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screen printing => General Screen Printing => Topic started by: ericheartsu on May 15, 2013, 02:10:25 PM
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Ours is registration. It takes us FOREVER to get stuff up and running.
what about you?
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customer service/email
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Ours is registration. It takes us FOREVER to get stuff up and running.
what about you?
What is forever? Give use an example and what press you have. It takes me longer to load the ink then to register. Press to press, shop to shop time to do things is very different.
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Ours is registration. It takes us FOREVER to get stuff up and running.
what about you?
Screen storage which causes a lack of screens ready to coat/burn which slows down everything screen printing related, but working on a solution now.
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http://www.theshirtboard.com (http://www.theshirtboard.com)
And you know it. :o
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[url]http://www.theshirtboard.com[/url] ([url]http://www.theshirtboard.com[/url])
And you know it. :o
From this frog's perspective, that's time well sucked. :P
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Ours is registration. It takes us FOREVER to get stuff up and running.
what about you?
What is forever? Give use an example and what press you have. It takes me longer to load the ink then to register. Press to press, shop to shop time to do things is very different.
it just took us about 4-5 hours working on a four color job with a pin lock system. We have an M&M Xpress (the missing link between the multi printer and centurian).
Poly White Base (160)
Flash
space
roller screen
Teal (272)
space
light blue (272)
flash
space
Poly White.
4 hours to get it lined up, an hour to match the ink. FML.
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Ours is registration. It takes us FOREVER to get stuff up and running.
what about you?
What is forever? Give use an example and what press you have. It takes me longer to load the ink then to register. Press to press, shop to shop time to do things is very different.
it just took us about 4-5 hours working on a four color job with a pin lock system. We have an M&M Xpress (the missing link between the multi printer and centurian).
Poly White Base (160)
Flash
space
roller screen
Teal (272)
space
light blue (272)
flash
space
Poly White.
4 hours to get it lined up, an hour to match the ink. FML.
Jesus!!!!
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Ours is registration. It takes us FOREVER to get stuff up and running.
what about you?
What is forever? Give use an example and what press you have. It takes me longer to load the ink then to register. Press to press, shop to shop time to do things is very different.
it just took us about 4-5 hours working on a four color job with a pin lock system. We have an M&M Xpress (the missing link between the multi printer and centurian).
Poly White Base (160)
Flash
space
roller screen
Teal (272)
space
light blue (272)
flash
space
Poly White.
4 hours to get it lined up, an hour to match the ink. FML.
Wait 4 hours to set up a 3 color job. That is beyond nuts. Pin reg? I could set up a 8 color manually on my press faster. Why so long?
Sorry I wanted to be sensitive, but that is really long. You can only do one side of one job in a day with that kind of set up times. You must hate printing.
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Screen management. Mostly de-taping, ink removal, reclaiming, drying and recoating.
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Ours is registration. It takes us FOREVER to get stuff up and running.
what about you?
What is forever? Give use an example and what press you have. It takes me longer to load the ink then to register. Press to press, shop to shop time to do things is very different.
it just took us about 4-5 hours working on a four color job with a pin lock system. We have an M&M Xpress (the missing link between the multi printer and centurian).
Poly White Base (160)
Flash
space
roller screen
Teal (272)
space
light blue (272)
flash
space
Poly White.
4 hours to get it lined up, an hour to match the ink. FML.
Wait 4 hours to set up a 3 color job. That is beyond nuts. Pin reg? I could set up a 8 color manually on my press faster. Why so long?
Sorry I wanted to be sensitive, but that is really long. You can only do one side of one job in a day with that kind of set up times. You must hate printing.
exactly. i'm working on this very hard. but it's giant pain.
The biggest problem with out press is each head has to have the off contact for each corner adjusted for every job.
and our employee who set it up, set it up incorrectly, and we didn't double check until it was inked up and ready to go.
We are about to do an 8 color job, and time ourselves on this.
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Getting customers to approve/release artwork is our biggest delay issue.
Close behind is incomplete paperwork from both customers and in-house.
Mill defects and 100% ship polices.
