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screen printing => General Screen Printing => Topic started by: Get Shirts on April 24, 2016, 08:49:44 PM
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We're in the middle of a large-ish job (8k), 4 color / 2 sides.. And I started thinking about how grateful I am that I have my autos, how amazing technology is, yadda yadda.. And then I thought, how long would this take me on a manual? A month? Probably.
At this point you couldn't pay me enough to do such a thing, but there was a time that I probably would have.
What's the largest job you guys ever printed manually? I think I maxed out at 300 before I ended the insanity.
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I did 1000 pcs once one sided 2 colors...never again, well if I get my gauntlet fixed never again lol.
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4350 here 5 colors 1 side. I ordered an auto in the middle of that job. Never again.
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1000, 2 sides, 3 colors each side. That is when we decided to buy an auto.
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We are a manual shop. Last year we printed 1,000 navy shirts with a 4 color front and 6 color back. I think that took about 4 days with 2 people on press.
We've done larger orders than that, but not as many colors. We always team print with at least 2-3 guys on press and can actually bang through orders pretty quick for a manual situation.
But we are way overdue for an auto and have been planning to get one for a while now, along with a larger dryer and the rest of the peripherals. But we first need to find a larger facility to accommodate the expansion... and finding that has been tough.
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Way back we printed like 3200 shirts on a 4/4 manual and you better believe I felt it all after we where done, I told my wife another job like this and it gets farmed out to an auto shop, glad to have our own auto and I still hate large jobs like that ;D
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1000 pieces. 5 colors. 2 sides. 7 days. Never again. Auto is on the purchase list.
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Doug, how many flashes did those 4350 pieces require?
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Doug, how many flashes did those 4350 pieces require?
I was lucky in 1 respect that they were white shirts with 4 cp and 1 spot black at the bottom but it still about killed me.
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I remember YEARS ago we did some bicycling caps for RAGBRAI, 5 color print, three locations, 3 or four thousand pieces.Ugh
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We did 1500 in a day before 1 color ink single sided on a sport grey shirt, was a long day though. That was 2 people and we were in a basement at the time so we were dragging 4-5 boxes down print them take 4-5 up. Repeat.
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we went auto very early... the most we have ever printed manually was 250 1 color in a day.
I'm always impressed by manual printers that do 1000's of prints.
But very thankful and happy that we automated early on.
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2100 in February. 2/2 with a flash between colors (white-print/flash/print/flash, then golden yellow). I've done this job for the last 7 or 8 years, although it was around 1700 before this year. I had access to an auto in Daytona, but to trade out my time and the driving made it not really any better. Last time I'm doing it, though.
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9000 2 color fronts, over a weekend with 2 manuals, one of them an original Harco joke machine...
Steve
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1300 - 5 color front - 3 color back - 1 color left sleeve - 1 color right sleeve - White shirts though. 2 people, we did both sleeves at same time..pretty muched sucked..
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Just thought of another job we did manual, we did about 1000 koozie's 1 color 1 side and we bought those pocket pallets which made the job so easy and still use them today.
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right after my dad started he ran a 25,000 pc order that I think was 2 colors manually. He didn't have enough money to order all the shirts at one time so he'd print 5k, get a check and print the next batch. Heck, we were garage at that point so I don't even know how we moved that many shirts through the house.
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700 one color front and back on whites is my largest and was one of my first real jobs too. I do orders of 250ish frequently with all kinds of color counts and locations. Largest recent job I did in house was 400 pieces.
I would love to automate, and keep looking for a deal on one where everything syncs up, but haven't come across that yet. I also know for a fact that my current space would end up causing headaches with an auto related to how much power I have etc. Would love to move into a bigger and better space, but I have a fantastic deal on my current location, and Austin commercial space is absurdly expensive right now. Even shitty spaces 40 minutes outside of town are renting at over $1 a square foot right now...
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We are still a manual shop but hopefully not for long. Did a 1200 piece 2 color front 1 color back last year...SUCKED!! We do orders of 250-400 pretty regular but it is usually 1 color front / back...Still sucks but with the right tunes you can knock it out! :)
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We did a couple of 500 piece 1 color front. 2 color back I'm thinking.
We've done a handful of multi color, 2 sided tees in the 250 piece range.
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We are still a manual shop but hopefully not for long. Did a 1200 piece 2 color front 1 color back last year...SUCKED!! We do orders of 250-400 pretty regular but it is usually 1 color front / back...Still sucks but with the right tunes you can knock it out! :)
If you have a speed table, I hope you had 2 people on it, makes it much faster. At the shop I worked at for years, we had an early hire that came in, and she had worked at another shop and shared this with us, practically doubled production. If a one color, 3 people, one loader, one unloader, one printer...
