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screen printing => Show Your Stuff => Topic started by: alan802 on February 19, 2012, 12:15:56 PM
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I was looking at some shirts at our local grocery store last night, and they have this whole section dedicated to t-shirts from local high schools, NFL teams, and the latest fashion tees. I always look at the quality of the prints when I'm in a store and usually I'm appalled by the lack of quality that print shops have that do retail work. I know some of this stuff is done locally, because I've seen bids for some of the local schools and the prints they want done, and it's pretty obvious that they go with the cheapest by looking at some of these prints. I decided (maybe against my better judgement) to start taking pics of some of the worst offenders and starting this thread. Let me know if this is a bad idea and we can scrap it. I'm not going to post pics of shirts that I know the print shop who did it, so that leaves most of the local stuff out, but here are some pics of some "fashion" prints that I hope to hell that someone on this forum didn't print! If so, maybe it will motivate you to do better work. For most of these, pics won't do them justice, they are much worse than what the camera will show, so you'll have to trust me.
From a distance, not that bad, but get closer than 6 feet to it and you'll notice that someone didn't give a damn about registration.
(http://i485.photobucket.com/albums/rr211/alan802/Tshirt%20Pics/350BC5FC-13BF-4305-94DD-F897606BA195.jpg)
Close up of the above print.
(http://i485.photobucket.com/albums/rr211/alan802/Tshirt%20Pics/A38D54FC-949A-4F79-A6CA-95079B90F4B8.jpg)
This one made me think I was going crosseyed because it was so blurry.
(http://i485.photobucket.com/albums/rr211/alan802/Tshirt%20Pics/5148BB1F-7923-4910-80C9-4EF23F39C6BD.jpg)
Close up of the above truck print, and no, the camera wasn't shaking, that's what it looks like in person.
(http://i485.photobucket.com/albums/rr211/alan802/Tshirt%20Pics/ADA7241C-E018-495E-968B-0B13BC196A0C.jpg)
This was the best of last nights contest, which isn't saying much.
(http://i485.photobucket.com/albums/rr211/alan802/Tshirt%20Pics/185A45CE-C0D0-485E-8713-86905DF1FF53.jpg)
Close up.
(http://i485.photobucket.com/albums/rr211/alan802/Tshirt%20Pics/CB7655BD-66B9-4434-BE4D-7E19403E3802.jpg)
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I took a stroll through Target yesterday and thought the same damn thing. Out of the thirty or so graphics I checked every single one was out of reg. Crazy how the quality is just crap. Yesterday we also went to a kids party at one of those rock crawling gyms. Their shirts had the texture of the concrete that we were climbing on. I talked to the owner and he just did not know any better. He saw my company shirt I was wearing and I now have a new customer.
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Its funny how we are critical of other peoples work when i guarantee that a few just like it have slipped by each of us also.apparently these printers are doing something right because they have the client and got thru the qc audits..sorry, I just cant stand these kind of negative posts..
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Its funny how we are critical of other peoples work when i guarantee that a few just like it have slipped by each of us also.apparently these printers are doing something right because they have the client and got thru the qc audits..sorry, I just cant stand these kind of negative posts..
Sure am sorry to ruffle your feathers, we can take this down no problem. It won't hurt my fealings like this post has struck a nerve with you, so Frog and the gang, feel free. That's one of the reasons why I did put in the post that it might not be the best idea for a thread but I am a bit surprised at the response. I'm ok with taking it down if that's the sentiment from even one of the members here.
And I assure you, nothing like those have left our shop. If these printers are considered successful by some then I'll just disagree. Maybe we should all just print as cheaply as possible and undercut everyone else to get our work in these types of stores and let quality fly out the window. If that is considered successful then I guess we'll be unsuccessful. It's clear the grocery store buys this type of merch based on price and not quality.
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I was looking at Old Navy the other day, and its amazing what some of their suppliers get away with.
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no no dont take it down. we are all professionals here and have a right to our opinions.thats what makes this board so great..sorry if it sounded like i directed it personally at you, sometimes i need to choose my words better. please accept my apology alan. you know some of those large printers are running 100-150 thousand shirts a day. they do q.c audits and with those numbers i guess a few get thru.
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although I'm by far not a great printer but I also notice them at local stores as well and can't understand how they get thru and its not just one or two of the batch its the whole rack so it's not a qc issue its a printing issue. I like seeing them because it makes me feel like I'm on the right track.
