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screen printing => Equipment => Topic started by: tancehughes on September 25, 2013, 11:49:15 AM
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I realize that this is a semi-unnecessary question, because I already know what I think about M&R and their equipment, but I just want to get some feedback from anyone that currently owns a Sportsman EX 10/12.
What kind of real world speeds are you experiencing when printing with your Sportsman? Where are you placing your two flashes?
I currently have an all-air Diamondback 6/8, so I've never had servo drive either.
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Servos are the bees knees when coming from all air!!!!!! Youngin' ;)
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Have used one. Depending on the set-up I usually had the flashes in head 2 and head 8.
Depending on the number of colors you're printing I would place the flash in head 3 and rotate printing on head 1 and 2.
Usually the print counts on 1 and 10 are the most compared to every other head.
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See I was thinking flashes in 2 and 7, and yeah I am really really excited about eventually getting a servo press....
Also our dback maxes out at 480/hour printing, so we're really hoping to see some major increase in printing speed!
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We are not the fastest printers here for sure. We run 30-50dz, most often 1 operator (loading and unloading). Machine will run over 70dz a hour. Ours is just a 8/10 though, not a 10/12.
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Brandt, what is the actual max print dimensions that you have been able to pull off on the Sporty? I know guys that haven't read posts from a couple years back when you got it will be shocked to see how much you have gotten outside of the actual specs as far as max image size.
Thanks
Mike
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Brandt, what is the actual max print dimensions that you have been able to pull off on the Sporty? I know guys that haven't read posts from a couple years back when you got it will be shocked to see how much you have gotten outside of the actual specs as far as max image size.
Thanks
Mike
Rated 20x20. We have never tired any wide prints past 15, but we print 23 tall with NO issues at all. If you wanted to run real slow you could probably do slightly more.
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Thanks for the replay Brandt! I know a lot of guys that their presses say 18" max depth, and they have to actually play around with angles on their squeegees and floods to get the max, good to know you have actually pulled off prints a few inches easily deeper than spec'd without having to rig your print head!!
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Thanks for the replay Brandt! I know a lot of guys that their presses say 18" max depth, and they have to actually play around with angles on their squeegees and floods to get the max, good to know you have actually pulled off prints a few inches easily deeper than spec'd without having to rig your print head!!
Ya thats with NO fancy tricks with squeegee/flood.
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It's funny how many times someone ends up at the counter here talking about AOP printing for them, and then when you actually show them an image printed 20" wide and 22" tall, they freak out at how huge it actually is. Most walk in orders would never pay the extra doe to go for a "true" AOP, we do some multi locational stuff on occasion, but right now we are limited to 17" tall, 15.5" wide on our DB and have to do anything larger on the manual which now I try to avoid at all costs, too dam back breaking. I tore my back up doing 22x24 printing for a guys indi label here and had to stop printing for him a couple years back since all of his designs were at that size and he was a "contract" customer. Just took too long with too much effort for the end invoices. Now, if I had that Sporty, I may have been able to swing that =). Really looking forward to seeing how this new hybrid Sporty/Challenger comes out.
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on a 10 color press I would suggest only 1 flash. You are wasting 4 heads with 2 flashes. IMO, 2 flashes are for 12 color press or larger. Just my 2 cents.
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dirk, I disagree about the flashes. it's never a bad thing to have an extra for several reasons...1, in case you are running a 3 color job that needs 2 flashs, and second, a backup is always nice.
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Not to sidetrack but in my shop I have 3 red chili flashes between our 12 col and 8 color autos and we are constantly wheeling our flash from the 12 color over to the 8 for various jobs that require a flash before a top white or many other reasons so I would certainly suggest having 2 flashes for a 10 col machine. Get something not attached to a head so you can wheel it out and use the head if needed.
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We even have a second flash for our 8 color.
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Multi flashes are useful. We even put 2 on our 6 once in a while. Can't see how one on a 10 makes for efficient production, but would like to know more why one is adequate for my info.
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we have 2 flashes on our 10 color, but rarely use the second one, however when we need it, it's super handy. We have our main flash in head 3, a lot of the times we lay down a color before the white, flash, and use always use a smoother screen on head 4...works rather well. I like flashes on stands, no in head flashes for us...I guess you are saying you loose 4 heads due to one being a flash and the other a cooling station?