~Kitson
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WTF? how many hours to set what up....at that pace it is cheaper to junk your press buy and new on with a real regi system....I am dumbfounded at that...and 1 hr to mix ink? where do you have to go to do that?
still blown away
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ericheartsu,
My advice for you on your press...keep everything consistent. Set the off contact and then just leave it the same on every job. I have my press so all the heads print the same speed and same everything. The white is really the only head that gets messed with. Yes i adjust a little here and there but not too far from my base settings is needed. This gives you a solid starting point on every job. With time it will be second nature how much from your base setting to adjust to get the print dead on. Thats all I have for you. I am no expert.
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WTF? how many hours to set what up....at that pace it is cheaper to junk your press buy and new on with a real regi system....I am dumbfounded at that...and 1 hr to mix ink? where do you have to go to do that?
still blown away
working on it
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ericheartsu,
My advice for you on your press...keep everything consistent. Set the off contact and then just leave it the same on every job. I have my press so all the heads print the same speed and same everything. The white is really the only head that gets messed with. Yes i adjust a little here and there but not too far from my base settings is needed. This gives you a solid starting point on every job. With time it will be second nature how much from your base setting to adjust to get the print dead on. Thats all I have for you. I am no expert.
from screen to screen, it really does vary, and i'm trying to figure out why they do so much. We only use m3 frames on our press, which puzzles me as well
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ericheartsu,
My advice for you on your press...keep everything consistent. Set the off contact and then just leave it the same on every job. I have my press so all the heads print the same speed and same everything. The white is really the only head that gets messed with. Yes i adjust a little here and there but not too far from my base settings is needed. This gives you a solid starting point on every job. With time it will be second nature how much from your base setting to adjust to get the print dead on. Thats all I have for you. I am no expert.
from screen to screen, it really does vary, and i'm trying to figure out why they do so much. We only use m3 frames on our press, which puzzles me as well
Sounds like you need to put in some hours of adjusting the press..
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We even had it completely rebuilt last month!
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We even had it completely rebuilt last month!
After rebuild did you have the heads all leveled, pallets leveled and the press calibrated? Sounds like you may still need to have this done.
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We even had it completely rebuilt last month!
After rebuild did you have the heads all leveled, pallets leveled and the press calibrated? Sounds like you may still need to have this done.
yep! this press is weird, it has ONE fork for registration. it's pretty silly.
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Eric
What make and model press do you have?
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Eric
What make and model press do you have?
it's an M&M/AWT Xpress 10/12
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Eric- How long have you had the press? I know when I first got a auto I hated setting it up because it took so long, but with time it got better. Then we got a better press. The new pre reg system our S.Roque uses in my opinion can't be beat, possibly rivaled by MHM POSSIBLY. But I guess I don't know all the ins and outs of the MHM system.
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So is most of that time spent test printing...adjusting micros...test printing...adjusting micros...adjusting off contact...test printing? Or is that from screen exposure, dry, tapeup, screen registration, test printing, adjusting, etc. I know back in the centurian days before it was calibrated and using 10 newton statics it would take an hour to two hours to set up a 4 color job and test print till it looked decent. Do you mind walking us through what a typical setup feels like with time spent on certain tasks? That could answer some questions if we knew exactly which process is causing you the most grief.
Without a regi system and manually setting screens a 4 color should be 15-20 minutes and 3-4 test prints then production. Regi system and that job from screen on press to final test print should be 10 minutes or less.
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Our biggest time waster depends. For the "front end" it is dealing with clueless customers. For the production end of things I would say it is mixing specific discharge colors and like Kitson said "100% ship polices". We try to put individual packing slips in each box, that takes time. But I think I got a "system" almost set up. I'm trying to use our UPS printer to print packing slips from a template. Then we just fill in the blank on the computer and print.
MY personal time suck is the damn phone!!!!!! When I started out I never thought I would say it, but I hate to hear the phone ring!
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Our biggest time waster depends. For the "front end" it is dealing with clueless customers. For the production end of things I would say it is mixing specific discharge colors and like Kitson said "100% ship polices". We try to put individual packing slips in each box, that takes time. But I think I got a "system" almost set up. I'm trying to use our UPS printer to print packing slips from a template. Then we just fill in the blank on the computer and print.
MY personal time suck is the damn phone!!!!!! When I started out I never thought I would say it, but I hate to hear the phone ring!