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i understand its a printing issue but those large chain stores like gap(old navy) etc. send in their own qc team that pulls audits on orders befor they are shipped. usually things like this are caught and the order is failed and must be gone thru and re audited befor shipping.
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no no dont take it down. we are all professionals here and have a right to our opinions.thats what makes this board so great..sorry if it sounded like i directed it personally at you, sometimes i need to choose my words better. please accept my apology alan. you know some of those large printers are running 100-150 thousand shirts a day. they do q.c audits and with those numbers i guess a few get thru.
I accept and please accept my apology. I took it harder than I should have and overreacted. I have no idea how some of the huge operations run, I can't imagine printing 100K shirts a day and knowing that I probably shouldn't talk poorly about the print quality like I do, but I just can't help it. It's long been a pet peeve of mine to walk into a store and see absurd prints that may not be easy to accomplish and we might struggle to do them, so I refrain from critiquing those types. But the prints that are so out of registration and you can tell the double or triple stroked something, or any number of printing no-no's really bother me to no end. It irks me because there are a great number of us, particularly on this forum who think quality is of the utmost importance and we are getting passed over in favor of shops who just slather a couple colors on a shirt and shove it out the door before anyone can say it looks like pooh.
I'd love to sit down with a purchaser for some of these stores and spend an hour with them and ask them questions. I'd like to know if they personally EVER look at some of the shirts that are on their shelves or do they simply not care, or perhaps the most common reason is they have no idea what a decent print looks like. I know I'm looking harder at these prints than anyone who buys them or purchases them for their business, but damn, some of them are so terrible that even an idiot can tell that's it's junk.
Along this same subject, I know I've mentioned this before but only briefly, but has anyone ever noticed or looked at the youth apparel like at the Disney stores in the mall or even Babies & Toys R Us? Most everyone of those prints are top notch, they are way more indicative of something that would come out of our shop than 98% of what I see on adult shirts. I have some opinions or theories as to why this is but I'd like to hear some of my fellow printer's thoughts on why this phenomenon exists. Is it because the shops who comply fully with the new rules and regulations are just good print shops? Is it because of the fact that printing smaller images on smaller pallets with bigger screens allows for better prints? Or is it a couple other things that are a little more far fetched that cause this difference. If some of you aren't aware or don't believe this phenomenon to exist, trust me, start looking at youth prints versus adult. And it's not the obvious reason of Disney using top quality art and print shops, these awesome prints are in stores like Carters, Walmart, Target, K-Mart, Buy-Buy Baby etc.
AND...GO!
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I like this topic. I am not going to be able to add anything to it because I stopped looking at printed shirts in stores years ago. It is the samething I had to do when I was a designer for print. Just looking at a menu would drive me nuts. Out of registration, not centered, bad color choice, stolen - not legal fonts, you name it.
Good luck.
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Its funny how we are critical of other peoples work when i guarantee that a few just like it have slipped by each of us also.apparently these printers are doing something right because they have the client and got thru the qc audits..sorry, I just cant stand these kind of negative posts..
Like Alan I can 100% say that this type of crap has not nor will not leave our shop. We do print for retail and it will not happen. If it does someone will be needing a new job. I know that the guys that do this print for almost nothing and dont care. You have to sometimes to do runs for these big box stores. We are not that way. They get good quality if we do the work period.
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This will sound bold, rude, Agressive, and unpopular, but I'm not one for popularity votes. I'm sure my counter parts might want me to stay out or not be so brash. Sorry. I feel I should say how it is.
Over a years span from a shop that is doing any kind of major production I am positive that "something has gone out that is what some might post as bad crap. If you are a major shop of mass production and claim it would never come out of your shop, you are either lying or unaware. One of the two.
I have been to the mountain and I have seen the promise land of tees and I am hear to say, it occasionally has some bad tees in it. I have been in many major shop and worked in a few top shops myself and even worked in a Disney shop. I know all shops that Disney uses and can assure you that even disney has crap on the floor occasionally. I know that first hand for a fact. We all want to believe it never happens in our shop. Some say that if you never make a mistake then you are not trying hard enough. The bigger you get, the more you increase your opportunity to make mistakes. It's got to be a part of business. If I take on too much freelance, I make mistakes trying to meet all the deadlines. I know better, but occasionally I take on too much in one day. For me to say I am perfect and will never make a mistake is more than I want to be responsible for.
