picked up about 15 screen racks, a bunch of job carts, and one of the image technology hot boxes that you can roll a screen rack into. Price for us was about 1/2 of what those would cost if we bought the racks from GSF. Hard to get good screen racks without dropping a ton of $$$. The deals were pretty reasonable but some things would get bid up pretty quick. D backs went for 10-12K, Red Chilis 3K+, newman racks got bid up over what we paid for them brand new once you factor in auction fees.

They'd sell some items individually and then in lots of 3-4. things moved pretty quick so you had to be ready to pull the trigger. I'd be pretty skeptical to buy presses, dryers, or serious prepress equipment this way. Fun time, interested to see how the image technologies hot box works out. Looks like a cool unit, just have to figure out how the hell im going to move this crap.