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screen printing => Equipment => Topic started by: im_mcguire on July 25, 2018, 03:50:16 PM
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So this last year, my shop has seen tremendous growth. Our numbers are growing, and this year alone we have done more 6 color work than ever before. We currently run a 6/8 Workhorse Cutlass. In 2 years we are approaching 300k impressions on it. And for us, that is a lot.
We are going to be joining the M&R team we think. After running the Workhorse for the last 2 years, I feel that I am losing out on production numbers other shops are hitting.
The Cutlass has been a great press and it has allowed me to grow as a printer, but with that, it has shown me that I need to grow in other ways. I have gone to other shops running M&R presses, and Ive seen with my own eyes dozens per hour that I couldn't fathom getting on my Cutlass.
Our plan is to start looking into a 10 Color Sportsman at the beginning of the year. Im also curious of the features of the new M&R press that is coming out in a couple of months. From my understanding it will be a retooled "Diamondback" with a servo index, but Im not sure about the print heads.
Like I said, the Cutlass was a good press, and got me to where I am today, but I think it is time to move to a higher production press.
Any of you guys out there mad a switch from one brand to the other: was it a big learning curve?
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Look at assorted presses, but M&R is great, with great service. It's indeed time. Keep that workhorse for the smaller easier 1 & 2 color short runs...
Steve
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I'd definitely recommend you go to a few trade shows between now and then to see what's available. We'll be at ISS Fort Worth (September), SGIA (October), and ISS Long Beach (January) for sure so those are the three I know of.
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Look at assorted presses, but M&R is great, with great service. It's indeed time. Keep that workhorse for the smaller easier 1 & 2 color short runs...
Steve
I wish we could keep it, but I won't have enough space for 2 presses.
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I'd definitely recommend you go to a few trade shows between now and then to see what's available. We'll be at ISS Fort Worth (September), SGIA (October), and ISS Long Beach (January) for sure so those are the three I know of.
Ive been at the last 3 ISS Long Beach Shows, and last year I really gave all presses a thorough looking into. Im definitely one to really do my research on presses after this last press purchase.
Not nocking Workhorse at all, its been a good press. Im just ready to step up my game.
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Why not ask Workhorse what is there best production press and compare that to what you think M&R has a good production press, you just might get a better deal from Workhorse unless you just got you heart set on blue. ;D
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Why not ask Workhorse what is there best production press and compare that to what you think M&R has a good production press, you just might get a better deal from Workhorse unless you just got you heart set on blue. ;D
It’s not that I have my heart set on Blue, it’s the blue is tested and proven. I bought the Cutlass when it was new and it had a lot of problems it needed to work through.
The Sabre is their equivalent to the Sportsman, but as I talk with people who run Sabres, they all fall in the 500 pieces per hour.
I’m not looking to crush any world records, but I am looking to hit higher numbers than what I have heard Sabre owners say they hit.
I also have talked with owners of Sabres who also run older Sportsman presses, and those still out perform the Sabre.
I know the guys at Workhorse, and they are great dudes, but I’m looking at numbers here. Like I said, I’ve seen the shops with my own eyes that produce the numbers I want to hit, and all of the presses are M&R.
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I recently went to a waterbased class and they had 2 Gauntlet 3's in their shop. I was helping them load for a couple of minutes and man what a difference loading a gauntlet compared to my sportsman. I was loading a 60 dozen per hour and it felt like loading 40 dozen on my sportsman. That difference of not having the table raise and lower is tremendous. Too bad we don't have 3 phase here. If I were to do it again, I would spring for the 3 phase and a gauntlet 3. Not saying that it's for you but something to consider.
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Why not ask Workhorse what is there best production press and compare that to what you think M&R has a good production press, you just might get a better deal from Workhorse unless you just got you heart set on blue. ;D
It’s not that I have my heart set on Blue, it’s the blue is tested and proven. I bought the Cutlass when it was new and it had a lot of problems it needed to work through.
The Sabre is their equivalent to the Sportsman, but as I talk with people who run Sabres, they all fall in the 500 pieces per hour.
I’m not looking to crush any world records, but I am looking to hit higher numbers than what I have heard Sabre owners say they hit.
I also have talked with owners of Sabres who also run older Sportsman presses, and those still out perform the Sabre.
I know the guys at Workhorse, and they are great dudes, but I’m looking at numbers here. Like I said, I’ve seen the shops with my own eyes that produce the numbers I want to hit, and all of the presses are M&R.
M&R has been fantastic for us. We love our Challenger 3D. I can't remember the last time I saw that press running under 57dz a hour (684pcs). We consider that a casual pace.