For the question of how buyers can let something like this go, here is te answer. They approve the Pre production sample and they may have the job revised 3-6 times before approving but once they do, they never see that job again for 3, 6 or 12 months later and if they see the bad product it's like a gamble. After the buyer has approved the quality of the sample, the shop can run the crap out of that print on press and speed up production, money money money. Speed speed speed.
The one time the buyer is in the store and looking at product on the floor can be 1 out of 10 chances. Some of the biggest shops might re-print a design 3 times in one month. over a year, you will see a crappy job on at least two of those re orders. I do feel that the smaller the shop, the more you have a chance of maintaining top quality control. I often said that I would rather own 10 small size shop across the country than to own 1 major shop.
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I think for the most part we are talking about a good number of pcs in the run. When I can go into a store and see the same mistake through a size run it is pretty fair too say that the majority were F'd up. Have some gotten through us? I am sure a few have but not anymore more than couple even on a bigger run of 20k. Its all how you run your QC. If everyone is held accountable that had their hands on it then it matters.
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I know the exact situation dan is speaking about because i have ran those large shops. The big difference is there is no personal factor involved, the owner of general manager is not on top of each order. he relies on the hundreds of employees to do their jobs on possibly 3 shifts. It is about speed and money but I dont think they say" well we are only being paid xxxx so lets run them xxxx quality" and there is no excuse for quality that looks like that but it is what it is.
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I allso think as some of you that if you say you never let a bad print out your shop your lying or just didn't see it. Lets look at it this way what you feel might be a jam of a print reggie tight as goats lips might not look good to someone else, that goes for all of us that think everything we do is perfect. I ,ve seen some bad prints for sure and have did some myself mine you I work like hell for it not to be, I allso think we as printers put a lot of pressure on oursevles to product the best we can (and we should) but the end user sometimes could care less they just want a print on a shirt as cheap as they can get it. The shop that prints a 1000 shirts and all 1000 is out of register and they didn't care now thats a bad printer or they didn't take the time to cure them correct and you only get a one time wear before all the ink washes off.
Darryl
Good topic by the way!!!!
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From many trips to the garment district in L.A. I can tell you that there are a lot of printers that just dont care. There are so many print shops down there that just get it close and go.
I have a buddy that runs 750k to over a million prints for a very popular customer a month and I give him crap all the time because their stuff is always out of reg. I can go into any of the big chains and grab one of his shirts and most of the time they are off. He just says nobody ever complains so they dont mess with it. It is what it is when they want it for nothing.
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I hear what you're saying Jblue. It's not supposed to happen and a good shop/QC/manager/Owner is on top of that easier for small to medium shops and even some big ones. We all know we are responsible for what we produce. I have seen/heard production managers with the feeling that we are such a machine that when something bad is caught, you stop it from proceeding. In the same breath, I've heard them say, and what happens about the stuff that already shipped, well, I guess we will find out later". Often times we never hear complaints. I worked at the screen print facility at a very large shop for 1 year, then hired on at the design dept for 11 more years. In that time, I've never heard of them coming back on a printer for something that was already in the stores. Never. I even tried to point out something that was horrible, on the shelves and consistent between re-orders. and was taught in my training class" to do yet, was told to not bother with it. It's "out of my area". Thats how it goes. Thats realitee with big shops.
I remember my co workers telling me early on, if you wanna get along here, you eat the pooh samich on your plate. You don't get a better pooh samich. You get what you get and the Co tells you it's a really good pooh samich and you are supposed to agree and believe it. Thats the dark side of the bis boys. I'm sure some of that is at all levels. Some of your employees might feel the same way in the screen room or on press.
Shut up and eat your pooh samich. Ha!. Sounds sad. It is sad we have company's that run that way and we have many of them. I'm glad I'm out.
Here's how sneaky the corporate side is. While working for a fortune 500 Co. I was being courted and eventually hired by another of even larger size. So, I made my intentions known and soon, not the owner or one of the board, but a senior level exec came to me and ask me to stay. Now, I thought I must be in pretty big demand. Heck this "exec" is meeting with me face to face from the corporate office and offers me oh. Probably another 5-10,000 to stay. I don't remember now but it wasn't that substantial. I do remember him telling me how bad the gins are in where i was going and I should reconsider. The Co. I was being hired by was (in my mind at the time) a chance of a life time so I stayed the course for the new Co. I went to work for this other big company and a month later, the previous Company totally SHUT DOWN that entire division I was in. Nothing left of it. They completely moved out of that town of laid off everyone. So, the sneaky part is, this Exec already knew of this. Stuff like that doesn't happen over night. It's being developed for months or years in the making. In additon to the sneakyness, lies the fact that it turns out my new employer is heavily in cahoots with the previous Co that just shut down my old division and were in the midst of negotiated bad contracts between the two. Legal stuff. So, somewhere, I felt like a pawn. I don't know where exactly, but it still feels dirty. The connection didn't stop there. It went on into the great debacle of 1999 and is yet another story.