Don't answer it, if they love your service and print work enough they will do businees your way!
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Eric- How long have you had the press? I know when I first got a auto I hated setting it up because it took so long, but with time it got better. Then we got a better press. The new pre reg system our S.Roque uses in my opinion can't be beat, possibly rivaled by MHM POSSIBLY. But I guess I don't know all the ins and outs of the MHM system.
Nothing beats the MHM system.
You can load then in backwards and they are still registered. Hell, You can load the screens upside down and they are still registered. (Not sure why you would do that)
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So generally i have all of the screens for the day made by 9am, taped up and blocked out by 10am. Typically on press by 11am.
Each screen is put into a head, using our newman pin lock system. All of our screens are between 30 and 40 newtons, on m3s.
Screens are lined up to the pin lock, then each corner of the screen is checked to make sure off contact is equal. After one head is set up and checked, it's then on to the next one, then the next etc..etc...
after each screen is checeked, and registered, it's then inked up, then squeegees and flood bars go on. We use Action winged flood bars, and either smiling jack or 70 duro squeegees. Sometimes tripple duro, if we feel it needs it.
after that each screen is printed one by one, and this is usually where the longest part comes in. Even though we use the pin lock system, we've found that we have to micro register each head several times to get it in perfect.
Now it could be that we've been printing this press so much, that it needs to be re-registered (even though it was re-registered and leveled about a month ago). And to answer TCT's question, we've had this press since summer of 2012. and before that we had a challenger 1
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If your press does eventually register then its registration is fine. 4 hours is a long time for what you just said. I did a 8 color on my press with no prereg (before I got one for my press) and it took me only about 1.5 hours and that was taking my time. Maybe your just really slow? How old are you? Do you walk with a crutch? Are you in a wheel chair? Are you missing both arms so you use your mouth to put the screens in? Are you Blind? These are all things that my be why it take you so long. Ok, kidding aside. How long did it take to register on the Challenger you had? It must me so frustrating for you to print.
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If you're reading 30-40 newtons on screens you're setting up multicolor, that may be part of your issue--try a set of screens that are all 30N.
If you slip up mesh inconsistently, you can still have low and high tension pockets--are you measuring tension on five or nine points, or just in the middle?
I'd have to agree, four hours is rather excessive, might be time to go through that thing with a good tech and level it out, make sure nothings loose.
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our biggest time issue is customer management.
mooseman
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now wait a minute...why do you have to micro so much after set up? are you using the pin system wrong? i would investigate that first. I made my own reg system similar to the MHM system, screw carrier sheets, that's room for error and a huge pita. How far are you off on reg after set up? what type of micros does this press have? something is terribly wrong here...
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Our biggest time waster depends. For the "front end" it is dealing with clueless customers. For the production end of things I would say it is mixing specific discharge colors and like Kitson said "100% ship polices". We try to put individual packing slips in each box, that takes time. But I think I got a "system" almost set up. I'm trying to use our UPS printer to print packing slips from a template. Then we just fill in the blank on the computer and print.
MY personal time suck is the damn phone!!!!!! When I started out I never thought I would say it, but I hate to hear the phone ring!
Ditto, we're so busy the phone is really bugging me, as are walk-ins but it's all pretty good money. Sometimes I really miss the old days of just being able to print un-interupted .
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Our biggest time waster depends. For the "front end" it is dealing with clueless customers. For the production end of things I would say it is mixing specific discharge colors and like Kitson said "100% ship polices". We try to put individual packing slips in each box, that takes time. But I think I got a "system" almost set up. I'm trying to use our UPS printer to print packing slips from a template. Then we just fill in the blank on the computer and print.
MY personal time suck is the damn phone!!!!!! When I started out I never thought I would say it, but I hate to hear the phone ring!
Ditto, we're so busy the phone is really bugging me, as are walk-ins but it's all pretty good money. Sometimes I really miss the old days of just being able to print un-interupted .
Time to hire someone to deal with that for you. 10.00 per hour receptionist is the best money ever spent.
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Our biggest time waster depends. For the "front end" it is dealing with clueless customers. For the production end of things I would say it is mixing specific discharge colors and like Kitson said "100% ship polices". We try to put individual packing slips in each box, that takes time. But I think I got a "system" almost set up. I'm trying to use our UPS printer to print packing slips from a template. Then we just fill in the blank on the computer and print.
