First piece of M&R equipment....well second actually

[bimmridder]

Your entire operation is about to change. Computer to screen, Tri-Loc, and a good press are the beginnings of outstanding production work flow. Look beyond these things though. Look at your entire system. Art, screens, pre press, etc. They all need to be tight. You really don't know what you're in for, but you will be so thankful you've made this investment. It looks like more and more people are seeing the benefits of these, so the support here will grow also. I am happy for you.

[244]

Duane, knowing how many screens you go through a day my advise would be to propose a unit that can image 2up (maybe thats what the 2 in I-Dot 2 means) Brad was skeptical about skipping the film as a QC step but I never really saw that as an issue

How many does he go through? Our three head unit does over 350 screens in 8 hours.

[Zelko-4-EVA]

Duane, knowing how many screens you go through a day my advise would be to propose a unit that can image 2up (maybe thats what the 2 in I-Dot 2 means) Brad was skeptical about skipping the film as a QC step but I never really saw that as an issue

How many does he go through? Our three head unit does over 350 screens in 8 hours.

i print about 500 films per month

im working on calculating the number of screens per day, new jobs and reprints

[Socalfmf]

just remember on reorders take into account time to get film out and file back as well as line up if needed.

[Zelko-4-EVA]

just remember on reorders take into account time to get film out and file back as well as line up if needed.

if they can find the film!

just kidding, our filing system is decent - so many films its collapsing the metal shelving units.  ill have to calculate replacement shelvings into the ROI too...

[bimmridder]

What's film?

[GaryG]

Film is for the not so rich guy's. 
~Not so rich Guy

[alan802]

Maybe one of these days I'll get to join the cool crowd, in the meantime, I'll keep on doing research and reading all the posts here about others' experiences with CTS.

I'm torn on wax versus WB systems.  In a few months maybe there will be enough users here that we can discuss the pros and cons of the actual delivery system and I can make a better decision on which unit to go with when the time is right.

Congrats on your CTS by the way.

[Spreading Ink]

Honestly we probably only go through on average about 70 screens per day on the average day with some days being higher.   So I am sure some are asking why go with the I-Image 3?  Well it's about being prepared for future growth and the overall time involved to prep each screen. 

I don't look at the ROI on this as coming from film per se and we won't be able to totally get rid of film as long as we are printing all overs and some oversize jumbos (that won't work with the i-Image), but time savings alone very well may pay for the machine in either labor reduction or increased capacity and this is where I truly expect to see most of the ROI come from.  Year to date we have spent about 6500 on film and there is no doubt there will be a significant savings there, but I think the real savings will come from areas that aren't readily apparent in a way that I can put numbers to until I have had the machine in production for a little while.

I am already quite impressed with the machine though and from what I have seen so far we were holding some halftones that were in the 1% range that we couldn't hold prior (we were holding between 3-5% before).

Is the I-Image 3 overkill for us at this time - maybe, but at what these machines run and with the growth of our business over the past few years it really seemed like it was worth the extra money to go with this unit rather than the Image 2 which would have been the only other one that was in consideration. 

All of this and the fact that M&R was showing an i-Image 3 in Long Beach at the NBM show that had not been sold yet led us to buy this machine.

Love it already and we really aren't to a point to a point of making full utilization of it yet!

[mk162]

planning for the future? That's crazy talk!!!