Ok. Off topic. Bring me back.
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I allso think as some of you that if you say you never let a bad print out your shop your lying or just didn't see it. Lets look at it this way what you feel might be a jam of a print reggie tight as goats lips might not look good to someone else, that goes for all of us that think everything we do is perfect. I ,ve seen some bad prints for sure and have did some myself mine you I work like hell for it not to be, I allso think we as printers put a lot of pressure on oursevles to product the best we can (and we should) but the end user sometimes could care less they just want a print on a shirt as cheap as they can get it. The shop that prints a 1000 shirts and all 1000 is out of register and they didn't care now thats a bad printer or they didn't take the time to cure them correct and you only get a one time wear before all the ink washes off.
Darryl
Good topic by the way!!!!
We could argue all day about what is a bad print and we'd all have a different version but let's take the closeup pic of the first print as our guide. I'm not lying nor have I just missed it, but nothing that far out of registration has been put in a box and left this building. I can say that because the first 5 years, I printed every garment. Now I don't see every garment but I've got a printer that is as detailed as I am when it comes to registration, not so much in print technique but when it comes to getting a job registered he goes above and beyond. My catcher is really good at catching something that the puller missed because he loves to brag about finding something that got by my printer or whoever is unloading. My printer and screen guy don't get along so any chance my screen guy has to stick it to the printer he takes great enjoyment out of that. I no longer see every print that goes out the door but I've got a great crew that is very capable of picking up where I left off. I still look at every job at some point during the print process and several times a day I'll open a box to check it out.
Does anyone have any comments on the youth prints versus adult? Don't tell me I'm the only one who has noticed.
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I'm not lying nor have I just missed it, but nothing that far out of registration has been put in a box and left this building.
How do you know if you've missed it or not? Isn't that the point of "missing it"? LOL.
You have your "one guy" who prints and your "one guy who catches and your "one guy" who..... as you get bigger, you will lose touch with your perfect quality control. I hope you stick to your guns and I hope you really are a perfect operating machine. That would be cool.
As a Christian, I am to have to goal to be "Christ like" and be perfect, but will I really ever get there? No, but that does not mean I stray from the path but it's a goal.
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Alan I would not dought one bit that you take care to give your customers top notch products, I,m just saying sometimes when some of us get to rocking and rolling things can get missed. I seen some bad work and the people still go right back to that same printer for more of the same... price and they like dealing with them.
Darryl
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I have to say registering is the easy part and should be easy for any shop big or small. Print technique amd quality is certainly more involved and requires some sort of talent. No way in hell do I ever print a job miss registered there is no reason for it at all.
My guess as to why these big shops that print for the retailers with such crappy reg is that they all use some type of reg system, they rely on these systems from burn to print, they slap the screens in butt up on the reg board and clamp the screens and print . These are huge shops printing for pennies with barely pennies an hour labor, time is money for them even a couple minutes per set up. That's my take.
Oh and by the way a reg system if used correctly y could allow you to drop the screens in and print but if the person lining up the films is not perfect then the screens will not be perfect ith out micro ing.
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The average consumer is used to crap , I mean look at all the crappy prints being sold even high dollar tees in the mall. I'm not saying put out crap but I think we as printers look too hard into things and maybe have a little too much pride in our work. Makes you wonder if reburning those screens to fix something minor is really worth it... :-\
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O.K Here is a senerio. its thursday night and your finishing a job on american apparel tees and on the last print location your white underbase screen runs out of ink. the customer is picking up the shirts at 9 am for a event that day and to get more shirts it will monday. you can run it around a additional time or two to get the coverage and the print will look great but is bulletproof. the customer will not notice and be happy and not say a thing. what are you gonna do? i already know! but isnt that a quality issue? yes but it falls within the loose industry standards we are talking about here and we have all done it.same thing as the guy running with the registration issue..just sayin
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O.K Here is a senerio. its thursday night and your finishing a job on american apparel tees and on the last print location your white underbase screen runs out of ink. the customer is picking up the shirts at 9 am for a event that day and to get more shirts it will monday. you can run it around a additional time or two to get the coverage and the print will look great but is bulletproof. the customer will not notice and be happy and not say a thing. what are you gonna do? i already know! but isnt that a quality issue? yes but it falls within the loose industry standards we are talking about here and we have all done it.same thing as the guy running with the registration issue..just sayin
This is a little different than what we are talking about. We are talking about large numbers of F-ups. Stuff that is printed that way from the start. Have I done what you talked about? Yes for sure. The print was a little heavy but it was still in registration and to the lay person it was still a really great print. We are talking about the crap that is in retail.