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Why not ask Workhorse what is there best production press and compare that to what you think M&R has a good production press, you just might get a better deal from Workhorse unless you just got you heart set on blue. ;D
It’s not that I have my heart set on Blue, it’s the blue is tested and proven. I bought the Cutlass when it was new and it had a lot of problems it needed to work through.
The Sabre is their equivalent to the Sportsman, but as I talk with people who run Sabres, they all fall in the 500 pieces per hour.
I’m not looking to crush any world records, but I am looking to hit higher numbers than what I have heard Sabre owners say they hit.
I also have talked with owners of Sabres who also run older Sportsman presses, and those still out perform the Sabre.
I know the guys at Workhorse, and they are great dudes, but I’m looking at numbers here. Like I said, I’ve seen the shops with my own eyes that produce the numbers I want to hit, and all of the presses are M&R.
Yeah I see now that you've done your homework, as Doug mention I can see loading a press faster if the table is not moving up and down also, great that your biz is growing that fast. 8)
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Happy with our Sabre for the most part, but even after only 3ish months with it, I feel like we have hit its limits when it comes to production speed. We regularly run it at 58 dozen, but can't ever really break 60 dozen on anything but tiny neck labels. Loading it is also a chore due to the way their pallet arms are made, where the pallets are basically 4 inches up and shirts regularly catch on the rectangular end of the pallet arm itself. Loading any shirt below an XL, especially fitted shirts, is basically a two step motion instead of one to clear the arm below the pallet. Still, MUCH better than manual printing :D
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Happy with our Sabre for the most part, but even after only 3ish months with it, I feel like we have hit its limits when it comes to production speed. We regularly run it at 58 dozen, but can't ever really break 60 dozen on anything but tiny neck labels. Loading it is also a chore due to the way their pallet arms are made, where the pallets are basically 4 inches up and shirts regularly catch on the rectangular end of the pallet arm itself. Loading any shirt below an XL, especially fitted shirts, is basically a two step motion instead of one to clear the arm below the pallet. Still, MUCH better than manual printing :D
Get a set of 14" platens...it makes life a ton easier.
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This brings back the question of, does the print quality suffer above 500/hour or x amount per hour? I guess it really depends on how good the loader is, but I would fear crooked prints any higher then 600/hour.
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Go Blue. Our 3 autos are Sportsmans, an 8, a 10 & a 14 color EXG that has the faster Gauntlet servo drive. They're great presses, well built, readily available parts, easy to work on & if you can't figure it out their Tech Support is awesome, which is more than I can say for Workhorse. If you can spring for a Red Chili D flash unit(s)... do it. The temperature sensor w/ auto shut off is a god-send. We haven't burned any shirts since switching to them.
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This brings back the question of, does the print quality suffer above 500/hour or x amount per hour? I guess it really depends on how good the loader is, but I would fear crooked prints any higher then 600/hour.
This is my experience with all of the production numbers:
On my old American rototex 6/8 it was slow! I mean SLOW. 900 shirts per day slow. But it seemed like we were working twice as hard as we are now to print 2,200 a day on my Cutlass. I feel that we are in the same boat with this situation. A M&R can print faster, and more consistent with less effort, from the videos and me visiting trade shows, and helping in shops that run M&R.
I can not get more than 400 shirts per hour off of my press no matter how hard I try. That is 33 dozen / hour. More like 29-30 dozen per hour realistically.
This is the reason for my switching of press. I need more numbers faster.
We just got 3 orders totaling over 50,000 impressions due in 3 weeks.
And for us, that is a ton of work we have ahead of us. And adding a second press is not an option.
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Even with the difficulties loading on our Sabre, I am waiting on the press at 58 dozen, not the other way around. I have no doubt AT ALL that on a "better" press I could load/print with identical consistency/quality quite a bit faster.
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The press should never be the hold up. It just shouldn't. If the human can work faster and the print does not suffer the press should be able to accommodate.
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I believe you're in the Sacramento area correct?
As something less vanilla, find out if you can go see Motion Textile over by the airport.
If numbers are your concern, go watch Tom and their MHM's just annihilate stacks.
If MHM had the features they have now, when we were in the market, they would have been a much higher contender.
We already had two older S-Types.
Or head west and check out our Roq's. We have an Eco and a You. We're high volume, but I'm of the belief that much more
than 2000/day per machine leads to worn out employees.
At 50,000 impression over three weeks you'll need a second machine sooner rather than later.