Steve
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My first screenprinting job was a one-color white on pink and light blue shirts for kids, but with about 4 different screens. I'd just bought an old used Hopkins International 6-color without micros and a crappy flash dryer for $75 off eBay. Just over 1100 shirts in total at around $1.50 a shirt - customer supplied the shirts. Paid for all my crap on the first job.
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Seems this is the starting point for automation for everyone. The guy in our shop who ordered our auto told us delivery is delayed by a month, but the sales guy never got the memo. (One in the same guy, logistics? who needs logistics? Sales, sure we'll print anything as he still takes orders as if we had an auto.} We had plenty of manual work already and then the auto work started landing long before the auto arrived. 10k 4/color on white. To this day I hate Happy Faces in art. One 4/c rotary load, without that we never would have made it. Sales guy loading and unloading, and me knocking out the 4 colors, thankfully wet onto wet. About a week of getting up at 4am and crawling into bed at midnight. Phone rings a week later, "they are selling like hotcakes", and our client ordered 30k more and still no auto. That month is a blur, except for the repeating pattern of fluorescent happy faces. Did anyone else who has gone through this wake up in the middle of the night still moving through the print motions? Wife kicked me to the couch. Never again. If it had required flashes I would have switched professions and taken up something easier like digging ditches. When you finally get your auto and see shirts thrown on the belt every 1.5 to 2 seconds, life is worth living again. When you get to 8-10 autos and don't see shirts on the belt every 2 seconds per press then we go in the reverse direction on life.
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Al, did you do the math on 2 sec per shirt?
That's about 1800 per hour.
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Did anyone else who has gone through this wake up in the middle of the night still moving through the print motions?
Nope, I wake up in the middle of the night thinking I'm smelling scorched polyester.
Not sure which is worse. :)
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I once alone printed a two color trucking co. logo on 10's of thousands of cheap White tees and caps for a boss long ago.
It was on a Harco tank, and YES I saw the rotating motion when I closed my eyes day or night. :o
Could of won the world arm wrestling championship after that run.
It took months and boxes were stacked to the ceiling.
Doh! Bring that first screen back around while unloading and save that millisecond!!
Our shop now anything over, give or take 50 goes on the auto depending upon design.
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Did anyone else who has gone through this wake up in the middle of the night still moving through the print motions?
Nope, I wake up in the middle of the night thinking I'm smelling scorched polyester.
Not sure which is worse. :)
What are you doing sleeping in the middle of the night? You should be printing!!!
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Did anyone else who has gone through this wake up in the middle of the night still moving through the print motions?
Nope, I wake up in the middle of the night thinking I'm smelling scorched polyester.
Not sure which is worse. :)
What are you doing sleeping in the middle of the night? You should be printing!!!
Pshaw. I'll be outta here by 11 tonight, tops. ;)
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I printed a 3000 piece order (mixed adult, youth, and toddler) each year for 2 years before I bought my first auto.. and I'd rather sell everything before doing that again. First year was 2c/6c, next year was 3c/6c. Both years required 2 flashes on the back, I think we averaged about 35 finished shirts per hour using an old 8 color Rototex.
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I forgot about the 1200 two ply shorts I printed with a 2 color pfp. That was horrible without having a proper hold down.
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500 pcs. six color front, six color back. Not the most, but the most memorable....... :o
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Man, some of these jobs that you guys are posting are nuts!! I'm having a blast reading through all of these.
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Our first job ever was 1300 pcs - 700 on black with a six color back and a 2 color front....guess we got initiated quickly and printed it with both my wife and I (in our garage at the time) with the flu and 102 fevers! Man it sucked!
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Man, some of these jobs that you guys are posting are nuts!! I'm having a blast reading through all of these.
It's a daily reminder to grind it out towards an auto. 75% of what I've been printing lately has been 5-6 colors a side and 72-144 pieces. I may only run 2500-3000 pieces a month, but pushing 6 colors still sucks.
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Man, some of these jobs that you guys are posting are nuts!! I'm having a blast reading through all of these.
It's a daily reminder to grind it out towards an auto. 75% of what I've been printing lately has been 5-6 colors a side and 72-144 pieces. I may only run 2500-3000 pieces a month, but pushing 6 colors still sucks.
Absolutely. The day I bought my first auto was two years late. Even when I was a one man shop I would have benefitted immediately. The speed alone would have allowed me to produce more jobs, quicker and with more consistency... Not to mention physically preserving myself.. And opened up time to sell more jobs. I'm not a fan of borrowing in general, but the payment on a decent size auto setup is covered in no time.
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Largest I've done was 2000 shirts. 1 color sleeve, 1 color back, 3 color front. Printed it in 5 days. Probably around 90+ hours. Did it alone as well. Stacking, folding, printing, the whole shabang. I may have teared up a little upon finishing that one. I'm still printing manually. Gonna take the plunge and run my shop full time come September, hope to be automated by next summer :-X