As for your above scenario. I dont put myself in that situation. For us to do a 24 hour turn it is going to be expensive and I am going to order extras. Extras will be printed and billed as an overage. Its part of the rush deal. Everything is explained to the customer. Even Murphy's law is explained to them. A plan B is always discussed so that there is no surprise at 9 am. If we screw up the whole carousal of shirts then they may not get an AA shirt but what they do get will be registered.
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I don't understand why it's hard to believe a small operation like ours that does 4-8 jobs a day and 1000-4000 shirts a week wouldn't let something out the door that looked like those prints I posted. I've conceded that I don't know how larger ops work but managing something our size and qc is a breeze. Technically I could look at every shirt now but the good thing is I don't have to. Like mike said, registration is the easy part, and if something goes out the door with the ub showing like that first shirt is carelessness regardless of the shop size. It's still one job per press and some guy/girls setting up and doing things exactly like we all do it, there is just more presses and employees to handle. I'm not trying to diminish what the big shops do but we are still comparing the same process not screen printing versus theoretical physics. As the numbers get larger it gets less feasible to qc like we do, so what do you do about it? Well I think you have to have better control over all the variables and you better have employees who give a damn. There is obviously a lot more to it than that but we dont have all night.
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Alan. Great point. Hire the right people and you dont have to worry as much. Its going to happen eventually but we can still do everything in our power to stop it.
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I'm not lying nor have I just missed it, but nothing that far out of registration has been put in a box and left this building.
How do you know if you've missed it or not? Isn't that the point of "missing it"? LOL.
You have your "one guy" who prints and your "one guy who catches and your "one guy" who..... as you get bigger, you will lose touch with your perfect quality control. I hope you stick to your guns and I hope you really are a perfect operating machine. That would be cool.
As a Christian, I am to have to goal to be "Christ like" and be perfect, but will I really ever get there? No, but that does not mean I stray from the path but it's a goal.
Being a perfect print shop isn't possible just like you being a perfect person isn't possible, but not letting really poor work like the above out of a shop like ours doesn't require perfection. It requires having control over as many variables as possible, having good employees that care about what they do and many other things. If we can do one job with high quality then why can't they all be of the same or better quality? Completely possible at our shop without being perfect. Good luck in your pursuit though Dan, I gave up a long time ago.
We are not all on the same page here and I'm arguing something slightly different and subjectivity is also causing some issues. I get what you guys are saying about why some of this occurs, but what about the rest of it? Not all of the poor prints are coming from massive operations and they come from shops like ours too, and that is my main argument. I went to the ISS Ft. Worth last year and I saw two guys wearing their company's screen printed shirts, their logo and text underneath. I kid you not, the underbase was showing worse than first print on this thread! Black shirts, neon green print with white UB, you could see the white from 10 yards away. These two guys probably owned the business and to this day I think they were doing a bit, trying to get a laugh out of people because there is no way someone would wear their own advertisement around that was that bad. I took a pic of it t the time and I can't find it now. I remember telling Donnie about it at the show.
We have bad days like everyone else, but not as bad as the bad prints at my local grocery store. There isn't anything there that I would consider above average technically speaking.
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I do believe that a shop your size can be held to tight QC down to an estimate of 98% possible flawless product. I won't give anoyone 100%. Not even me. :)
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Dan, that is understandable, since your spelling runs at about 50% accuracy. ;) I couldn't help it.
Crap, my prices just went up. I'll just order everything under Pierre's account, but not tell him about it either.
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hey alan....I have a theory why the babies and youth are better prints....