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We run our Sabres, on average, 45-55/dz.hr. Max we've gotten it up to was 76. It really depends on the job, screens, seps, and other variables. The Cutless has air printheads which are definitely slowing you down. As others have mentioned, there is a speed handicap with presses that table up/down. I'm certainly being convinced of that watching videos of ROQs, G3s and C3s.
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We have 2 Sabres and are hitting far better numbers than a lot mentioned. We average 65-70 dozen an hour, but have stretched it out to 81 dozen on a few occasions. Several things that are potentially slowing you down.
1) FLASHBACK vs Inhead flash. You lose 2-3 seconds on flashback in comparison to the in head flash. We average 1-1.5 sec flash once pallets are warm
2) flood/Chop delays. These delays are factory set @ .5 seconds, but can be sped up which will run your numbers up 4-5 doz an hour alone. On our 8 color we run at .2 second on flood&chop and 0.0 on our 10 color.
3) indexer- the machine is factory set at 45-50 but can be sped up (60max) which again will allow you to gain another 3-4 dozen an hour.
4) table up/down speed & cushion
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much more
than 2000/day per machine leads to worn out employees.
We've found exactly the same here, funny how that works. Our crew can consistently do this per machine on the daily. Pushing further doesn't really seem to net many more prints achieved, just more chaos over the week. I'll add that this figure holds for us across press brands/types of a similar class.
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With no flash or heads on, if i just let the press dry cycle on auto it is at 78dz, so hitting 81 without adjustments would be impossible with actually tabling up and down and having a print stroke and flash.
We are using a quartz and flashing at 1 second, and have tweaked our flashback to essentially also flash in about a second.
I'll look into the flood/chop delays, speeds on both are already maxed (though they still seem slower than videos of other presses I've seen).
I've read a few forum and facebook posts where people adjusted the index and ended up causing issues with it, so not sure I want to mess with that. I think a few people even had to slow theirs down from the factory setting to prevent it over indexing.
Every press is probably a little different, but our table up/down already feels/sounds kind of rough. Again, not sure I would want to mess with that.
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Also, kind of funny seeing the contrast between this thread and the other recent one about expected output per day per press. People were shitting all over only doing 3500 a day in that one and saying 4500 to 5500 should be expected, while here we have multiple people saying more than 2000 a day leads to issues. I am currently running our presses at an average of 2400 impressions a day with 2 or 3 people crews depending on the day. I run the auto solo at 1800ish comfortably with a catcher, while we have hit close to 3000 with an added unloader. Averaging 4 setups a day right now, 3 screens per.
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Also, kind of funny seeing the contrast between this thread and the other recent one about expected output per day per press. People were shitting all over only doing 3500 a day in that one and saying 4500 to 5500 should be expected, while here we have multiple people saying more than 2000 a day leads to issues. I am currently running our presses at an average of 2400 impressions a day with 2 or 3 people crews depending on the day. I run the auto solo at 1800ish comfortably with a catcher, while we have hit close to 3000 with an added unloader. Averaging 4 setups a day right now, 3 screens per.
I think some shops have significantly more support around the press ops than others and maybe aren't as laid back as other shops. We aren't trying to kill people here and make top dollar every minute. I understand that some shops simply have to max out production on every machine everyday for economic issues and I'm sure they do.
Also I think there is a tipping point where, when you throw extra employees on a press to keep the operator only loading throughout the shift your payroll just went up. Did it go up more or less than the added production value those extra folks brought to the shift? This is probably where shops with many people on a press need to have that thing screaming all day.
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Even at our lowest margin (per impression) it makes send to add the extra body any way I look at it. An extra 1200 impressions more than pays for the added payroll, even if they ended up sitting around a lot on slower days, which we have zero of right now...
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People inflating numbers on a mostly anonymous internet message board? Never.....
We ran an 80k piece job in in April/May.
We could consistently hit ~3200 in 8 hours on each of 3 presses with one floater.
We could not do that all week however.
I could probably have squeezed out a not insignificant amount more by having people swap
out singly for lunch, but eating all together is good for morale. So who knows what the gain or loss
would be in the end. Morale is extremely important on looooong runs.
Having had several 3000 plus days myself, I honestly don't know how anyone does more than that.
I'm pretty fit and have the tenacity speed and incentive to make the big numbers happen, but
at about 3K I'm stumbling around like a 12th round prize fighter.
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3200 is completely doable if you are running the same graphic, and everything goes smoothly, and its not a 29 in tall print.
( we have a CHIIID, so its as fast as is humanly possible.... and even then race is a long 8 hours that day and you don't sprint through a whole marathon....}
I remember talk in this forum a single press average of 800 pieces an hour .... and thinking yea on a 1" tall left chest single stroke... un realistic if you are setting up 6 colours
If my guys do 2000 prints a day , I feel like they deserve a beer. If they do 4K , they get a cold case.