MY personal time suck is the damn phone!!!!!! When I started out I never thought I would say it, but I hate to hear the phone ring!
Ditto, we're so busy the phone is really bugging me, as are walk-ins but it's all pretty good money. Sometimes I really miss the old days of just being able to print un-interupted .
I didn't want to say that because I'm kinda superstitious, but it seems every other time the phone rings now it is some "artist" or digitizer from India wanting to "give me great deal". Actually typing this makes me realize I can just turn off the ringers in back! Weird how I didn't think of that, the forum is like therapy that helps me with basic problems :P
Eric- why did you just have the press rebuilt last month? Was something wrong? Did you get the press used or new? Sorry for all the questions, but if the press was new there should of been no reason to have it rebuilt.
Now I don't have a Newman pin system, but from my understanding they are similar to the M&R one with a carrier sheet right? Is it possible there may be a issue with the registration/placement when burning screens?
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If your pin registration system isn't exact, and it sounds like it isn't, here's a suggestion to maybe shorten things up. You may already do this, but it's sort of a step backward in the whole pre-registration process.
- Don't block out your registration marks!
- Lock all the frames down with the pin reg
- Print the base plate on a high contrast garment to ink color and flash it
- Use that pallet/shirt to check all the other screens and micro to those printed registration marks BEFORE adding ink, squeegees or floodbars
- Add ink to each screen and print ONE screen over the base until registration marks stack.
- Tblock out/tape reg marks and run one final print
I'm off my kick for using my registration pallet until I build a reverse backlit registration board. No job under 5 colors should take more than 20 minutes to register. If it does, you're either not paying attention (moving micros in wrong direction, forgetting to lock down one side of the screen, etc) or there's a problem with the film/screen/tension/exposure process.
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One thing I'll mention is if your press isn't calibrated to a decent tolerance, the higher tension levels are going to hurt you rather than help you. To get the most out of a 40 newton screen your press needs to be calibrated dead on. Our pallets are within a sheet of paper of one another so we can take advantage of any tension tension. We also modified our regi system to not use carrier sheets and it's been more accurate and much faster.
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Alan, I'm with you. When we first got the Tri-Loc, I modified it to work without carrier sheets. My main reason was I wanted to be able to expose 4-5 screens at once, and not mess with the master frame on the glass. I always hated carrier sheets. I still got great results doing it "my" way. Still a die hard Tri-loc user.
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sorry for the radio silence on my end, these next two weeks are the busiest of the whole year for our little shop.
i'll answer all these questions tonight!
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Our biggest time waster depends. For the "front end" it is dealing with clueless customers. For the production end of things I would say it is mixing specific discharge colors and like Kitson said "100% ship polices". We try to put individual packing slips in each box, that takes time. But I think I got a "system" almost set up. I'm trying to use our UPS printer to print packing slips from a template. Then we just fill in the blank on the computer and print.
MY personal time suck is the damn phone!!!!!! When I started out I never thought I would say it, but I hate to hear the phone ring!
Ditto, we're so busy the phone is really bugging me, as are walk-ins but it's all pretty good money. Sometimes I really miss the old days of just being able to print un-interupted .
Time to hire someone to deal with that for you. 10.00 per hour receptionist is the best money ever spent.
Yup, just putting it off as long as I can. We need the right person as they'll be the face of the shop for most customers, and it's a long, hard battle to break the customers habit of wanting to talk to me, right now every phone call and 90% of the walk-ins are for me. Not to mention all the training that will go into getting them up to speed on dealing with the customers to the same standard and knowledge base as mine. This person will have to be in it for the long run because I don't want to train someone every other year.
Some days I can't get anything done as I'm too busy quoting, answering questions, doing artwork proofs, answering e-mails and dealing with the phone and front desk. Yes it's great being "too busy" but that has it's limits. Thank goodness I have three great people running screenprinting, padprinting and embroidery! but there are still too many things on my plate that can't easily be handed off.....yet.
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I still got great results doing it "my" way. Still a die hard Tri-loc user.