On adults if the print looks good 6 ft away its good to go...(like you said in your first post)
On youth and babies the print has to be better because everyone is up close squeezing the the babies cheeks or patting the kids on their heads telling them how cute they are...
No one wants to get that close to an adult....LOL ;)
Just a theory....HAHA!
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We as printers and/or artists tend to over analys our product. This is a good thing, but the everyday consumer does not notice most of what we recongnize as poor to shotty work.
Example, I used to work on plastic molding machines that produced the bottle caps for soft-drinks. I would open a 20oz Sprite and could pick it apart on things that where wrong. Safety band coming off too easy or to hard bad liners, bubbles in the liners ect.... I would do this and it drove friends and family crazy.
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We as printers and/or artists tend to over analys our product. This is a good thing, but the everyday consumer does not notice most of what we recongnize as poor to shotty work.
Example, I used to work on plastic molding machines that produced the bottle caps for soft-drinks. I would open a 20oz Sprite and could pick it apart on things that where wrong. Safety band coming off too easy or to hard bad liners, bubbles in the liners ect.... I would do this and it drove friends and family crazy.
Exactly!
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I have to agree there. I have a neighbor next to my shop who is a cabinet guy and we shoot the breeze once in a while. while in his shop he shows me things other cabinet guys have done that is crap and I just dont see it. He will come over and I will show him what a customer brought me in that was a crappy print and he cant see it. So yes we do overanalyze but I believe it is a good thing.
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Keeps us all on out toes...never know when another printer might point your bad print to that customer he is trying to get from ya.
Darryl
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Keeps us all on out toes...never know when another printer might point your bad print to that customer he is trying to get from ya.
Darryl
One of my goals when it comes to print quality is to have other printers look at something we printed and think it was a great print or better yet, have them think that it is better than anything that they can do. I love getting a shirt that I think is better than we can do, it's motivational. I usually bring them to the shop and look them over with my loupe and then I'll do some measurements. Most good shirts I buy today are toddler shirts. There aren't many adult prints worth a damn.
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Keeps us all on out toes...never know when another printer might point your bad print to that customer he is trying to get from ya.
Darryl
One of my goals when it comes to print quality is to have other printers look at something we printed and think it was a great print or better yet, have them think that it is better than anything that they can do. I love getting a shirt that I think is better than we can do, it's motivational. I usually bring them to the shop and look them over with my loupe and then I'll do some measurements. Most good shirts I buy today are toddler shirts. There aren't many adult prints worth a dam.
Alan, I agree. This is one of the many reasons I frequent this forum. This place will challenge you as a printer.
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Next time any of you are in the mall, go to the Disney store or a Carters, then cruise through the kids clothing section at Target and look at the print quality. I think that I might be one of the only one's who has really noticed the print quality difference since I've got a 2 year old but I am begging for some of you to do this and tell me what you think.
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One reaso I would guess as to why youth prints look better to some is that thry have a smaller area for mistakes. Imagine having to monitor and maintain quality for only a 4" area versus a 12" area. Mechanically, a smaller area on a smaller shirt is easier to control. On the other hand, smaller areas on large shirts are horrible to control. How many people love trying to run a job efficiently with a 2" center Chest print? Very hard to center correctly and do it fast.
2ndly, not many youth and toddler prints are difficult 8-10-12 color sim process jobs. Sure, we have some but not a large portion. Mostly vector art. Solid but with an occasional special affect ink or application combination.
Just a guess at that.
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You can't pay me enough to get a 2 year old. :P
Dan's got a great point though--considering just about everyone runs 23x31 screens, 15x18 is more than four times harder to keep under control than 7x9 IMHO....
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I have never really had a good response from a prospective customer pointing out the bad printing of another printer. usually they jumped ship for other reasons and kind of take those comments personal ..after all its the shirts they have been proud of and wearing since the last order. I find it best to never say anything negative about the competition.Regardless of the situation and that seems to gain respect from professional buyers.
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I try not to either, but I had a customer that wanted me to match another printer in town. I told him I won't match his prices but my quality is a ton better....still got me the job. Their shirts were awful. Just terrible. And not cured either.
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Alot if not most of the children/ infant clothing is done off-shore, and is printed on cut goods prior to sewing. This will improve quallity standards simply because there are more eyes on it prior to delivery. I have a 1 year old with another on the way so I've noticed theese prints as really good especialy when it comes to Disney.