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we have 2 flashes on our 10 color, but rarely use the second one, however when we need it, it's super handy. We have our main flash in head 3, a lot of the times we lay down a color before the white, flash, and use always use a smoother screen on head 4...works rather well. I like flashes on stands, no in head flashes for us...I guess you are saying you loose 4 heads due to one being a flash and the other a cooling station?
I knew some would disagree, that's why I said IMO, I like to get the full use of the press. Yes, its good if you can move them easily, like if your printing a lot of FLO colors, those suckers need to be flashed. If your art is built correctly, you can print 8 colors without flashing them, IMO.
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dirk, I pretty much agree with you. Engineered correctly, there shouldn't be a ton of flashing going on. I am mainly thinking I want the second flash for the exact reasons posted - flo colors, some highlight white that may need to be flashed, etc.
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We use the second flash all the time for 5+ color jobs that have stubborn inks that don't print wow worth a damn. I wish we used a mixing system and all of our inks were engineered to print wow but we don't. Most of our work is 4-5 colors, bold artwork, on darks with lots of ink area so having the second flash to hit 2-3 open areas of ink before we put a few more colors on works wonders for production flow.
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Spot on with what Alan said with our 9 Color DB. Usually roll a tabasco flash into head number 6. Alan, I found a little trick for those stuburn inks that don't like to WOW and stay down. Wiflex fashion soft base. It looks and has the consistency of their curable reducer, around the same price per gal. Use about 2-5% in your wow inks and it keeps it from sticking to the screens, at that mix ratio doesn't seem to affect the opacity either or effect the finish of the inks. So far I've tried it in wilflex inks, and Union Maxopaque royal and scarlet red. Makes them a nice high opacity wet on wet able ink. Second flash, "on a movable stand", is a serious helper. I want to get into a 12-16 co machine next to have at least 3 flashes.
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when I started years ago, we would flash EVERY color....no matter what....on a brown Harco 8 color manual with blown lazy susan bearings....I had tennis elbow for years....not my choice, I was just a grunt printer for someone that didn't have a clue how things should really be done and taught me terrible habits. rant over.
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We use the second flash all the time for 5+ color jobs that have stubborn inks that don't print wow worth a damn. I wish we used a mixing system and all of our inks were engineered to print wow but we don't. Most of our work is 4-5 colors, bold artwork, on darks with lots of ink area so having the second flash to hit 2-3 open areas of ink before we put a few more colors on works wonders for production flow.
Alan, wilflex MX is great for WOW inks, that's what we are using here, very consistent and EASY EASY to print. You probably already knew that though
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QCM Wow inks are great too. I'm bummed they discontinued their WOW white. I hate shopping new whites when you have something you like.
2 flashes here on the 12/14, and if the right deal on a third flash came along I'd be on it just for the added flexibility it would provide of tricky prints and weird inks.
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On our Sportsman 10/8 a second flash is pretty essential with spot colors
every now and then. More powerful flash for whites, then basic one for successive colors.
The cool-mister would be nice not to loose heads for cooling.
Second the Wilflex MX system we have been using for 12+ years.
A little curable reducer and slick-up, no pick-up as it goes.
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Just for reference, I operate a 10/8 Sportsman every day. Not the EX or the E, but it has a servo index and AC heads. We can easily run it at 70 dz/hr, and have hit 83 dz/hr with the right screens and ink.
83 dz is not the most comfortable speed, to be perfectly honest. Mostly because shirts are usually stacked all effed up.
It's 2013...can the mill factories stack a shirt straight please?
Also...is there a person at Gildan who's job it is to sweep lint and thread off the floor and dump it into the outgoing shirt boxes? They use to be bad, lately they are just evil.
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The lint is horrible huh? I took a pic of my wife's neck last week after she ran 300 black g2000s. It looked like someone threw a dust pan at her. The use of a sticky screen is looking like it's really needed.
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Did a bunch of towels last week and what little hair I had on my arms
gathered a few oz's of lint!
Hate to see what Mooseman's hairy arms would come up with.
(remembering a pict of his a bit ago) ???
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We do have the 2011 Sportsman EX with "rear micro".
Do any of you EX'ers use it?
From old school and find just using front swing is quicker if familiar...
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Spot on with what Alan said with our 9 Color DB. Usually roll a tabasco flash into head number 6. Alan, I found a little trick for those stuburn inks that don't like to WOW and stay down. Wiflex fashion soft base. It looks and has the consistency of their curable reducer, around the same price per gal. Use about 2-5% in your wow inks and it keeps it from sticking to the screens, at that mix ratio doesn't seem to affect the opacity either or effect the finish of the inks. So far I've tried it in wilflex inks, and Union Maxopaque royal and scarlet red. Makes them a nice high opacity wet on wet able ink. Second flash, "on a movable stand", is a serious helper. I want to get into a 12-16 co machine next to have at least 3 flashes.