No carrier sheets? (not that I ever had an issue with them)
I'm eventually going to convince my shop to take the Tri-Loc pill.
Care to share your sheet-less method? I'm all ears... (PM is fine)
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One thing I'll mention is if your press isn't calibrated to a decent tolerance, the higher tension levels are going to hurt you rather than help you. To get the most out of a 40 newton screen your press needs to be calibrated dead on. Our pallets are within a sheet of paper of one another so we can take advantage of any tension tension. We also modified our regi system to not use carrier sheets and it's been more accurate and much faster.
You got any photos of your regi system set up. Would love to go that way too. Please;)
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I'll see if I can get some pics up some time in the next few days. Essentially I have turned my Triloc master frame into an MHM style FPU. I turned it upside down and raised it up off the table so that it hits the same side of the corners on the pallet jig as the FPU. It does not sit on the exposure unit and has a dedicated table next to the exposure unit where everything is registered. I register my film exactly how you would on an MHM system but with my corners butted up again my stop points instead of locked in the pins like on the MHM FPU and the registration grid is showing through the emulsion from the squeegee side and you simply tape the film directly onto the shirt side.
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First and foremost, let me thank everyone for their eagerness to help. I have a couple of minutes while a job being finalized, and waiting for UPS to show up.
We have deteremined a couple of things:
1. our AWT press has slowly gotten out of registration, but our tech is coming to re-register it for us today. This press has a single point of registration, which is it's biggest downfall in my opinion.
2. Our screens are to tight. Our intentions were good, but our press is just not set up to handle that type of high tension.
3. I had to sit down with our pin system registration grid and check and re check everything going with that set up. I did find room for many errors, and hopefully i've got them taken care of. Our carrier sheets were def. bending, and causing weird issues with things being straight.
Thank you to everyone that called and emailed. Hopefully we'll get this knocked out and fixed up today. at least i hope so, i have to print about 10K shirts by the end of the month! YIKES
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First and foremost, let me thank everyone for their eagerness to help. I have a couple of minutes while a job being finalized, and waiting for UPS to show up.
We have deteremined a couple of things:
1. our AWT press has slowly gotten out of registration, but our tech is coming to re-register it for us today. This press has a single point of registration, which is it's biggest downfall in my opinion.
2. Our screens are to tight. Our intentions were good, but our press is just not set up to handle that type of high tension.
#2 Very Correct!
Single point registration is not and inferior design buy any means.
I have customers that have "American Brand" printers, and have good results.
MHM s-type, E type presses use single point systems and they are "dead nuts" on
Registration.
Registration problems happen, because of worn, loose, parts. Metal Fatigue on older machines,
can occur, but not often. Or Improper installation
3. I had to sit down with our pin system registration grid and check and re check everything going with that set up. I did find room for many errors, and hopefully i've got them taken care of. Our carrier sheets were def. bending, and causing weird issues with things being straight.
Thank you to everyone that called and emailed. Hopefully we'll get this knocked out and fixed up today. at least i hope so, i have to print about 10K shirts by the end of the month! YIKES
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I'll see if I can get some pics up some time in the next few days. Essentially I have turned my Triloc master frame into an MHM style FPU. I turned it upside down and raised it up off the table so that it hits the same side of the corners on the pallet jig as the FPU. It does not sit on the exposure unit and has a dedicated table next to the exposure unit where everything is registered. I register my film exactly how you would on an MHM system but with my corners butted up again my stop points instead of locked in the pins like on the MHM FPU and the registration grid is showing through the emulsion from the squeegee side and you simply tape the film directly onto the shirt side.
Ah, I see.
So the critical piece is that you are looking down through the mesh/emulsion to a grid, and you register to that. Correct? Do you tape one of the films to the grid, or is there a set target on the grid you always register to?
Carrier sheets can be a pain sometimes, but you can't beat registering films to each other on a light table with a loupe.
Before I sold everything off, I was looking into this:
http://www.takachpress.com/servlet/the-3/punch-registration-system-printmaking/Detail (http://www.takachpress.com/servlet/the-3/punch-registration-system-printmaking/Detail)
Basically do away with carrier sheets and punch the films directly, then use a set of punch registration pins and a sheet of aluminum to make a pin bar. (ie not using the Tri-loc pin bar)