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I took a stroll through Target yesterday and thought the same damn thing. Out of the thirty or so graphics I checked every single one was out of reg. Crazy how the quality is just crap. Yesterday we also went to a kids party at one of those rock crawling gyms. Their shirts had the texture of the concrete that we were climbing on. I talked to the owner and he just did not know any better. He saw my company shirt I was wearing and I now have a new customer.
I agree, Target needs to work on their quality control. Congrats on getting the new customer!
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Thats something I will never do is bad mouth another printer even if I know they bad mouthed me, its just not good business IMHO, but I do tell them what my strong points are and asure them I will take care of them in every way possible.
I look at prints all the time in stores I see things that I would try not to do, but them I say hey they must be doing something right they got the big biz and I don't so who am I I to tell them how to print...I make pennies a year they make 1000ings a week.
Darryl
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There has been a long history around this town of badmouthing the competition, especially on the embroidery side. It's amazing to hear some of the stuff that is said about your shop, some of our customers have been open to us about other shops trying to put the hard sell on them and they tell us what is said about us, it's down right untrue.
We had a potential customer come in this morning and ask if we could fix something that they had gotten done somewhere (pretty sure it was not local), but I erased most of the print to just show you what someone put in a box. Out of 80 vests, 50 of them were damaged like this, this is a good example of the average, some were worse, some better. We are going to fix them I guess, hit them with the zim gun, and hopefully gain a new customer at the same time. These are really cheap mesh safety vests.
(http://i485.photobucket.com/albums/rr211/alan802/Tshirt%20Pics/Rooftopprintbad-1.jpg)
Does this constitute as a bad day in the QC department or what? I don't know what's worse, the pics I posted earlier or this, I'll let y'all decide.
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Alan hard to tell by that pic,but it looks to me like mesh and they had wet ink on the palette as they slid the next vest on. If so that is just pure laziness, they do not want to take the time to print them correctly, in our case we use a piece of paper in between each print keeps ink from smearing between prints. If more than one color that requires tack then we use the flash between colors to keep the ink dry, when I do these on the auto I do one revolution of prints and one of just flash to cure what's on the palette.
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Yeah, they just slid the vest off and the wet ink on the pallets transferred to the garment. On the manual press I put a pellon between the vest and pallet but on the auto, I put the screen before a flash and flash the print, without scorching of course, so that the ink doesn't get on the garment.
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Alan, was that on the outside of the shirt or inside?
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I was hoping nobobdy would see those. I was in a rush to get them out. J/K
Actually, is that the inside of the mesh? I take it you can see it from the outside. I HATE printing those things for that reason. I up-sell people to the tighter mesh. Prints better and looks nicer.
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We can't flash the ultra loose weave stuff long enough to tack the ink without scorching the material,
so we use temp pallet paper that we replace every 3rd or 4th (per pallet) print or so. Built into
the pricing so that the more expensive tighter weave actually works out to about the same.
I sometimes wish autos came with 3 unloading/loading stations for a flash in between.
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Alan, was that on the outside of the shirt or inside?
Inside. We have all done this but I think we would all spray them out and figure out a way to stop it from happening.
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We can't flash the ultra loose weave stuff long enough to tack the ink without scorching the material,
so we use temp pallet paper that we replace every 3rd or 4th (per pallet) print or so. Built into
the pricing so that the more expensive tighter weave actually works out to about the same.
I sometimes wish autos came with 3 unloading/loading stations for a flash in between.
I had to dial in our flash to keep from scorching them while gelling the ink enough to keep it from transferring. I have it written down in my notebook, but I think we were around 40% bulb intensity for 3 seconds and 30% standby intensity for another 2 seconds.
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I actually did some and didn't have a problem with them transferring. If you are really careful about how you load and unload, you are OK. It also wasn't a ton of them, so I didn't have much chance for a ton of buildup.
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Sanmar now sells a pinnie that is awesome no holes for the ink to pass through and still reversible etc. yet some people still prefer them large as hell port holes ugh, like I said take your time do it right the first time and charge accordingly its not all that bad.
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why do it right the first time? You can do it again and gain twice the experience!