I used to use the fashion base but it never improved our inks for wow printing. I tried it numerous times thinking it would help but the inks I added it to were terrible at building up so maybe there was nothing that could help those inks. My additive of choice these days is halftone/process base. Depending on who you buy it from it's either halftone base or process base. We use it for anything that needs cut, softened, extended, lengthen body, shorten body, you name it. I've tried many different bases and reducers and they all have done what I needed for the most part but this halftone base is all we have in the shop now.
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Spot on with what Alan said with our 9 Color DB. Usually roll a tabasco flash into head number 6. Alan, I found a little trick for those stuburn inks that don't like to WOW and stay down. Wiflex fashion soft base. It looks and has the consistency of their curable reducer, around the same price per gal. Use about 2-5% in your wow inks and it keeps it from sticking to the screens, at that mix ratio doesn't seem to affect the opacity either or effect the finish of the inks. So far I've tried it in wilflex inks, and Union Maxopaque royal and scarlet red. Makes them a nice high opacity wet on wet able ink. Second flash, "on a movable stand", is a serious helper. I want to get into a 12-16 co machine next to have at least 3 flashes.
I used to use the fashion base but it never improved our inks for wow printing. I tried it numerous times thinking it would help but the inks I added it to were terrible at building up so maybe there was nothing that could help those inks. My additive of choice these days is halftone/process base. Depending on who you buy it from it's either halftone base or process base. We use it for anything that needs cut, softened, extended, lengthen body, shorten body, you name it. I've tried many different bases and reducers and they all have done what I needed for the most part but this halftone base is all we have in the shop now.
We do the same but with Finese.
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Will have to give the halftone base a try too. I really liked what xenbase did as well, but we couldn't get enough information from them as to what's actually in it, so until that full documentation is available for our customers, we tried somthing else.II've also heard Rutland chino base was awesome but havent got the chance to try it yet.
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We are not the fastest printers here for sure. We run 30-50dz, most often 1 operator (loading and unloading). Machine will run over 70dz a hour. Ours is just a 8/10 though, not a 10/12.
Been mulling this one over. You can hit 50doz. an hour, sustained for more than a couple of minutes with 1 guy? I thought I was doing pretty good, but that's awesome production. I don't think I could do much over 30doz/hour single handedly loading and unloading, and even then everything has to be just right. Any tips to getting up to those speeds with 1 guy?
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Are you guys doing REAL numbers or is that what the machine says?
My guy played on an Diamond Back C at the show this past week and it was set to 78 dz/hour but they put a 7 second delay/dwell since he had never ran an auto before. I timed it and he was running a shirt every 8 seconds. That's about 37 dz/hour and he was only loading :)
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We are not the fastest printers here for sure. We run 30-50dz, most often 1 operator (loading and unloading). Machine will run over 70dz a hour. Ours is just a 8/10 though, not a 10/12.
Been mulling this one over. You can hit 50doz. an hour, sustained for more than a couple of minutes with 1 guy? I thought I was doing pretty good, but that's awesome production. I don't think I could do much over 30doz/hour single handedly loading and unloading, and even then everything has to be just right. Any tips to getting up to those speeds with 1 guy?
Best we can do is 40-42dz 1 guy. That's on a diamondback though. So I could see how doing it on a sportsman might yield a bit more speed but 50dz/hr with 1 person seems pretty insane for a sustained time.
Sometimes we do run ours at 53dz/hr which is the highest speed possible. It equates to almost no dwell time for the squeegee to move...since it dry cycles at that speed haha. I wish we had a faster press...
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I personally can run 40 dz/ hour by myself loading and unloading on my diamondback, but we are always running two people so that the person unloading can be constantly eyeing pinholes, trash, holes in shirts, etc (quality control).
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I always count while we are printing because I've never trusted the production counters on autos. Our old centurian was not accurate at all. Loading and unloading by myself I can do about 7-8 shirts/min, right now without having much time on the auto in the last few years, that equates to 35-40dz/hr. With a loader and unloader we can do 17 shirts/min. I'm not saying 50dz/hr is impossible with one person, especially on a fast indexing machine like an MHM or CH3, but I'd sure like to see it done on my press.