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In our situation with just me, my wife and an occasional catcher/stacker, we over the last 3 days ran a little over 1600 pcs per day with 3 to 4 setups each day but didn't start printing until 11:00 each morning after going to pick up at UPS and sorting. This was a rush order. I personally wouldn't want to run more than 2000 a day unless it was the same design. These were all bella canvas which for me is a little more difficult to load.
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Hey Jeff......we worked an ISS show together at Long Beach a few years back with Workhorse......the Cutlas and Sabre are two different machines. Obviously the main difference being the electric print head but it makes a world of difference in production speeds. I'm not saying the M&R is not better or worse just make sure you compare the Sportsman with servo heads to the Sabre.
My first Sabre was an 8 color as far as production speeds go on a standard 1 stroke left chest or back tag we could run 70doz an hour. We traded in the 8 for a 10 and our production speed has dropped to 60doz an hour.They have added a "mandatory" print/chop delay(.2 sec) that took a few dozen away and our table down is set a bit slower so I feel we could make some adjustments and get a few more dozen but honestly we are good with the 720 an hour mark. I know a few shop owners who have 6 color Sabre's that will run 72doz an hour. Point being the smaller the machine the faster it will run. Also check your print/chop delay timers and make sure you have them at the lowest setting (.2) A few months back WH did a software update that changed print/chop delay to .5 sec and killed production time....sure they got an ear full and dropped it back to .2 and it helps. Also a slow table down will hurt. Even with air heads I'd imagine you should be getting much better numbers than you listed.
It's been a while but we've talked a few times and it sounds like you guys get big runs really often. If I were in your shoes the only thing I'd be consider upgrading to would be a Challenger 3 or an S-Roq. A heads down machine (no table up/down) is really where your gonna find some very high production speeds. Take a close look at S-Roq as well they are making a very nice machine. Loading on those 2 machines is a dream without having to hit a moving target. Also at this point get as many print heads as you can fit.... 14 color with 3 flashes you'd a freight train of a shop!
Good luck man and congrats on the growth...feel free to reach out if you have any questions.
mike@acescreen.com
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So this last year, my shop has seen tremendous growth. Our numbers are growing, and this year alone we have done more 6 color work than ever before. We currently run a 6/8 Workhorse Cutlass. In 2 years we are approaching 300k impressions on it. And for us, that is a lot.
We are going to be joining the M&R team we think. After running the Workhorse for the last 2 years, I feel that I am losing out on production numbers other shops are hitting.
The Cutlass has been a great press and it has allowed me to grow as a printer, but with that, it has shown me that I need to grow in other ways. I have gone to other shops running M&R presses, and Ive seen with my own eyes dozens per hour that I couldn't fathom getting on my Cutlass.
Our plan is to start looking into a 10 Color Sportsman at the beginning of the year. Im also curious of the features of the new M&R press that is coming out in a couple of months. From my understanding it will be a retooled "Diamondback" with a servo index, but Im not sure about the print heads.
Like I said, the Cutlass was a good press, and got me to where I am today, but I think it is time to move to a higher production press.
Any of you guys out there mad a switch from one brand to the other: was it a big learning curve?
The new Diamondback is coming with A/C print heads. Price will be almost identically to the Diamondback with air heads. That`s what I`ve been told by M&R.
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So it looks like our print/chop delays are set at .5 by default. Can I change this to .2 without any issues? Why would the default be .5 to begin with if the press can run them faster without issue?
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I just updated the software and switched them now.
Im having a lot of issues with the tablet loosing internet, and needing to reset it every time, so I tend to forget about it, and check every 2-3 months for a update.
But Im not sure why it changed to .5 if it can run at .2.
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I just tried to change mine to .2 and they revert to .5 automatically.
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I just tried to change mine to .2 and they revert to .5 automatically.
Weird. I updated to the latest version today, and the timer opens at .5, but I can save it as .2.
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If it reverts back to .5 automatically your not on the latest update.
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Cool, I'll check it out in the morning.
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I had to call Workhorse today to get mine changed. The tech I spoke with was VERY reluctant to change it but ultimately did. He said they’ve been getting tons of calls about it. Seeing how my 6 color has run at 0 since I bought it in Dec. of 2014 and my 8 color for a year and a half both without issue, I don’t see why now it suddenly would be an issue. It is absolutely worth a couple dozen /hr. in speed. I am happy to gain that back.