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Alan, there is a lot of people struggle with the high vis vests, low mesh counts, pushing too much ink through and not cleaning the pallets back. My thoughts regarding quality of kids tees. Adults will pay 40 for themselves but struggle to pay 14 for their kids tees, work back the retail margin, wholesaler, manufacturing and once again the printer is squeezed to print kids shirts much cheaper than adults because they have less perceived retail value. Quality is a relevant and moveable variable in my factory, maybe because we have soo much work we can afford to loose it, although we don't. But remember all shops also operate in different markets and manage their customers diffently to what is their own normal. I have customers who happily run 500 tees and pay $5 a 6 col print, and they come to us for quality and pay accordingly, cash on collection and they refer others on. We also have customers who openly get a dozen quotes to go with the cheapest price sacrificing quality happily on both print and garment, just purely buying on price and they may get their 6 col at $1.50. Likewise we find different shirts print different quality, so a fine gauge combed Bangladesh cotton which is flat, soft, no dust, and a great surface will print much nicer than a Gildan coarse guage combed cotton tee that has fluff and dust, and about 5% have fabric flaws, snubs, holes or worse. I think we now pay less attention when printing on lesser quality shirts. I also allow lower quality with rude customers who I don't like, or those that average five months to pay for their jobs. I know it's bad to be complacent, but I think that after doing this for so long that maybe you can easily allow yourself to run stuff that is not going to be entered into print awards. Part of me knows this is wrong as we get most of our work on referral and word of mouth, but we have varying levels of acceptability in our shop. Some customers have A1 grade quality and service and zero defect policy, others are punch+crunch. There were earlier times when we were all low end, and times and a separate business which is now integrated which was very high end, but now we are much more settled and i am comfortable that some customers are just here for price, while others are happy to reject anything less than perfect and happy to pay accordingly. Either end could walk away to another shop that just does work for their kind, we just happen to output both. Sometimes it can be awkward to admit we do some stuff, but then again the customer may come in and say 17,000pcs and budget is .35c for two colour, needed next week. They get a 35 cent print as opposed to a sixty cent print. If I say no someone else will take their money and maybe give them an even worse print. At the budget point those customers have differing expectations at each end of the spectrum. We say imagine the triangle, Quality, Service, Price. Pick the two attributes that suit you the most. A customer can only have two out of the three points on that triangle, yet our business can alter production to suit.
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Alan, there is a lot of people struggle with the high vis vests, low mesh counts, pushing too much ink through and not cleaning the pallets back. My thoughts regarding quality of kids tees. Adults will pay 40 for themselves but struggle to pay 14 for their kids tees, work back the retail margin, wholesaler, manufacturing and once again the printer is squeezed to print kids shirts much cheaper than adults because they have less perceived retail value. Quality is a relevant and moveable variable in my factory, maybe because we have soo much work we can afford to loose it, although we don't. But remember all shops also operate in different markets and manage their customers diffently to what is their own normal. I have customers who happily run 500 tees and pay $5 a 6 col print, and they come to us for quality and pay accordingly, cash on collection and they refer others on. We also have customers who openly get a dozen quotes to go with the cheapest price sacrificing quality happily on both print and garment, just purely buying on price and they may get their 6 col at $1.50. Likewise we find different shirts print different quality, so a fine gauge combed Bangladesh cotton which is flat, soft, no dust, and a great surface will print much nicer than a Gildan coarse guage combed cotton tee that has fluff and dust, and about 5% have fabric flaws, snubs, holes or worse. I think we now pay less attention when printing on lesser quality shirts. I also allow lower quality with rude customers who I don't like, or those that average five months to pay for their jobs. I know it's bad to be complacent, but I think that after doing this for so long that maybe you can easily allow yourself to run stuff that is not going to be entered into print awards. Part of me knows this is wrong as we get most of our work on referral and word of mouth, but we have varying levels of acceptability in our shop. Some customers have A1 grade quality and service and zero defect policy, others are punch+crunch. There were earlier times when we were all low end, and times and a separate business which is now integrated which was very high end, but now we are much more settled and i am comfortable that some customers are just here for price, while others are happy to reject anything less than perfect and happy to pay accordingly. Either end could walk away to another shop that just does work for their kind, we just happen to output both. Sometimes it can be awkward to admit we do some stuff, but then again the customer may come in and say 17,000pcs and budget is .35c for two colour, needed next week. They get a 35 cent print as opposed to a sixty cent print. If I say no someone else will take their money and maybe give them an even worse print. At the budget point those customers have differing expectations at each end of the spectrum. We say imagine the triangle, Quality, Service, Price. Pick the two attributes that suit you the most. A customer can only have two out of the three points on that triangle, yet our business can alter production to suit.
Well said. You get what you pay for.
Sent from samsung gem(the worst smart phone ever)