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I got to see someone do more than 50 dozen an hour 1 operator. I can load as good as ANYBODY, and at that rate you cant possibly be watching quality! And doing this consistently, not just trying to see how fast you can do it.
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My personal record was 48dz./hr but that was not sustained for a long period of time, maybe 25min. If I am on the anatol, I am comfortable right around 38-40dz./hr.
Kinda what Alan touched on, with the way the MHM and S.Roque machines index(servo AND they flood the screen while the press indexes) they seem to run faster. I have never taken the time to make sure the numbers add up exactly to what the counter says we are doing, but an educated guess would say it is pretty darn close. The fastest we ran our anatol was like 72dz./hr or something like that on a left crest print. I seem to remember that was as fast as that press went I think. But it is real odd because we will run the S.Roque much faster(unless my math is bad, the S.Roque counts in pcs./hr not Dz./hr.) than that and not struggle. I could totally be off, any MHM users experience anything similar?
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We've run sleeves and bags at 1000 hr, both by the presses count and ours.
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Should qualify that was with 2 people. Personal best is about ~350/hr, short bursts of
500 or so.
Remember that index speed will play a huge part in overall pcs/hr.
Inks of similar viscosity will get printed at similar speeds on different presses (maybe slightly faster with servo heads)
given all other variables are equal. So the press that indexes faster = more pieces/hr.
Both our presses max out at 1200/hr. Not bad for ten year old machines, and making it effing
difficult to upgrade. Everything I look at seems like a step backwards.
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eb- I'm sure it is in another post, and off the top of my head I can't remember, do you have 3000's?
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I timed it and he was running a shirt every 8 seconds.
I think we push the Sportsman to about one every 3.5 to 4 seconds. It FEELS like 80+ doz and hour. This is typical 1-2 color stuff with decent screens (which we have very few of) where I can max out the stroke speed.
Note the final production rate is always less. This is just press speed. Having to stop for lint balls, etc really eats into that overall speed.
We us ink traps on the bigger runs so inking up is not very frequent. Dump in a bunch of spun up ink and go.
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Oh and alone I do about 38-40 dz/hr comfortably. 50 is dumb if you want any QC.
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Solo, I run at a steady 27-28/doz per hour. Its not fast, but I keep up quality and can maintain that pace all day long. This is on a Diamondback S 7/8.
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We are not the fastest printers here for sure. We run 30-50dz, most often 1 operator (loading and unloading). Machine will run over 70dz a hour. Ours is just a 8/10 though, not a 10/12.
Been mulling this one over. You can hit 50doz. an hour, sustained for more than a couple of minutes with 1 guy? I thought I was doing pretty good, but that's awesome production. I don't think I could do much over 30doz/hour single handedly loading and unloading, and even then everything has to be just right. Any tips to getting up to those speeds with 1 guy?
That's not exactly what I said. I said we run 30-50dz, most often 1 operator. Someone asked how fast people were printing on it, I gave that range, then noted most often we are running just 1 operator, which would be generally 30-40dz. We run faster when we have 2 operators of course which would be more like 50dz. I think we have printed as high as 58dz a hour. We've never had desire to run faster than that.
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Lol, okay, makes sense now. I was loading/unloading by myself a bit yesterday and thinking 50 doz/hr....! wow! We're a bit bottle necked by our dryer right now, and having a big ol' belt to flop shirts on would speed us up, but even so I don't think more than 30-35/hr is gonna happen anytime soon here with 1 guy.
We can comfortably hit 40-45/hr and maintain that through a whole shift with 2 guys, and the machine will certainly go faster.... as soon as I hook up with Winston for the right gas oven.
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eb- I'm sure it is in another post, and off the top of my head I can't remember, do you have 3000's?
I wish. S-Types.
There has been more than a few times that being able to print that fast has saved our butt and made
some serious money fast.
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With S-types don't wish... contentment is a virtue.
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Lol, okay, makes sense now. I was loading/unloading by myself a bit yesterday and thinking 50 doz/hr....! wow! We're a bit bottle necked by our dryer right now, and having a big ol' belt to flop shirts on would speed us up, but even so I don't think more than 30-35/hr is gonna happen anytime soon here with 1 guy.
We can comfortably hit 40-45/hr and maintain that through a whole shift with 2 guys, and the machine will certainly go faster.... as soon as I hook up with Winston for the right gas oven.
Our dryer would be our hold up as well if we wanted to go much faster. I figure we will go bigger press and bigger dryer I hope next year.